Robert Boswell: The Man in the Water: Sub-Aqua Commerce in Maximal Short Fiction (July 2011)

Robert Boswell examines what he calls “big stories,” or short stories which manage in relatively few pages to convey the complexity and expansiveness of the larger world.  How can a writer generate this sense of expansiveness?  And what strategies can be used to make a “big story” cohere?  Boswell explores these questions, focusing on examples from William Trevor and Alice Munro.