Short stories

The modern short story — the one that ends without resolving, that leaves its meaning below the waterline — was substantially invented in 1920s Paris, in the space between Chekhov's example and Hemingway's ambition. The little magazines needed short work; the aesthetic demanded compression; and the result was a form where omission became the chief special effect.

In Our Time remains the demonstration case: stories in which a man fishes, or a couple argues about nothing, while enormous unstated facts — a war, a pregnancy, a marriage failing — displace their weight through the surface. The interchapters between stories, single paragraphs of distilled violence, pushed the compression further than fiction had ever taken it.

Stories are also the honest low-commitment door into the whole era: three pages tell you whether the style is for you, and the collected volumes reward reading in any order, in any mood, at any speed.