Early in 2003, it came to Prospect's attention that the arts council was running a campaign called "save our short story." It seemed an odd creature, the short story, to be singled out for salvation. Debates about British fiction are common enough - how it measures up against US fiction, the place of our writers in Europe, the value of Granta's list of top 20 novelists. The British novel may not be at a historic peak of excellence, but it certainly gets attention. If short fiction is just a minor branch of long fiction, why the special pleading?
The first answer is that the short story has got nothing to do with the novel; the second is that, as all publishers know, collections of short stories sell woefully in Britain.
When was the last time an author's anthology created authentic excitement in this country, in the way that the arrival of novels like White Teeth or Brick Lane have hoisted Zadie Smith and Monica Ali into the headlines? You'd have to go back to Roald Dahl, or further to Somerset Maugham or Saki, to be reminded that the short story was once a popular medium here. And, beyond local issues, we have forgotten the Jorge Luis Borges example: that the short story is one of the elite forms of modern literature. There is now no contemporary British equivalent to Alice Munro or John Updike-short story writers who, regardless of their success or otherwise as novelists, are read for the way they have adapted and perfected a particular type of narrative jewellery.
At Prospect we think (we would think this) that the real problem lies in the state of British magazines. Very few magazines regularly publish fiction and, as a consequence, British writers don't produce notably good stories. Or, rather, they are not provided with the platform on which short stories perform best. Literary magazines create no significant impact on mainstream British culture, and very few mainstream magazines consider fiction to be integral to their purpose (the Independent on Sunday's metropolitan supplement "Talk of the Town" is an honourable exception in this regard). Meanwhile, writing for a book-length collection, which is what most British authors are forced to do, tends to lead them into a "series" mentality, in which stories are linked by theme or setting, or blend into each other via the leaking fluid of the author's developing style.
A book-length collection should be the end of the road, not the beginning. The short story is as dependent on the history of magazine publishing as the novel is on book publishing. Of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a writer evolving themes throughout their stories. John Updike's new collection of his early fictions is a continuous unravelling of his youthful obsessions. But every one of Updike's pieces was published first in a magazine. Each one first had to win its readers on its own terms. When British writers write in batches so as to fill a book, those stories are pre-disposed to fail in their essential duty, which is to function, each one, as a complete and independent entity.
At Prospect, we have decided to accept the arts council's challenge. Starting with this, our January 2004 issue, we will publish a short story every month. This is not an altruistic act. On the contrary, by considering the problem of the short story, we were alerted to an inconsistency of our own. Prospect is a magazine of current affairs, politics, science and culture. It was launched in 1995 as a vehicle for, primarily, the essay-a form which came of age in the Enlightenment and has since developed its own complex aesthetic history (as complex, arguably, as the short story). With the essay at its heart, Prospect has been committed to all species of original prose: narrative journalism, political polemic, analytical report, character profile, cultural criticism. And this is precisely why it should be publishing fiction-as one of the indispensable prose forms. It is not a matter of having a literary "section," dedicated to a particular type of reader. For us, it is a matter of taking the ideas of fiction as seriously as those in politics or science.
What will the Prospect short story be like? We want the next generation of professional writers: writers with ideas; writers able to do interesting things with the form of the short story, and able to communicate that formal and narrative originality to a generalist audience. The first of those writers is Michel Faber. Overleaf he takes the idea of a man's happiest moment, and out of it constructs an entire life. For more on the project and our principles, email us, or visit www.saveourshortstory.org.uk.
