Article Evaluation 2: Short Story

Title of the Text:  The Rise of the Short Story

Author:  Laurie Hertzel

Title of Journal:  Star Tribune

URL / Web Address:  http://www.startribune.com/the-rise-of-the-short-story/363868601/

Main Idea:  "Novels still get most of the attention, but short stories are standing out in the crowd."

Evidences that supports the Main Idea:

1.  "For the past several years — perhaps since Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro won the 2013 Nobel Prize in literature — short-story collections have been on the rise, gaining in significance and momentum, written by big names, published by big houses and scooping up some of the most significant prizes."

2.  "There are many reasons why we’re entering a new heyday of short fiction: Writing workshops and MFA programs concentrate on short stories. The Internet and smartphones allow people to find and read short pieces in one bus ride, or one flight. We have shorter attention spans, busier schedules."

3. "And then there’s this: intensity. The sense that the craziness of modern life might best be reflected not in long, full novels, but in short bursts of stories."

New Information or Idea Identified:

1.  'The rising profile of short stories is not reflected in sales. “There have always been a few collections that have taken off,” Lynch said, “but most don’t succeed commercially.”'

2.  'The Internet makes it easy to click from journal to journal, “reading innovative work in Tin House, the Paris Review, Esquire, the New Yorker,” she said. “And there are hundreds of online publications open to short and flash fiction.”'

3.  'Characters in short stories seem to have no past, no future. They’re “rootless, impulsive, hardly know what they’re going to do the day after tomorrow,” Baxter said.'