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Identity politics and the conditions of production:
Reflections on writing Short Stories

A paper presented by M Y Alam at the 11th International Conference
on the Short Story in English, Toronto June 2010.

This article as a PDF.

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This paper is based on elements of my own professional, and to a large extent, personal and political identity. As such, it’s drawn from my practice as a writer and teacher of creative fiction as well as research and teaching endeavours which are grounded in the world of sociology and social policy.

I’ll start with something of a preamble as a means of situating the short story as an efficient and effective means of communicating every day life, including experiences and voices that may otherwise go unnoticed, hidden, or, as the literature would have it, remain marginal and perhaps marginalized. Of course, we all know that the short story presents writers with an opportunity to be heard, to leave a calling card that may elicit further engagement with their work; for some, a short story is more than an advert but the fact remains, it can serve as an invitation for our reader to discover more of the authorial same. Additionally, the shape, duration and, of course, the nature of the stories themselves – including questions of theme, genre and the audiences they aim to serve – are all part of the larger equation of what a short story is. As Susan Lohafer notes:

‘Whatever a story is, how it behaves, the important thing is what it reveals. It’s a magnifying glass for examining the techniques of impressionism, say, or the assumptions of postmodernism, or the social data caught in its prism. Famously associated with “submerged populations” and the “lonely voice” of the individual, the short story is the window on marginalized identities.’ (Lohafer, 2003: 1-2)

From The Train of Ice and Fire

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Q: Where did the idea for La Rochelle come from and what is the launch point for such a book?

A: The idea came from a dream my brother Paul told me, in the autumn of 2003. His girlfriend had been kidnapped by a criminal called ‘Whitby’. I agreed to do a swap for her, so we took a taxi down from London to the countryside, where Whitby’d taken her. In the taxi, the driver turned to us and said, ‘Can’t you see, the whole of London’s going down!’ Behind us, there were fires in the sky, falling cranes, etc. This was the starting point, the disappearance of a woman, and the name Whitby, which really stuck in the mind.

Q. It is quite an unconventional read. What is it you were trying to achieve with the book?

I was trying to write a novel that wasn’t too much like a ‘novel’. It had to have the qualities of life instead, such as thickness, abundance, presence, a degree of untidiness. I was after something baroque and dishevelled, with a coat of varnish. I also wished to write something that will last, so that readers may feel inclined to read it again (and even again).  Furthermore, I felt it was necessary to bring privacy back into fiction. Can anyone tell what the narrator’s problem really is in La Rochelle? This isn’t an issues book, and it isn’t journalism in disguise.

I was also trying to make people laugh, and worry.

Q. Could you elaborate on ‘This isn’t an issues book, and it isn’t journalism in disguise’?

A. I mean it isn’t a book in which the narrator’s problems have been formulated in advance, and in a manner that robs them of their particularity to him. They are problems that are being experienced through a sort of fog, rather than seen clearly, as something that ‘everyone’ knows all about these days. The narrator can’t see around his own corner, whereas journalism typically supposes it can.