2 - “Wide-Angle Shots”: Thomas King's Short Fiction and Poetry

Summary

Thomas King published his first short story in 1987 and his first poem in 1976. To date, two short story collections with altogether thirty of his stories have appeared, One Good Story, That One (1993) and A Short History of Indians in Canada (2005), as well as a few uncollected stories. As for his poetry, he has published fifteen poems in journals and anthologies to date, too small a number for a collection in book form. Thomas King is indeed mainly regarded as a novelist and as a short story writer. Although scholars have mostly dealt with his novels, it could be—and has been—argued that King's literary writing is most successful in the short story format, or, to put it differently, that essential aspects of his writing style are more conducive to short fiction than to longer prose. The oral tradition of Native storytelling, which King adeptly integrates into his texts, is particularly prominent among these aspects, as is the author's leaning towards parabolic and satirical styles of narration. On the other hand, these aspects inform King's novels, too, which tend to be written in episodic structures as well. In fact, his first published long fiction text, Medicine River (1989), though usually classified as a novel, has also been considered a short story cycle, even by King himself (see Lynch 2007; Rooke 1990, 3).

Under these circumstances, and considering King's status as the leading Native fiction writer in Canada, the relative sparseness of research literature on King's short stories comes as a surprise. Even more drastically, there have been practically no critical responses to Thomas King’s poetry. This chapter, then, sets out to provide a wide-angle analytical assessment of King’s short stories as well as the first treatment of his (uncollected) poetry.