Uno de Mayo

At last: the first day of National Prose Month.

ADDED: Yikes, I was joking - now I hear tell it's actually Short Story Month or sumpin' like that. I've said this before (on this site, I think - too lazy to look), but I always find the idea that literary forms need protecting, like endangered waterfowl, very much beside the point. I'll stick up for a given writer's undeserved obscurity, or argue the merits of an unjustly unloved book or story, but a form? People will read more short stories (if that is, indeed, a desirable thing - let's assume for the sake of argument that it is) if there are good stories written and good critics writing about them and good editors working to get them attention and provide places for them to be read. That's true of all literary forms, though, as well as of all artistic forms and mediums, more or less.

If there is a story (or book) I love and am excited about, I will try and bring attention to it however I can (on this blog, in an email to a friend, as part of a drunken rant), but I could care less whether "more people," defined in the abstract, read stories in general. It won't change a word.

Maybe there are too many stories being written and read. Ever think of that, huh?