Review: Morphologies - Comma Press, ed. Ra Page

Short fiction has long been a playground for authors to experiment with, sketching out story ideas which will later develop into novels, or playing with styles and genres. The rise of e-readers has encouraged publishers to take a similarly speculative approach to the format, trying out new approaches to bring short stories to the public. Comma Press has played a part in this process with the development of Gimbal, a literary iPhone app which allows users to choose a city and travel through it, using short stories as a guide. Now, their anthology Morphologies (edited by Ra Page) explores short fiction further, investigating the key writers between 1835 and 1935 to get to the heart of what makes the short story work, as well as hopefully ‘pointing readers to texts they might not have considered before; encouraging people to re-read old favourites’.

The attraction of Morphologies for me was the opportunity to read today’s leading short story writers discussing the authors who influenced them; the chance to get Ali Smith’s thoughts on James Joyce, or Alison MacLeod on Katherine Mansfield. In the more exciting sections, we see the contributors getting carried away pressing the claims of their chosen subject. At various points, Sara Maitland describes Nathaniel Hawthorne as a Magic Realist a century before the fact, Ramsey Campbell calls Lovecraft ‘the most important twentieth century writer of tales of terror’, and, best of all, Stephen Baxter declares HG Wells to be a potential saviour of the world, thanks to his 1897 story The Star, which influenced the development of asteroid detection and deflection programmes. Others, though, find themselves bogged down in the minutiae of textual criticism. Stuart Evers, for example, exhaustively analyses Sherwood Anderson’s style without ever conveying to the reader the intriguing oddness of his signature collection Winesburg, Ohio, which makes it so compelling to the reader.

Morphologies celebrates the sheer variety of short fiction. In some examples, such as the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, the satisfaction comes from the conclusion, in which a mysterious narrative is wrapped up, providing closure for the reader. Another approach is highlighted by Toby Litt, who describes Kafka as wanting to ‘open out possibilities so infinite that the original wanting is entirely moot, and the opening eternally backgrounded’. So disconcerting is this effect that Litt’s essay breaks down into a fractured inquiry into what Literature actually means, making this one of the most interesting sections of the collection.

So what makes certain writers so effective when it comes to short fiction? It may be an issue of temperament. According to Aldous Huxley, DH Lawrence saw life as a series of episodic interludes, with no overarching narrative or closure; he started afresh ‘as though he were newly reborn from a mortal illness every day of his life’. His short stories reflect this attitude; one, Daughters of the Vicar, is even broken down into 15 shorter fragments, with storylines abruptly discarded along the way. For others, it is a question of technique. Martin Edwards argues that Conan Doyle works best in the short story format, as it allows him to keep the fascinating character of Sherlock Holmes front and centre. Longer stories such as The Hound of the Baskervilles see the great detective kept out of the way for long stretches, testing the reader’s patience. Others were simply more playful; Jane Rogers highlights the satirical nature of Dostoyevsky’s short fiction, a quality often lacking from his novels.

The authors who engaged most with the real world have dated somewhat; Brian Aldiss, in his discussion of Thomas Hardy, acknowledges that his readership has waned ‘now we have fewer milkmaids, while scheming barons go under other names’. On the other hand, writers like Chekov, who focus on the psychological, still inspire authors today. In terms of direct influence, few can match the impact of Lovecraft, whose Cthulhu Mythos has been picked up and developed by scores of modern admirers. Lovecraft’s short fiction eschews the detailed scene-setting typical of the horror genre, preferring instead to plunge his readers straight into a world of primal, howling terror. There is a Jungian aspect to Lovecraft’s work, the idea of chaos lurking beneath a veneer of modern rationality in the human psyche; the subconscious language of dreams is also applied to the work of authors as seemingly disparate as Edgar Allen Poe and Katherine Mansfield. In both cases, their short stories seem to be already in progress as we join them, like the experience of dreaming.

The best contributions here offer a fresh perspective on members of the canon; Adam Philips’s discussion of Rudyard Kipling, for example, makes the author sound far more interesting than his public perception suggests. ‘It’s hard being an admirer of Kipling when your political sympathies are like mine’, he admits (a caveat that would also apply to many Lovecraft fans), but the way in which Kipling resists the rush to conclusion that short fiction sometimes encourages, and his ability to heighten dramatic tension by leaving key facts and events unexplained, make Philips an unlikely fan. Martin Edwards chooses to concentrate not on Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, but instead plays up his lesser-known, rather gory sounding tales.

Overall, while the most interesting entries here combine academic appreciation with wide-eyed enthusiasm, the focus on literary technique and close readings of individual stories might mean that Morphologies is slightly more of interest to creative writers than to the general reader. One useful feature, though, is that each contributor has chosen ten key stories by their subject; as all the stories are out of copyright now, these should be easily and cheaply available. It’s always a good sign when you come away from a book with a long list of new stories to read, and Morphologies will provide plenty of inspiration for readers and writers alike.