The End of the Story

doi:10.1017/9781009292863.027

Chapter 21 - The End of the Story

Grammar, Gender, and Time in the Contemporary Short Story

from Part IV - Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023

Lola Boorman

Edited by

Michael J. Collins and

Gavin Jones

Show author details

Michael J. Collins: Affiliation:
King's College London
Gavin Jones: Affiliation:
Stanford University

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Since Edgar Allan Poe’s assertion that the short story must be read in a “single sitting,” short story theory has focused on the importance of endings as a hallmark of the form. This crystallized, in the 1980s and 1990s, in the rise of closure studies, a critical field that sought to taxonomize the ways stories end and its effects on the reader. This essay examines a feminist countertradition of short story writing that uses grammar as a tool to disrupt the form’s inbuilt narrative teleology. By interrogating the short story’s narrative temporality, writers such as Gertrude Stein, Lydia Davis, and Lorrie Moore use grammar to situate themselves, in distinctly gendered ways, in and against broader systems of time. Through a close examination of these writers, the essay explores how grammar offers a way of assessing not only the short story’s closures but also its various expansions and radical possibilities.

Keywords

grammar feminism temporality closure speculation Davis Moore Hemingway Barthelme

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story , pp. 327 - 340

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009292863.027 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Barth, John. 1986. “A Few Words about Minimalism,” New York Times, December 28. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/21/specials/barth-minimalism.html.Google Scholar

Barthelme, Donald. 2005. Forty Stories. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar

Barthes, Roland. 1975. “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.” Trans. Duisit, Lionel. New Literary History 6.2: 237–272.Google Scholar

Boddy, Kasia. 2010. The American Short Story After 1950. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Boddy, Kasia. 2019. “Making It Long: Men, Women, and the Great American Novel Now,” Textual Practice 33.2: 318–337.CrossRef Google Scholar

Burgan, Mary. 1993. “The ‘Feminine’ Short Story: Recuperating the Moment,” Style 27.3: 380–386.Google Scholar

Burgan, Mary. 2000. “The ‘Feminine’ Short Story in America: Historicizing Epiphanies,” in American Women Short Story Writers: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Brown, Julie, 267–280. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar

Cohen, Milton. 1984. “Black Brutes and Mulatto Saints: The Racial Hierarchy of Stein’s ‘Melanctha’,” Black American Literature Forum 18.3: 119–121.Google Scholar

Davis, Lydia. 2009. Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. London: Penguin.Google Scholar

Gerlach, John. 1985. Toward the End: Closure and Structure in the American Short Story. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar

Hemingway, Ernest. 2021. In Our Time. London: Vintage Books.Google Scholar

Hemmings, Clare. 2011. Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar

Kristeva, Julia. 1981. “Women’s Time.” Trans. Jardine, Alice and Blake, Harry. Signs 7.1: 13–35.CrossRef Google Scholar

Leitch, Thomas. 1989. “The Debunking Rhythm of the American Short Story,” in Short Story Theory at a Crossroads. Ed. Lohafer, Susan and Clarey, Jo Ellyn. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar

Lohafer, Susan. 1983. Coming to Terms with the Short Story. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar

Lohafer, Susan. 1994. “A Cognitive Approach to Storyness,” in The New Short Story Theories. Ed. May, Charles E., 301–311. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar

Lohafer, Susan. 2003. Reading for Storyness: Preclosure Theory, Empirical Poetics, and Culture in the Short Story. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar

MacPherson, Heidi Slettedahl. 2012. “‘Escape from the Invasion of the Love-Killers’: Lorrie Moore’s Metafictional Feminism,” Journal of American Studies 46.3: 565–580.Google Scholar

Poe, Edgar Allan. 1994. “Poe on Short Fiction,” in The New Short Story Theories. Ed. May, Charles E., 59–72. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar

Scholes, Robert. 1990. “Decoding Papa: ‘A Very Short Story’ As Work and Text,” in New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar

Smith, Jennifer. 2018. The American Short Story Cycle. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRef Google Scholar

Stein, Gertrude. 1993. “Composition as Explanation,” in A Stein Reader. Ed. Dydo, Ulla, 493–503. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar

Stein, Gertrude. 2001. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar

Stein, Gertrude. 2003. Three Lives & Tender Buttons. New York: Signet Classics.Google Scholar

Trussler, Michael. 1996. “Suspended Narratives: The Short Story and Temporality,” Studies in Short Fiction 33.4: 557–577.Google Scholar

Pratt, Mary Louise. 1981. “The Short Story: The Long and the Short of It,” Poetics 10.2–3: 175–194.Google Scholar

Wald, Priscilla. 1995. Constituting Americans. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar

Winther, Per. 2004. “Closure and Preclosure as Narrative Grid in Short Story Analysis,” in The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis. Ed. Winther, Per, Lothe, Jakob, and Skei, Hans H., 57–69. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar

Winther, Per, Trussler, Michael, Toolan, Michael, May, Charles E., and Lohafer, Susan. 2012. “Introduction,” Narrative 20.2: 135–170.Google Scholar

Young, Emma. 2018. Contemporary Feminism and Women’s Short Stories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar