- Title
- Short stories...but linked: Steven Amsterdam's Things We Didn't See Coming
- Creator
- O'Neill, Ryan
- Relation
- Reading Like an Australian Writer p. 42-55
- Publisher
- NewSouth Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- There is a wonderful scene in the 2007 film 2 Days in Paris where Marion ( Julie Delpy) meets Manu, an ex-boyfriend. When Marion asks Manu what he has been doing, he says proudly, ‘Well, my book’s just come out’, and Marion replies, ‘Great! A novel?’ ‘No. Short stories’, Manu says. ‘But …’ and he hesitates for a moment, searching for the right word, ‘… linked’. ‘Great’, Marion says, with far less enthusiasm. I have always loved this exchange for the way it comments on a number of aspects of writing and publishing. First, the idea that a short story collection is somehow less impressive than a novel. Second, the insecurity of the writer as he attempts to justify his work with that one word: ‘linked’. Third, Manu’s hesitation in describing his collection, which indicates the nebulous nature of linked collections versus story cycles versus novel-in-stories and so on, and finally, Marion’s offhand dismissal of the whole enterprise. Despite Marion’s lukewarm reaction, the linked short story collection is a form with a long pedigree, especially in Australia, and when it is done well, as in Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, it can indeed be great.
- Subject
- short stories; linked stories; Steven Amsterdam; fiction
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1441814
- Identifier
- uon:41541
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781742236704
- Language
- eng
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