Haunted short stories chuck palahniuk6/29/2023 When I began to write in the late 80s and early 90s the market wanted Barry Hannah, Thom Jones, Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, and Mark Richard. As per McGurl this periodic need to refresh college reading lists creates short-lived-but-major demands for publishers to bring out collections. Students can dissect stories and learn to replicate the writer’s effects. McGurl writes that Denis Johnson will always be remembered for his collection Jesus’ Son because college students are less resistant to stories. Thus collections by Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner are replaced by collections by Junot Diaz and Nami Mun. He proposes that such collections are the easiest way to teach literature and creative writing, but that academia must update its syllabi every generation or so. In his history and analysis of writing programs, The Program Era, author Mark McGurl touches on story collections.
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