2006 Edinburgh International Book Festival

"The short story should be the natural form for our time-poor, hardworking times."

Sophie Lewis of Prospect Magazine talks to James Lasdun.

James Lasdun won the inaugural National Short Story Prize in May this year, for his story 'An Anxious Man'. Lasdun, who is British but now lives in the US, is the author of two collections of short stories and three books of poetry. He is also a novelist - Seven Lies - has been longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize - and screenwriter; one of his short stories, 'The Siege', was adapted by Bernardo Bertolucci for his film Besieged.

Lasdun was guest of honour at the press launch for the 2007 prize, held at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August. I found him there, a little dazed, and suggested we'd be better off in the Oxford Bar, which has its own place in literary history as Ian Rankin's favourite pub. Lasdun agreed to answer a few questions here between story readings and other festival events.

When did you first become aware of the National Short Story prize?

My editor sent me an official email announcement. It made quite an impression. There's nothing else like it. It's an offer of serious money backed by serious institutions. I've been toiling away at short stories for years and there's never been this kind of award for them before.

I was struck by the generous word limit. There are prizes for short stories in the US but most of them allow you no more than 3,000 words. A short story can still be distinctly a short story at 15 pages, although it's too long for most magazines and no good as a filler in a newspaper.

Even in the US, book and magazine publishers do not actively seek out short stories. Most literary magazines are vanity projects; money is poured into them simply to raise the prestige of university departments. They're part of the creative writing industry; people are getting published in them for the sake of their CVs.

Do you consider yourself a short story writer?

I consider myself a writer. I don't favour any type of writing. I sometimes wish short stories came more easily to me. I like to start something I can see the end of. I'd love to be like Chekhov - they said he could write a story about an ashtray if you asked him to. The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a novel, with its requirements of concentration and economy.

Which short story writers do you prefer?

The usual suspects: Chekhov, Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor. I've come round to Maupassant; I now really enjoy his crudeness and cheapness. Sometimes his endings are too tricksy, but his stories can penetrate so deeply into a social world, and with such grace and speed.

If I had to pick out one story that exemplifies what a story can do, I'd choose Chekhov's 'The Husband'. It's very short and never anthologised - I found it in the Collected Stories. It’s about a couple who go to a party which they dont expect to enjoy. But just as the wife does begin to enjoy it, her husband sees this and announces that they should go home, so they leave. Its very Chekhovian, full of provincial dreariness. It manages to contain all you need to know about life.

As for modern writers, I was one of the judges for the inaugural Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize in 2005, and two of the shortlisted writers there particularly impressed me: David Bezmozgis and David Means.

Is the short story an endangered species?

As a writer, I do think that. As a reader, I have conflicting feelings. The short story should be the natural form for our time-poor, hardworking times; it seems counterintuitive that people increasingly want to read thousand-page blockbusters. But I think there are more novels around that are worth reading than books of stories. Maybe there are just more people with novels in them.

Writers tend to write stories as a kind of holiday between novels, or as preliminary steps towards a novel. Stories just don't often make up a writer's main body of work and that's not because they don't see the market for it. The short story demands an interest in form as well as content, more than a novel does. Perhaps people aren't so interested in form these days - although I'm not sure of my ground here. There haven't been nearly as many great short story writers as novelists, but then it is a newer form.

But your next book is going to be a collection of short stories.

Yes. The prize has galvanised me into focusing on some embryonic stories I had. Some of the stories in the new book are quite old. I wish they were all new. I'm drawn to writers in whom you can sense the immediacy of their writing, but that's not me.

What advice do you have for aspiring short story writers?

Read and study: the obvious. Live in as conscious a way as you can. Get used to turning your experience into language, keep a journal. Read your favourite writers analytically and consciously as well as for pleasure. Then write! There are books on the art of the short story that can help, but ultimately they aren't going to make much difference.

Your winning story centres on a man whose worries about his shares creep into his everyday life and spoil his holiday. Was there an autobiographical element to this?

I have speculated in the past. There was a time when I was quite worried about it. I got into online trading. It was alarmingly easy to do. I went through the whole cycle of emotions, from supreme self-confidence to total impotence. I broke even in the end. It makes a lot of things mean nothing very quickly. Speculation keeps unbelievably wealthy people in control of the planet, but 'but I'm not trying to make that point in the story. I think things happen through some kind of inner logic and I'm more interested in that than in getting on my soapbox about it. So yes, I was drawing on first-hand experience in 'An Anxious Man'.

What have you done with the prize money?

Most of it is still in the bank. I did make myself one present out of it: a digital projector. I live in the country and there's no good cinema nearby, but there's room for a screen out on the porch, so now I can play films there on summer evenings.

I might go abroad somewhere next year and use the money to keep afloat rather than having to teach. I've been teaching creative writing on and off for 17 years and I'm eternally grateful to the creative writing industry for supporting me. But you have to read and take in so much that's not particularly good. It wears you down.

How does being longlisted for the Man Booker prize compare with winning the National Short Story prize?

To have won a prize is always more important than making the longlist. Actually I used to be preoccupied with these things, but I try not to think about them too much any more.

August 2006

Prospect Magazine