Confessional: I Don't Like Short Fiction

If you're an intelligent, humanities-type person, I would wager that there are a certain number of cultural categories that you feel almost obligated to like, or at least grudgingly commit yourself to keeping up-to-date with.

You know what I'm talking about. The "this proves I'm smart" list. It includes things like:

• "Important" movies
• Semi-obscure scientific discoveries
• The vaguely defined world of art
• Philosophies
• Capitalized Literature
• lower-case bands
• World events
• Obscure cheeses
• Classic cocktails
• A genteel smattering of classical music, dance, and the theater

And, in certain circles,

• A mostly-smirking appreciation of current "pop" culture

That one is, in its own way, the most pretentious of all. The "no, really, I'm SO open to experience that I sit home some nights reading Hegel in the original German, and other nights I just rock out to One Direction" 

Once I finish this, I'm going to binge-watch all of Toddlers in Tiaras, because I just really respond to their raw, heartfelt portrayals of life's most primal dramas, and also their sequins.

Anyway, what makes the list shifts based on your interests; as a writer, you get your own special sub-list of additional things you're supposed to care about, one which includes: 

• CURRENT capitalized literature
• The vast majority of your sub-genre or shelving category through all of time
• Poetry
• Think pieces on topics no one really needs to think about
• How well adaptations live up to the original
• Long-form journalism
• Well-done personal essays
• The quality of television dialogue

And, here's the kicker, 

• Short fiction

It's the bread and butter of every writing class, the throbbing lifeblood of MFA fiction programs, the only reason dozens, even hundreds, of obscure literary journals are able to claim prestige without having ever claimed readers.

And I generally hate it. 

I know, I'm not supposed to be against an entire type of writing--it's closed minded! underinformed! just eat your vegetables and some day you'll realize you love them!--but it's the truth. 

I rarely--EXTREMELY rarely--enjoy a piece of short fiction. And I'm generally only ever coming across it in places that are so highly selective (read: The New Yorker) that it's a fair assumption that I'm dealing exclusively in the cream of the crop. 

And rejecting it. Because most of it sucks. 

I suppose I have two main beefs: 

Beef 1: Most modern short fiction seems to rely on the "slice of an uninteresting, ordinary life in which a few things are remembered, very little happens, and in the end, no one changes meaningfully" formula. 

Beef 2: Short fiction writers get away with writing no-nos that would get you CRUCIFIED in a novel: the massive, clunky info-dump of an entire personal history while a character is looking at an object, say, or the "as this thing happened she thought about this one other time that I don't know how to work into the story but which is the only thing that will give an otherwise meaningless series of moments the illusion of depth" tell in place of a scene. Short fiction tells tells TELLS. Even the adverbs are tell-y (she thought lingeringly, her eyes wistful like a metaphor that got a lot of props in that one workshop). Yes, writing rules are made to be broken, but the reason they were made in the first place is that they probably shouldn't be broken all that much. 

Basically, I think it's long on pretension, but short on actual enjoyment. God, how fucking DREARY. 

And while we're getting all confessional, here, I feel pretty much the same way about poetry (for different, but equally pissy, reasons). Sorry, I buy that there are people out there who like it for reals, who might even like it for reasons other than smugness, but I just cannot find anything to hold onto there, at least not in the recent output of current poets.

I just don't respond to it. I've tried, and it didn't take. 

I give up on forcing myself to choke down things I don't actually like. 

I know that's a risky attitude to have, generally. It might keep all the important works of art from getting made, and all the important books (and poems and short stories) from being written, and all the best television from getting live-blogged.

Though of course that presumes that NO one actually likes these things, which, if it's true, means they deserve their fate.

But I think it's worse to live your life subjecting yourself to things you can't enjoy just to clear some arbitrary bar of "the right kind of interests." And I think there's nothing worse--and in the long run, more detrimental to ALL writing, because I promise it contributes to the general degradation of reading tastes--than pretension masquerading as a more cultivated palate.

For what it's worth I want to mention that most genre-writing (whether that's taken to mean sci-fi, an actual genre, or "young adult," an actual age group of your protagonist/readers that in reality comprises all the genres in the literary world) isn't something thinking people feel any obligation to. No one is considered less well-versed for not being aware of a deep-cut fantasy novel. Even mystery--a genre that serious heavyweights, from Poe to Christie to Hammett to Chandler, snuggled up to, and one with major crossover appeal--is something we're allowed to ignore entirely.

Why can't I do the same with a "genre" (I know, it's not) that I just don't respond to? I don't claim you're less intellectually rigorous if you haven't taken your recommended dosage of epic elf battles lately, why should I feel obligated to suffer through another fight between married people that may or may not lead to cheating eventually, we don't really know, all we do know is the misery we all felt throughout the entire story is unrelenting by the end?

So here's my resolution (which I don't really make, so I'll only partially keep): I'm not going to feel guilty for liking the things I like, and not liking the things I don't, because there's no rule that every style, every genre, every form, and every piece, has to speak to you, and because there isn't actually a real ranking of value between them all. I'm going to try to challenge myself as a reader, but I'm not going to conflate "hating the thing in front of me" with intellectual rigor. And I'm not going to shame anyone for liking something I just don't get...unless they're only pretending to like it for the worst reasons.

So tell me: what's the ought-to cultural category you just can't stomach?