In France, the news has bad press. In the absence of prescribers (booksellers, journalists), it is presumed to be a repellent for the reader and would be a source of poor sales. Hence the publishers’ lack of appetite for these short forms, which Michel Déon mischievously called “my dancers”. But, which, the egg or the chicken…? This is the eternal question which the review Stripping seized in its spring-summer 2024 issue (16 euros) through the testimony of 21 writers, apostles of the genre.
As an appetizer, the great names in the field emerge: Raymond Carver, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Alice Munro, Anton Chekhov, Marcel Aymé, James Salter and Edgar Allan Poe, who gave this nice definition: “A text of fiction, the treatment of a single incident, material or spiritual, and which can be read in one go.” The short story still has a special status in the United States today, recalls Julia Kerninon, with writers having to “prove themselves as short story writers before being allowed to tackle the sacrosanct novel.”
The fact remains that, contrary to popular belief, it was in France, and not across the Atlantic, that the genre established itself at the end of the 19th century, thanks to the very many newspapers that published serials and short stories in droves. Belinda Cannone discovered one of the main culprits of the current disaffection in the person of Alain Robbe-Grillet, the author of For a new novel (1963), according to whom creation should be subject to writing, to the detriment of the characters and the plot… The writers of Stripping have, of course, ignored the advice of the “pope of the New Novel”. Thus Guillaume Sire, who does not mince his words when he writes: “Novelists are prophets, short story writers are saints, readers of novels are martyrs, readers of short stories are aristocrats.”
Small flashlights
Just like Mark Greene who proclaims his enthusiasm thus: “The news is light baggage which allows us to move forward, to find our bearings, to keep our heads held high. It does not claim to change the world. It is, and will remain, this little flashlight that does not take off its pants in the face of the darkness of the universe.” Likewise, Colombe Boncenne, a great reader of Julio Cortazar and Joyce Carol Oates, took out her little flashlights, while striving to connect them to each other, “by sewing, ramification of details or of motives, and a thoughtful composition”. Thus was born From my news (Zoé editions), released last March.
Véronique Ovaldé shares the enthusiasm of her colleagues: “The news is the implicit and the camouflaged, it is the silence and the interstice. A new […] it never smells of sweat, it’s playful and profound at the same time, it’s embroidered and twisted.” The author of What I Know About Vera Candida says he particularly likes news that responds to each other and the variation of points of view like so many variations of the same thing. And who makes a luminous illustration of it with his astonishing collection To our imperfect lives (Flammarion), just crowned with the Goncourt prize for short stories. In his eight short stories, variations on our contemporary disarray, the characters subtly move from the foreground to the role of extras. And they become more and more endearing to us.
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