Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Perfect prose

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 16th July 2008

National Short Story Award (Radio 4)

Chekhov, Louisa M. Alcott, Kafka and co. wrote them for money; thinking of them as a lucrative money-spinner to keep their families in bread and potatoes. Now they usually yield so little money from magazines and book publishers that very few writers devote themselves to perfecting the art of the short story (at least in the UK, though it’s not nearly so true in America or Canada). Of the great British magazines that used to churn out stories by Dickens and Gaskell, Hardy and Kipling, only the People’s Friend is left, published since 1869 by D.C. Thomson of Dundee (also publishers of those great products of the literary imagination Beano and the Sunday Post). Young, aspiring writers are instead encouraged by their agents and publishers to go off and produce the next monster novel.

The short story, that perfect snapshot of a life in just a few pages, the jewel-like precision of description, has been in danger of becoming an extinct literary species. All the big-money prizes (and associated kudos) have been devoted to novels, or poetry — until a couple of years ago when the combined forces of Prospect magazine and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts decided to launch a prize, worth a useful £15,000, for the best short story. No age limit; no sex, religion, colour or race discrimination. Just a colourful piece of writing, with a distinct atmosphere and convincing characters, conjured up in fewer than 8,000 words. It might seem an easy way to make a buck until you sit down and attempt it. Great patience and concentration are needed to create the architectural symmetry and distilled essence required of a short work, as opposed to a great, baggy novel.

The literary significance of last year’s prize was overtaken by political controversy as Hanif Kureishi’s shortlisted story, about beheadings in Iraq, was withdrawn at the last minute from its broadcast slot on Radio Four because of sensitivities over its subject-matter. This year the BBC has become the main sponsor of the prize, and quite right too. As the largest short-story commissioner in the UK it should be encouraging the development of the form, not just by ensuring they are broadcast but by making it worthwhile for writers to spend the years it will take to practise and refine their technique, just as musicians have to learn their craft in often tedious daily exercises.

‘We hope,’ says Martha Kearney, chair of this year’s judging panel, ‘that readers and listeners will be encouraged to embrace the short story once more,’ and not just on radio. The shortlist of five stories has already been published in paperback as The BBC National Short Story Award 2008, in time for the announcement of the winner, Clare Wigfall, on Monday’s Today programme.

1 | 2 Next page