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20th century ghost stories5/25/2023 If you need reminding that ‘normal life’ is never actually that ‘normal’Īlice Munro is routinely referred to as the finest living writer of short stories. In The Kiss (1887), a gawky young soldier discovers a new lease of life when an unknown woman kisses him in a darkened room, only to sink back into despondency once he is forced to accept that it was a case of mistaken identity. His work could also be incredibly poignant. He simply turned an exquisitely observed mirror on contemporary Russian society, and then left the reader to come to their own conclusions. And yet he was no moralist or writer with a message. His work is peopled by brutish, ignorant peasants, pompous officials, frustrated wives and spineless husbands. Shying away from a neat narrative conclusion, he pioneered an effortlessly formless form which was almost unbearably lifelike. If you want to discover the original master of the formĪnton Chekhov understood that life was godless, random and cruel, good people suffered, and lazy mediocrities often flourished. From early masters of the genre such as Chekhov to the contemporary genius of Zadie Smith, there is something for every taste and mood. Ten or 20 pages are an easier commitment to make than several hundred, and if we can manage to focus our swirling brains for one, we can always go on to another. Now is surely the time to turn to the short story in all its myriad formats.
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