Alice Munro Won the Nobel! Celebrate the Short Story With 10 Other Masters of the Form
Amy Hempel
Perhaps best known for the first short story she ever wrote, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” Hempel is one of those rare celebrated writers (like Munro) who only works in this form. Unlike Munro, she is much more experimental, sometimes writing whole stories that are just a single sentence. The detached tone she uses in much of her work doesn’t resonate emotionally with everyone, but me? I love it. It’s like every word she chooses is so deliberate, all part of an intentional construction designed to make sense of the chaos of the infinite. She works small because everything is really so big, too big. Anyway, read “The Harvest.” It is perfect. And while perfection isn’t everything, it’s still something to be admired when you come across it.