Can fiction miniatures dispensed through slots lure commuters away from their smartphone apps and social media feeds into the imaginary worlds created by authors including Virginia Woolf and Anthony Horowitz? We are about to find out. The French company Short Édition, which already has short-story vending machines in France, Hong Kong and the US, arrives in the UK this week, unveiling its first three terminals in London. Henceforth, travellers through Canary Wharf will have the option of forsaking news, email, Football Manager 2019 and every other temptation their handheld device can offer in favour of a story on a scroll of paper, printed on demand for free.
It’s a modern twist on the idea of a free bookstall or swap scheme, already familiar to rail travellers across the UK. The cost is borne by businesses, which are encouraged to install the machines as a way of improving customer experiences and preventing people from getting cross or bored. The novelty lies in the dispenser, but also the brevity and portability of the reads on offer, which range from one minute to half an hour, and can also be viewed online. (Mr Horowitz has been commissioned to pen a 60-second whodunnit for the launch.) They demand far less time and energy than a book – in many cases, less effort to read even than a chapter – and will take up next to no space in a bag.
Literature comes in many lengths but, broadly speaking, novels have shrunk since their Victorian heyday, when there were fewer leisure activities on offer to fewer people. It is not original to suggest that our age of online browsing, instant messaging and heightened competition for attention is somehow better suited to the short story or novella. And they have had their moments: in 2017, Kristen Roupenian’s story Cat Person, about power and sex in a disastrously unequal relationship, went viral and became the most-read piece of online fiction ever published by the New Yorker.
But such sensations remain the exception to an unforgiving rule. Research by Arts Council England has shown that, while the publishing sector remains in decent health overall, fiction sales have collapsed. Far fewer authors are able to make a living from writing, even if this is not obvious to readers because many good books continue to come out.
In the UK, and despite the best efforts of their many supporters, short stories have always been the less-favoured siblings of the fiction family. Their status in the US is higher, in part because of the slots they have long commanded in prestigious magazines; perhaps, too, because of the source material they provide for the film industry (Brokeback Mountain and Memento, for example, started life as short stories).
But whether long or short, fiction can offer a respite from the chaos and rancour of the present. This can feel like escapism, but is not necessarily. As well as shutting the world out, stories can be a different way of letting it in. If vending machines can help to prise open, even for brief moments, some windows on to other worlds, and stimulate people’s curiosity and interest in different lives, times and experiences, they will be providing a valuable public service.
