Suburban versus urban fiction
These are odd categories, and what I mean to refer to is fiction that expands into a space which is defined by suburban versus urban life.
John Cheever’s short stories are examples of what I call suburban fiction. The stories epitomize suburban alienation — the result of the tension between, on the one hand, the idea of harmonious life and, on the other hand, a setting that isolates one family from another without the rationalization provided by rural self-sufficiency.
I don’t profess to be a specialist in either form, having dabbled occasionally here and there. But I made a point watching how the move from Albany to New York City would affect my way of writing.
The answer is that urban life is captured in the short form, short-short stories, or flash fiction — on account of the fast movements of attention, the richness of experience accumulating every day. Also, at least in New York, life happens outdoors, and a lot of time is spent in trying to get from one place to the other.
I discovered that my writing not only changed to the short format, but it also started to reflect the experience of walking and watching, the engaged sort of interaction with the vast urban environment. Thus, “The Red Hat” and “How I get from A to B” are real discoveries spelling out how my mind responded to the change from the Suburban to the Urban.
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