Can Stephen King save the short story?

There’s no doubt that the short story is in trouble. I’ve written about it here (Is the short story dead?), and a trip to your local bookstore will show you just how hard it can be to find a book of short stories amid all those popular fiction novels that sell millions of copies, self-help books promoting the newest fad in pop-psychology, diet books, celebrity memoirs, and…well, the list goes on.

Stephen King, who many consider to be the iconic image of those popular fiction novels that appear to edge out works of short fiction, ironically, is the editor of The Best American Short Stories 2007. These annual collections go back several decades, and when I was just a young, carefree college freshman, I began to read these collections with much interest.

In an essay written for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, King talks of his experience trying to find the best short works of fiction to include in this year’s collection. As he does, he attempts to figure out why the short story, which used to be very lucrative for both writers and publishers, has slid down into the wastebasket of American literature.

His experience walking through a big-chain bookstore isn’t much different than yours or mine:

So into the bookstore I go, and what do I see first? A table filled with best-selling hardcover fiction at prices ranging from 20 percent to 40 percent off. James Patterson is represented, as is Danielle Steel, as is your faithful correspondent. Most of this stuff is disposable, but it’s right up front, where it hits you in the eye as soon as you come in, and why? Because these are the moneymakers and rent payers; these are the glamour ponies.

After much searching through more aisles of "disposable" books, King finally finds what he’s looking for. But it’s not displayed at the front and it’s not even discounted:

And here I find fresh treasure: not just Zoetrope and Tin House, but also Five Points and The Kenyon Review. No Glimmer Train, but there’s American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, even an Alaska Quarterly Review. I stagger to my feet and limp toward the checkout. The total cost of my six magazines runs to over $80. There are no discounts in the magazine section.

Stephen King is making it obvious that the short story is in trouble, partly, because none of the publications that serve up short fiction are given the "prime" shelf space that other books are given. Granted, the low position on the shelfing ladder is also due to the lack of popularity (and sales) of material that prints short fiction. So it starts to become a question of what came first, the chicken or the egg?

King offers up his own theory on the faltering short story, and makes a good point:

The chief reason for all this, I think, is that bottom shelf. It’s tough for writers to write (and editors to edit) when faced with a shrinking audience. Once, in the days of the old Saturday Evening Post, short fiction was a stadium act; now it can barely fill a coffeehouse and often performs in the company of nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a mouth organ. If the stories felt airless, why not? When circulation falters, the air in the room gets stale.

King doesn’t directly fault writers and editors, but when faced with shrinking demand for their product, it’s tough to get excited about it. Then we run into the "chicken vs. the egg" issue all over again. Is the public uninterested in short fiction because of all the bad short fiction out there? Or is there a lot of bad short fiction out there because writers know not many people will be interested in their work.

More and more it appears that short fiction is being given the same fate as poetry. That is, the biggest consumers of these two literary forms are the same ones who produce it. It’s a circular market with no "fresh meat" being brought in to spice things up.

I hope that with someone like Stephen King editing this year’s edition of The Best American Short Stories that maybe he will bring some "fresh meat" into a market that desperately needs it.

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• History of the Short Story

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