Can these (very) short stories rescue the genre?
The American writer Amy Hempel's mordant little stories are widely admired - yet sometimes they read like jokes without a punchline, says Matt Thorne
16 May 2008

Amy Hempel: The queen of minimalism

The Dog in the Marriage: Collected Stories by Amy Hempel, Quercus £16.99

Over the last decade there have been a number of initiatives intending to "save the short story". These have included conferences, seminars, websites and, for the last three years, a prize sponsored by Prospect magazine and the BBC that offers £15,000 to the winning story. But these initiatives, which have largely ended up celebrating or championing the work of well-known authors (we hardly needed a short story prize to introduce us to the merits of William Trevor or Hanif Kureshi), have largely failed to reignite interest, and ignore the development of a number of new outlets for the short story, whether internet-based (such as Lee Rourke's Scarecrow magazine, or the 3AM literary site), or daring new publishers such as Apis or Heidi James's Social Disease, which have introduced new voices and movements, such as the Brutalists and the Offbeat Generation.

The British publication of the collected stories of the American writer Amy Hempel in an anthology entitled The Dog in the Marriage (in the US, it is simply The Collected Stories) is a useful reminder that the last major revolution in the publication of short stories was (eventually) a mainstream phenomenon, with the success of manufactured short story movements such as the Dirty Realists winning a huge worldwide audience for American fiction.

As the celebrated novelist Rick Moody notes in his introduction to this collection: "In 1985, when Amy Hempel's debut collection Reasons to Live was first published, we found ourselves in the heady period of the American short-story renaissance. However briefly, it was not only acceptable to write and publish short stories, but it was even possible to sell a few copies of your collection along the way."

As Moody points out, this renaissance was largely the result of the vision of editor, writer and critic Gordon Lish, "as keen and vigorous a proponent of literary fiction as has existed in the last 50 years".

Although in recent years Lish has perhaps over-praised lesser talents, such as Michael Kimball, he was responsible for introducing some of the most exciting American authors of the second half of the 20th century including, most notably, Raymond Carver, whose stories to this day remain a staple part of most creative writing courses.

The Dog in the Marriage brings together four anthologies: Reasons to Live (1985), At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom (1990), Tumble Home (1997) and The Dog in the Marriage (2005).

The most famous story in the first of these collections, at least to those who read anthologies of the best American short fiction, is "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried", in which the narrator tries to cheer a dying friend.

As with much of this early collection, the story's power comes from its minimalism, something that has inspired fans such as Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club and Choke, who shares a similar spare telegraphese and has written of this collection, "each story is so tight, so boiled to bare facts, that all you can do is lie on the floor, facedown, and praise it". But unlike, say, Hemingway's, Hempel's minimalism is not designed to make the actual events mysterious, but rather to emphasise the seriousness of the action. Everything is at stake here; there is no time for narration.

As with all Hempel's work, this first collection is extremely mordant, with stories set in hospitals, earthquakes imminent and the emergency services on constant alert. One of the problems with short stories is that they often need a death to make them significant, giving the form a portentousness that can repel readers.

Rick Moody suggests that her second collection, a 137-page book that took her five years to write represents a significant leap forward, but for this reader this collection is largely more of the same. Which is not to say it's not good, and some stories, such as "The Rest of God", which takes its title from the 19th-century American poet Mary C Ames and considers how to achieve a state of grace, are tremendous.

Hempel's third collection, Tumble Home, is a collection of very short stories (most only a couple of pages long, and one, "Housewife", merely four lines) and the title novella. This novella sees Hempel running through all the symbols and obsessions elsewhere in her work (gorillas who know sign language, dogs, mental fragility, alcohol abuse, the act of writing, churches and sermons).

In this novella the narrator press-gangs a group of visitors to an art gallery to delineate the difference between the decoration of Protestant and Catholic churches. In many ways, the novella is an extension of "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried", although here her characters (including one named "Chatty") are far more verbose.

The most recent collection, The Dog of the Marriage, is by far the best. In "Jesus is Waiting", Hempel's narrator contemplates how a long road trip turns her into a woman awaiting religious redemption. In "The Afterlife", a woman observes how her father copes with being a widower after the death of her mother. In "Offertory", a woman describes a past affair to a new partner.

These stories have a richness that is lacking in some of Hempel's previous work. For all Moody (and Palahniuk's) admiration of the poetry of her terse sentences, at times her stories can become jokes without punchlines. Hempel seems aware of this, as misunderstood or misremembered jokes are referred to in many stories.

Although it seems unlikely that Hempel will receive the acclaim in England that she has in America (for all the references to England in the book, she seems to misunderstand this country), this is a fascinating collection well worth exploring for those interested in short fiction.

For if the short story does need saving, as many in England seem to believe, then the best way to do this is for writers to familiarise themselves with the masters of the form. And, while her work is undoubtedly uneven, Hempel certainly fits the bill.