PREFACE
The themes of the short stories selected in the anthology Insights include ethnic conflict, gender bias, violence, man-woman relationship, the central character in conflict with established social values, personal trauma, spiritual quest, etc. American novelist Henry James (1843-1916) made very wise comments about fiction writing, and these observations have influenced a number of short-story writers like James Joyce, Katherine Masefield, John Updike, John Cheever and others. Henry James writes: "A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most curious about." !
The stories of Insights reveal "intensity of impression", and "freedom to feel and say". Henry James’ extraordinary short story "The Beast in the Jungle", and James Joyce’s "Dubliners" are full of these sublime characteristics.
Insights features stories of a great variety. Several of the authors included in Insights reveal in their short stories the impact of John Collier’s "Bottle Party"(1939), Elizabeth Bowen’s "The Demon Lover" (1941), Saki’s "Tobermory" (1911), Isak Dinesen’s "The Sailor-Boy’s Tale" (1942), E. B. White’s "The Door" (1939), E. M. Forster’s "The Celestial Omnibus" (1908), Nadine Gordimer’s "Termitary" ( 1974), Hemingway’s "In Another Country" (1927), Margaret Atwood’s "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother" (1983), Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" (1931), Katherine Anne Porter’s "Flowering Judas" (1930), Flannery O’Connor’s "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" (1953), Arthur Schnitzler’s "Fate of the Baron" (1923), Mary McCarthy’s "The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt" (1941).
During1850s to the 1970s, the short stories were frequently published in various magazines and newspapers. The authors during this period were chiefly concerned with themes, which described social criticism, war, and also gothic, grotesque incidents of supernatural mystery creating fear and horror. The postmodern age also witnessed the full blossoming of this genre. The brevity of the short story is perhaps the most important reason behind its tremendous popularity, and development into a serious art. Best short stories "can be read in an hour and remembered for a lifetime" (Benet). Isabelle Allende aptly remarks: "Novels are, for me, adding up details, just work, work, work, then you’re done. Short stories are more difficult-they have to be perfect, complete in themselves." Short-story seems to me an ideal genre for the 21st century afflicted with "a stressful mix of rat race and numbing routine" (Irene Wanner).
Cordially
SANTOSH KUMAR
Narrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society, it begins with the very history of mankind. and there nowhere is nor has been a people without a narrative.
Ronald Barthes, Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives, tr. Stephen Heath (Fontana, 1977) p. 79
