Sharp short stories from a master of the art
From Under Gogol's Nose By Jack Harte Scotus Press, ?9.99 John F Deane This is a book that succeeds in setting out an ideal for the short story, then proceeds to exemplify that ideal in the stories presented.
Jack Harte has been working in the short story form for many years, and has attempted, by example, to open up the form.
In a sort of exasperation, this collection begins with three pieces, in the form of fiction that sets out Harte's view of the short story. While he lauds the work of 'masters' such as Frank O'Connor, his main quarrel is with O'Connor's attempt to define, and thus delimit, what the short story actually is.
In highly imaginative pieces, Harte scarifies this idea and leaves the form open to new approaches and new forms. This is highly important in our time, when the short story appears to have run itself into the earth.
Harte outlines how the story is, in fact, "a gift of the gods".
If the story form has become bogged down in social realism in this country, Harte's own stories, culled here from two earlier collections, Murphy in the Underworld and Birds, reveal the potential for the form.
Harte is a genuine master, moving from tales that recall Aesop and La Fontaine to the Latin American surrealists. While asking us to "eat the fruit of the tree of imagination", Harte demonstrates how the story may reach into the deepest fortresses of the human soul.
Here is an Ancient Mariner taking the reader by the ear and leading him into strange territories where he suddenly recognises himself and is astounded. We are all called to be witnesses - to love, pain, the horrors of war, the failure of the imagination.
Harte's contention is that too many things cramp a life, and form must not cramp the story. His is a naturalist-realist style that erupts into mythic and imaginative freedom, and offers us a chronicle of our thinking and being over several decades.
There are stories here that are set to be classics, like Murphy in the Underworld, Queen B, and A Message to Sparta, and there are stories whose lyrical pitch and rhythm approach the condition of song, such as Turfman and Birds. An essential collection for anyone still touched by the Irish short story.
John F Deane is a poet
