But it bothers me. It tells me there is something wrong with American literature.

There was a time, about 50 years ago perhaps, when this wasn't true. Not only did a lot of people write short stories in the United States, but a lot of them got published.

In part this was because in those days--before the coming of television, among other things--there were a lot of magazines of general circulation that published short stories, sometimes several in each issue.

Today there are almost none. The New Yorker is one--in fact, it is almost the only one. Most short stories of quality (or at least those that are seeking to be classified as quality) get published in non-general circulation magazines. Most are printed by colleges and universities, and most of the stories they publish are written by college professors and occasionally by college students.

And the writers are also the readers, for the most part. Little magazines have little circulations. That they get published at all is sometimes a miracle.

Little magazines sometimes publish more than one short story an issue. General circulation magazines certainly don't.

Currently, The New Yorker publishes one short story a week except on rare occasions when it devotes most of the magazine to short stories, usually on a theme. The Atlantic is the other magazine of general circulation that publishes short stories. It also publishes one an issue. Sometimes it doesn't publish any.

Most of these stories seem to follow a trend. They often are, for mysterious reasons, written in the present tense. Most of the time they seem plotless, opaque with neither beginning nor definitive end, and often they are filled with bizarre characters, apparently on the theory that the odder the character; the more likely it is to be real.

And The New Yorker makes a point of publishing foreign-written short stories, translated, of course, at the expense of American writers. I guess it is their magazine and they can publish whom they want, but with the American market so limited, I'd hoped they might stick to the folks at home.

Some folks may think all this is sour grapes on my part--the small number of those who care about short stories seriously themselves--and they are probably right. Over the years I've written perhaps 30 short stories, most of which have not been published either in books or magazines.

(I would add parenthetically that I have had some short stories published, and I have even managed to win a couple of prizes for them. I'd, of course, be happy to have some more published, but that doesn't seem likely in today's market.)

I think it's sad. The short story used to have an important part in American literature. Who, for instance, can think of Ernest Hemingway without thinking of his short stories? They set a standard for a whole generation of American writers and reshaped the style of American fiction.

F. Scott Fitzgerald also wrote some wonderful short stories. (He also wrote some hack stuff, too, but when he was good he was very good.)

Mary MacCarthy, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty and William Faulkner also wrote good short stories.

But all these folks are parts of the '20s and '30s, and there is no one like them writing (or at least publishing) today, nor does there seem likely to be. Short story collections still get published; there is still an annual volume of The Best Short Stories of 2005 (most of it from The New Yorker), but I can only conclude that both the American short story and the American short story market has declined.

This not only is unfortunate for would-be short story writers, it also has had an effect on those who write novels. Most of what gets published these days is not fiction, but what I would call exploitive nonfiction--the Clintons' memoirs, books about the Iraq war, "how to" books, cookbooks and, conversely, books on how to lose weight or stay in shape without exercising.

Maybe it is because reality is more interesting and closer to us than fiction. Perhaps it is because a lot of former readers now watch rather than read--it's easier--and because general circulation magazines have been elbowed out of existence by television and have yielded the stage to specialty publications: Self, Shape Up, Expectant Mother or the like.

We don't want to read about imagined lives, we want to look into real ones.

I remain convinced, however, that the well crafted, serious American short story has a place in our culture, even it is not there now.