At the Rotterdamsch Leeskabinet, the humanities branch of the University Library, we have forever been very fond of literary short stories. Our collection comprises thousands of titles in different languages, still counting.
Please find a small selection of our collection in this exposition - get acquainted with the genre and be inspired!
What is a short story?
Roughly, any story between 4.000 and 14.000 words. But that’s the most basic and banal definition, and therefore not very telling…
At all.
In fact, the title of this exposition is misleading. A long story cut short is not a short story at all, at best a summary.
If we focus on literary fiction, our primary concern here, then we could perhaps suggest that a short story can be read in one sitting, and that (unlike most novels) it generally deals with a very limited number of characters and typically manifests a tightly woven unity of time, place and action.
Ideally, a short story, when finished, through its intensity, by what is left unsaid, might afford the reader the sensation of having read an entire novel. It’s Hemingway’s ultimate iceberg proposition: the writing shows the top of the iceberg, what happens underwater takes place in the mind of the reader.
In this exposition we have included nonfiction stories by people suffering from illness, a collection based on participation by patients, as an example of the way nonfiction short stories can function as a vehicle for addressing societal issues and cater to a wider audience.
The J.M.A. Biesheuvel Prize is a bi-annual prize for the best Dutch short story anthology. It has been awarded since 2015 and is named after J.M.A. Biesheuvel (1939 – 2020), a master of the genre. The author was known for his illogical prose and dark, absurdist sense of humor.
On display below is a selection of the prize winners since 2015, when the then annual prize was first awarded. The most recent winner, Goudjakhals by Julian Ignacio, was praised for its style and variety of perspectives.
Literary magazine Bzzlletin ran from 1972 – 2004 and published many short stories by Dutch writers. It’s clear that literary magazines have been instrumental in publishing and promoting the short story, from the nineteenth century onwards and both nationally and internationally.
Bzzlletin infamously only published stories by authors from its own stable, BZZTôH publishers.
Maria Dermoût (Pekalongan, 1888 – The Hague, 1962) was an Indo-European novelist, in our opinion the greatest of Dutch literature, and as such an important proponent of Dutch Indies literature. In December 1958 Time magazine praised the translation of Maria Dermoût's The Ten Thousand Things and named it one of the best books of the year.
Louis Couperus (The Hague, 1863 – De Steeg, 1923) published novels, poetry, travelogues, and fairy tales as well as short stories. De Binocle was first published in 1920 in the weekly magazine Haagse Post. The story of a fatalistic obsession became an instant classic and is often used in literary education for its clear example of the use of Leitmotiv and a naturalistic notion of fate.
Among Rotterdam's many short story writers, Bob den Uyl (1930 – 1992) was one of the most well-known. From 2004 to 2019 the Bob den Uyl Prize was awarded to the best literary or journalistic travelogue. The magazine VPRO Gids, which had taken the initiative for the prize, hoped to revive interest for Den Uyl’s ironic and absurdist work, which had dwindled by the early 2000s.
Short stories are well suited for bibliographic special editions, which Dutch publishers often release in limited print runs and with special care for the type of binding, paper and typeface. Below we show some examples of those special editions.
A growing market for short stories in the nineteenth century
“The brief tale affords unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the wide domains of mere prose.”
One of these “loftiest talents”, Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849), suggests here that a short story showcases an author’s talent more effectively than a novel. The daily, weekly or monthly publication and distribution infrastructure encouraged this shorter form. Millions of new readers could be reached, from the working to upper classes, both women and men. Stories were tailored to feasts like Christmas for gift-giving purposes: a literal market of fiction was born.
Gothic stories were especially well suited to readers at the time. While the Gothic included various kinds of subjects (horror stories, science fiction and detectives), overarching themes are supernatural occurrences supplemented by a sense of existential fear and loss and a yearning for intimacy and escapism. Stories were set against backgrounds that were at once familiar and eerily distant: neglected forests, run-down buildings, dark alleyways and cities enclosed by fog. In this way, authors and readers alike attempted to ground their own lives in a changing, ever-expanding world.
What sparked wide-spread interest in Gothic fiction?
Feelings of suffocation and longing towards the past were brought about by various historical developments, such as the Industrial Revolution, urbanisation and the expansion of colonial empires. Other subjects hit closer to home: new scientific disciplines, such as psychology, sparked interest in personal experiences and social inequalities.
In literary terms, the rejection of Enlightenment values and a narrow interpretation of the past by Neoclassicism also influenced the development of the Gothic as a genre. Realism, rationalism and a rigid interpretation of good and evil made way for the irrationality and passions of eighteenth-century Romanticism and eventually the Gothic.
Haunted houses, psychological breakdowns, roaming ghosts, perceptive detectives, sweeping love stories and more were written to be in the realm of possibility. Enjoy our small selection of gothic horror, detectives and historical tales!
The short story in graphic form
Short fiction is often charged with imagery, giving a visual artist lots of room to expand on a theme or to focus on a specific detail. A masterclass of this approach is given by Miles Hyman, in his adaptation of the famous short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson – who happens to be the artists grandmother.
Hyman presents his own take on the short story he is adapting, where Aimée de Jongh closely follows the source material in Lord of the Flies. Adrian Tomine’s Sleepwalk and other stories, in contrast, contains sixteen original short stories peopled by characters struggling with modern life. The three differing processes highlight the versatility offered by visual storytelling.
Short stories across the world
Some US literary critics claim that the short story is a typically American mode of artistic expression. They reason that the short story was especially well suited to reflect the quick developments of American society from the 1900s onwards. It certainly is true that many well-known short story writers are from the United States, especially when looking at the first half of the twentieth century.
One reason for this phenomenon is undoubtedly the literary infrastructure, part of which is that many twentieth-century American magazines were devoted to the short story. The New Yorker, Story Magazine, and even Playboy and Esquire, published stories by renowned (and upcoming) literary talents. The New Yorkers on display here contain early short stories by Mary McCarthy and Eudora Welty.
Of course, another reason we know so many US short story writers is that the fact that during the past century American culture has been dominant throughout the western world. Elsewhere, the short story often has a more oral tradition, and once in print they are less likely to be translated in English, or Dutch, for that matter.
That is not to say we have a lack of quality short story writers from outside the US. The sheer abundance of great short stories has prompted us to focus mainly on female writers here, since their male counterparts are often more widely known.
We invite you to check our Reading Without Borders collection, a collection of international fiction translated into English, in our open stacks (90.55) or browse our online catalogue for many more short stories in the library’s depots.
It’s rare that there’s wind in Paris, and even less seldom a wind like this that swirled around corners and rose up to whip at old wooden venetian blinds behind which astonished ladies commented variously on how unreliable the weather had been these last few years. – Julio Cortázar, Blow-Up and other stories (1967)
The Patient Stories Collection
In 2018, the University Library acquired a very special collection of patient stories. Developed by Coleta Platenkamp with the help of many volunteers, this collection contains over 6.000 titles, with hundreds more added each year. Often written by patients, these publications document what it means to live with a health condition, revealing the struggles people often face. The collection offers a perspective on illness and support that differs fundamentally from the available body of medical research. The short story proves to be a well-suited form for many of these accounts of personal experience.
Student recommendations
We asked three students to recommend their favorite short story, which resulted in a glimpse of the enormous variation in the genre. From a favorite childhood donkey in beautiful prose poetry, to a retirement home where an old gentleman is celebrating his birthday, to an acute depiction of the displacement of the Palestinian people.
Atal Katawazi’s favorite short story: Men in the sun (1962) by Ghassan Kanafani
He knew his father through and through, and he knew that the past was, for him, a solid wooden box locked with a thousand keys that had been cast into the depths of the ocean. - Ghassan Kanafani, Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories (1962)
"This work is about the lives of Palestinians twenty years after the Nakba, filled with their perseverance and adventures. Kanafani is a writer who embraces his political responsibility but refuses to be reduced to propaganda. Men in the Sun is Literature with a capital L, depicting the full human condition."
Georgina Aránzazu’s favorite short story: Platero y yo (1914) by Juan Ramón Jiménez
"My mother has a very beautiful voice, which as a child never failed to enchant me with every book she read to me. We had Platero y Yo as a large picture book, and her voice, combined with the illustrations, made me feel deeply connected to the gentle little donkey. Since I didn’t know many Spanish children outside my family, I thought I was the only one who knew Platero. Later, I realized that my special bond with Platero wasn’t so unique after all; the little donkey has been dearly loved for generations. I hope that one day, I too can read this story to a little one. But the heartbreaking part about the canary… I think I’ll skip that one very quickly."
Platero is little, wooly, and soft, so smooth outside that you would say he was all made of cotton without any bones. Only the jet mirrors of his eyes are as hard as two black glass scarabs. - Juan Ramón Jiménez, Platero and I (1914)
Boudewijn de Wits favoriete korte verhaal: Het ontbijt (1972) van Jan Arends
"In Het ontbijt wordt mijnheer Koopman gewekt op 1 september. Dat is niet zomaar een dag, maar zijn verjaardag. Mijnheer Koopman verblijft in een bejaardentehuis. Hij is oud en dement, maar nog niet gek genoeg voor een inrichting. Zijn verzorgster, die het erg druk heeft met de andere 59 heren in het huis, heeft een verjaardagsontbijt voor Mijnheer Koopman verzorgd: vier sneetjes brood, een plakje ham (helemaal niet dun, wel verkleurd door de stank in het tehuis), twee plakjes kaas, een glazen bakje met rode jam (echte kersenjam) en ROOMboter! Dan vergeet ik nog de suiker, koffie en melk, het sinaasappeltje, en natuurlijk: het ei. De andere heren krijgen dat niet voor hun verjaardag, dat ei – enkel jam. Hij krijgt het wel. Omdat ze hem blij wil laten kijken. Omdat hij altijd zo ontevreden kijkt. Mijnheer Koopman heeft het alleen te druk met gekke geluiden maken om uit bed te komen en laat het ontbijt staan. De psychiater wordt gebeld. Zó kijkt iemand die jarig is niet uit zijn ogen."