Cirrus@Austlit

'In an interview with Harcourt, the American short story writer and novelist George Singleton uses a spatial analogy to compare the process of writing long- and short-form fiction. Singleton (2006) says, ‘Writing a novel is a walk across a bridge, while writing a short story is a walk across a tightrope.’ Singleton’s analogy captures the experiential differences of writing long and short prose and alludes to the characteristics that distinguish the short story as an enduring form: narrative economy, unity of effect or impression, and importantly, the compression of the story’s temporal setting and characters. In fact, while both the novel and the short story share the same formal characteristics (plot, point of view, dialogue, setting), the novel depends on expansion, the short story on compression. The process of adaptation is a complex project of reconfiguration: one that is not only governed by ethical issues and aesthetic tensions but by the various social, cultural, and political issues that arise in the calibration of old stories for new times, new audiences, and new medias. As Demelza Hall (2019) explains, ‘Works of adaptation are renowned for “talking back” to a text, while, at the same time, opening up new spaces and establishing new dialogues.’ In this context, it is interesting to consider the process of adapting the short story to the longer form, or as Singleton suggests, transitioning from tightrope to bridge. Since the past can be either contested or conserved, rewritten or reinstated, the act of retelling always necessitates thinking about the relationship between the story and history itself.' (Introduction)