{"id":7115,"date":"2015-11-30T09:55:18","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T14:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7115"},"modified":"2015-11-30T09:55:18","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T14:55:18","slug":"where-did-you-go-short-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7115","title":{"rendered":"Where Did You Go, Short Story?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/node\/6309\/full\">The dullest short stories<\/a> I read from the last fifteen years were winners of competitions,\u201d writes Hensher, who sieved through journals, old and new, to source the material for these collections. He characterises the winning stories of contemporary competitions as \u201cpresent-tense solitary reflections\u201d, their protagonists \u201clying on their beds affectlessly pondering; major historical events were considered gravely; social media were dutifully brought in to indicate an eye on the contemporary\u201d. It is a mistake to believe that competitions, rather than a system of commissions, payments, circulation and readers, will generate literary quality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Philip Hensher has compiled two volumes for <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Penguin-Book-British-Short-Wodehouse\/dp\/0141395990\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1448895121&amp;sr=8-1&amp;tag=brandbooks-20\">Penguin&#8217;s Book of British Short Stories<\/a>.<\/em> (via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/prufrocknews\">Prufrock<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe dullest short stories I read from the last fifteen years were winners of competitions,\u201d writes Hensher, who sieved through journals, old and new, to source the material for these collections. He characterises the winning stories of contemporary competitions as \u201cpresent-tense solitary reflections\u201d, their protagonists \u201clying on their beds affectlessly pondering; major historical events were &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7115\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Where Did You Go, Short Story?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[402,2572],"class_list":["post-7115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-british-literature","tag-short-stories"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}