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Mary Lavin |
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Like many other twentieth-century writers who think of their work as developing organically rather than in response to artificially imposed distinctions of genre, Mary Lavin has produced fiction that varies in length from that of the short, short story to that of the standard-size novel. Questioned about length limitations of genre, she acknowledges that because publishers must be concerned with such matters--for practical reasons related to the business aspects of making fiction available to the reading public--writers should be concerned with them, too. However, she regards "too great an obsession with technique" as "probably ... harmful ... to any art form." "To tell the truth," she declares, when she is writing, "there are times when I simply cannot see much difference between the short story and the novel, except for a certain kind of story, which is the kind I love best to read and want most to write." Manuscript drafts of her published work confirm what she says of her working method: a first draft of a work-in-progress is usually brief, consisting of disconnected phrases; references to people, places, events, and experiences that may be woven into the fiction to serve the author's artistic purpose; snatches of dialogue; rough notes for development; and questions from the author to herself.
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