How to study "The best short stories"

Chapter 11: SUPERS

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About This Book

A practical handbook analyzes a series of annual best-short-story anthologies and extracts the editorial values and technical habits behind successful short fiction. It surveys selected pieces to illustrate structure, point of view, unity, and regional color, and supplements close readings with author testimony and classroom experience. The work supplies study questions, exercises, and concrete advice on revision, pacing, and economy of form while stressing the need to balance artistic aims with the business realities of publication. Its aim is to train critical reading and disciplined practice for aspiring writers and students.

SUPERS

Classification. A single scene sketch; it is like a charcoal drawing.

Plot. The plot, concealed beneath the picture, lies in the objectifying of the eternal struggle for bread and meat.

Setting. The place is the street near the theatre door: like a magnet it draws the individual human beings, who cohere in the mass until the attracting power is removed.

Characters. This mass, or aggregate, emphasizes the individual struggle, at the same time it engulfs individual personality. What does the name “Supers” indicate, literally? Figuratively? What part does Red Beard play? How does he, too, contribute to the larger unity at the same time he offers a note of contrast?

Atmosphere. Sordid, drab realism, uncompromising in its ugliness.