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Baudelaire
«The short story] has this immense advantage over the large-scale novel, which its brevity adds to the intensity of the effect. This reading, which can be accomplished all at once, leaves a memory far more powerful than a broken reading, often interrupted by the hassle of business and the care of worldly interests. The printing unit, the totality of effect is an immense advantage which can give this kind of composition a very particular superiority, to the point that a short story (it is probably a defect) is worth even better than too long story. The artist, if he is skillful, will not accommodate his thoughts to the incidents, but, having deliberately conceived, at leisure, an effect to produce, will invent the incidents, will combine the events most likely to bring about the desired effect. If the first sentence is not written to prepare this final impression, the work is missed from the start. In the entire composition there must not slip a single word which is not an intention, which does not tend, directly or indirectly, to perfect the premeditated design. » Notes nouvelles sur Edgar sur Edgar Poe (New Notes on Edgar on Edgar Poe)
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Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
« If you can use the novel as a tote, it's impossible for the short story. We must measure the space allocated to the description, to the dialogue, to the sequence. The slightest architectural fault appears there. The complacency too. Sometimes I think that the short story blossoms me because I am first of all a man of the theater. We know from Chekhov, Pirandello or Tennessee Williams, that the short story is suitable for playwrights. Why ? The short story writer has the feeling of directing the reader : he grabs him at the first sentence to bring him to the last sentence, nonstop, non scale, as he is used to doing at the theater. The playwrights love the short story because they feel that it is depriving the reader of his freedom, that he converts them into spectators who can no longer go out, except to leave their armchair permanently. The short story gives this power back to the writer, the power to manage time, to create drama, expectations, surprises, to draw the threads of emotion and intelligence, then, suddenly, to lower the curtain . » Concerto à la mémoire d'un ange (nouvelles), Journal d'écriture (Concerto in memory of an angel (short stories), Journal of writing)
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