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Harold BloomHow to Read and Whyp. 66 |
In major short stories...
In major short stories, reality becomes fantastic and phantasmagoria becomes disconcertingly mundane. That may be why so many readers, these days, shy away from volumes of stories, and purchase novels instead, even when the stories are of much higher quality.
Short stories favor the tacit, they compel the reader to be active, and to discern explanations that the writer avoids. The reader, as I have said before, must slow down, quite deliberately, and start listening with the inner ear. Such listening overhears the characters, as well as hearing them; think of them as your characters, and wonder at what is implied, rather than told about them. Unlike most figures in novels, their foregrounding and postgrounding are largely up to you, utilizing the hints subtlely provided by the writer.