Reading Elizabeth Bowen's "Summer Night" for the second time in five years, and wondering, once again, what the hell to make of it, I suddenly realized that one possible key to understanding is to recognize that it never was a short story, but a 26-page novel.
Suddenly, the shifts in perspective, the changes in tone, the drastically separate responses of the main characters, all began to make sense. These things are expected in novels; here they are in "Summer Night," compressed in startling ways.
J. G. Ballard would later develop compression methods of his own for the stories collected as THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION; his book, along with "Summer Night," could teach writers to craft better stories in fewer words.
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