Short and Sweet

I like reading short stories and I kind of prefer them over novels, unless the novel is really, really good. One of my most favourite short story collections is Baum Plan for Financial Independence by John Kessel, I was in third or fourth year of college and it kind of vibed with me, my personal style and preferences but above all the actual truth of the world. I mean I liked what I read back then and haven’t read it again, but the experience stays, and it is among the few reading experiences that I remember like when I read Harry Potter as a kid or when I read Tolstoy. Short stories are underrated and not everyone can do justice to them though I’m glad that I grew up in an era when there were a lot of authentic short stories, written directly from the hearts of people. During college I read a lot of Kafka’s short stories, and I liked the vibe, I was already in depression so the depressive atmosphere of Kafka’s work and the truth in it felt sweet to me, and it felt like “at least someone knows the truth”.  Even Sherlock Holmes is mostly short stories. I kind of started writing short fiction around 2010 and still write a bit here and there when I get the inspiration and even though my language skills weren’t great, they still aren’t, I kind of like what I wrote for a guy in his late teens and early twenties. It’s all redundant now though. Short stories like any other story don’t matter anymore after the world got connected and changed and some would argue, for the worse. But I still read stories short or long because they are an experience. Reading short stories or even novels is an experience and this is what protects them from becoming irrelevant. You read Lovecraft and the feel the grand mythic nature of his stories and their warm nihilism. This is the very reason I never totally gave up on writing short stories, and even now every now and then end up writing a flash fiction. After getting exposed to and bearing the brunt of the reality of this country, I promised myself that my writing will do either of two tell the truth or make people feel and preferably do both. I’m more of warm writing that comforts kind of a person but then I lean towards the transgressive too, so I sometimes experiment with mixing warmth and transgression. Reading is one of the ways you can explore the world without travelling and explore the minds of people. I hope people who have kids now are buying them comics.