They bat their eyelashes at what a reader anticipates and never quite gets – the climax often working as a deflation, a detour from satisfaction. Oate’s stories – like “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” or “Mastiff” all circle around the attainment of sex and intimate fulfillment. Short story writer Alice Munro, when asked why sex and death were such strong themes in her writing, said, “why wouldn’t it be? It’s all that matters.” Munro is a single testimony to a general set of guidelines short story writers tend to adhere to.

Their punch gains strength by hitting close to home and stripping away a reader’s preconceived notions about the orbital centers of human life: sex and death. They offer just enough space to poke and prod ideas and, despite their brevity, can be the most difficult literary form to digest. The short story is the perfect package for these moral experiments. They, as The Guardian suggests, “invite us to smoke and also to know that we shouldn’t smoke, because it’s lethal.” They are rich with idiosyncrasies they complicate and construct rather than deconstruct, while maintaining a minimalistic form. Instead, they flirt with our moral boundaries. They don’t instruct, they don’t come fixed with trimmed moral tales or explicit meaning. They aren’t just remarkable in their precision – less words, more punch – they pose an entirely different motive than that of the novel. Reading a short, there’s always the sense that something creeps just beyond the pages and something vital being pressed a gauzy closeness to the narrative skin.

They glut and gut at the same time “concentrate without clotting” and bring the weight of something so much larger to a flimsy ten page read. I’d pick a Joyce Carol Oates or Coover short over long form any day. This should begin with a disclaimer: I adore short stories.

Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates