Presents a master-class turning a short story into an effective film ... analyses in painstaking detail two parallel scripts made out of the same story [Nikolai Shpikovsky's Banner (Znamia) as Leonid Leonov's Feast at Zhimunka (Pir v Zhirmunke)], and ... explains why one works better. [Also imagines at length adapting Ambrose Bierce's The Affair at Coulter's Notch. Describes excitation and compression of the plot through the use of imagery as found in: Honore Daumier's and Michelangelo's depiction of movement, and the works of writers Tolstoy, Edgar Lee Masters, Ford Madox Ford, and more]--

While the World War raged, Sergei Eisenstein, perhaps the world's greatest filmmaker-theoretician, lectured at the State Institute of Cinematography at Moscow, on how to turn a short story into a filmscript. In this transcript of the couple of lectures, appearing in English for the first time in a translation by Alan Puchurch, Eisenstein analyses in painstaking detail two parallel scripts made out of the same story, and prefers one to the other. The script by Leonid Leonov that Eisenstein recommends was eventually made into a film by V Pudovkin and Mikhail Doller -- 'The Feast at Zhirmunka', an intensely dramatic account of an episode of spontaneous anti-fascist resistance. The short but invaluable text appears with an introduction by Jay Leyda, translator of Eisenstein's major theoretical works and a direct pupil of the master.

Few figures in cinema history are as towering as Russian filmmaker and theorist Sergei Mikhailovitch Eisenstein (1898-1948). Not only did Eisenstein direct some of the most important and lasting works of the silent era, including Strike, October, and Battleship Potemkin, as well as, in the sound era, the historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible--he also was a theorist whose insights into the workings of film were so powerful that they remain influential for both filmmakers and scholars today. ​Seagull Books is embarking on a series of translations of key works by Eisenstein into English. On the Detective Story presents Eisenstein's elaborate study, in four essays and fragments, of the use of dialectical thinking in the creation of art and literature. Drawing on major works from Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Balzac, Gogol, Mayakovsky, Dostoevsky, and more, and ranging from folk tales to contemporary detective stories, it shows the keenly analytic quality of Eisenstein's mind when it turned to questions of creative work.

Long regarded as an undervalued and marginalised genre, the short story is undergoing a renaissance. The Short Story celebrates its unique appeal. Practitioners and scholars address the issues facing short story criticism in the 21st century. Author A.L. Kennedy shares the pleasures and frustrations of writing the short story in the literary marketplace. This is followed by an assessment of recent attempts to promote short story readership in the UK. Other contributors look at forms such as the short-short and the short story sequence. The range of authors discussed includes Martin Amis, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and James Joyce. The short story is the most international of genres; this is reflected in chapters on Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino and on Japanese short fiction. Postcolonial and translation theory are combined with the close reading of specific texts. Neglected authors, such as the Welsh writer Dorothy Edwards and the colonial figure Frank Swettenham, are re-evaluated and we also consider genre writing, with chapters on crime fiction and Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Integrating theory and practice, The Short Story will appeal both to writers and to students of literary criticism.

But the great majority of novels and plays represent human life in nothing more faithfully than in their insistence upon deeds. It is through action-tangible, visible action upon the stage, or, in the novel, action suggested by the medium of words-that the characters of the play and the novel are ordinarily revealed. In proportion as high art is attained in either medium of expression this action is marked by adequacy of motive, by conformity to the character, by progression and unity.

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal! A dazzling collection of short fiction Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving eleven completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us. Nothing is off limits, and everything—when captured by Smith’s brilliant gaze—feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.

This new general introduction emphasises the importance of the short story to an understanding of modern fiction.In twenty succinct chapters, the study paints a complete portrait of the short story - its history, culture, aesthetics and economics. European innovators such as Chekhov, Flaubert and Kafka are compared to Irish, New Zealand and British practitioners such as Joyce, Mansfield and Carter as well as writers in the American tradition, from Hawthorne and Poe to Barthelme and Carver.Fresh attention is paid to experimental, postcolonial and popular fiction alongside developments in Anglo-American, Hispanic and European literature. Critical approaches to the short story are debated and reassessed, while discussion of the short story is related to contemporary critical theory. In what promises to be essential reading for students and academics, the study sets out to prove that the short story remains vital to the emerging culture of the twenty-first century.