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  • The Paris Review

    A Refusal to Defend or Even Stick Up for the Art of the Short Story

    by Peter Orner Jul 17, 2019 4 minutes

    A silent rant in answer to a friend.

    Because why the fuck should I? Seriously, why the fuck should I?

    I should leave it right there but this is a rant, and isn’t the thing about rants that they lurch onward unnecessarily after what needed to be said has been said? A rant by its nature says more than it needs to, which makes it, already, antithetical to the short story but in any case I’m not going to do it, defend the short story again, I’m tired of it, half-drunk as I am on this plane that amid heavy turbulence

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