A Nobel wake up call

One page in The Wake

I woke up to learn that a short story writer has won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature. Her name is Alice Munro and she is a year or two past 80.

Publishers have concentrated for many decades on the novel and to a large extent on the overlong novel and the serial novel to the detriment of the novelette and the short story.

There is in good writing a place for all forms.

It might be said: if there is a place for James Joyce's Finnegans Wake there is a place for everything.


There is a longtime rumour abroad that books, by books I mean real literature, might become obsolete.

True it is that independent bookshops and local libraries have been struggling with shoestring budgets, the unstoppable internet river of books, and the false lure of  High Street, airport and train station revolving rack sameness, but maybe now at last there is a corner of hope.

The cavalry has ridden in timely and spirited fashion if not to the rescue at least to give us temporary respite from the squeaks of those racks of groaning pulp.

My last read book is Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy. It is not a short story. But I highly recommend it.

Literature is broad; has room for all.

Or maybe I'm dreaming.

In case you've forgotten they look something like this -

A GOOD BOOK OF SHORT STORIES: