... there are more goodish novels than there are good short stories, and I think a short story has to be very good to have any effect. And I think that you could probably... 100 short stories would be all there are, almost. Really great short stories. That’s probably not true, but there are so few really great short stories. A novel is a big bulky thing, you know. I suppose, well, with Kipling’s stories they’ve had a great effect, and O. Henry’s stories have. Shall we say that I think a great short story teller should have as much effect as a great novelist. I think that’s the answer, isn’t it, but there are so few. They really are. Maugham and O. Henry, Kipling, Maupassant. They’re not... Bret Harte’s done a few, but there’re not a great many.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "... there are more goodish novels than there are good short stories, and I think a short story has to be very good to have any effect. And I think that you could probably... 100 short stories would be all there are, almost. Really great short stories. That’s probably not true, but there are so few really great short stories. A novel is a big bulky thing, you know. I suppose, well, with Kipling’s stories they’ve had a great effect, and O. Henry’s stories have. Shall we say that I think a great short story teller should have as much effect as a great novelist. I think that’s the answer, isn’t it, but there are so few. They really are. Maugham and O. Henry, Kipling, Maupassant. They’re not... Bret Harte’s done a few, but there’re not a great many." in the context of "Alec Waugh, (March 7, 1960 Portland State College), A Novelist on Novels" to mean that wisdom is timeless.