Some points on writing

Between listening to music, working on my novel, and checking the Internet now and then this evening (O. J. Simpson is guilty, says the New York Times--the e-mail arrived not ten minutes ago), I found this article by Steven Millhauser about writing. Specifically, he compares and contrasts the short story and the novel. Some points he makes:

What the short story lacks in grandeur, it makes up for in elegance and grace. The short story is like William Blake's grain of sand: it becomes bigger than itself; it becomes bigger than the novel; it becomes as big as the universe.

The novel is exhaustive but the world is inexhaustible. The novel is ponderous. The novel is always hungry and dissatisfied; it fears coming to an end because then the world will run away from it. "The novel wants things. It wants territory. It wants the whole world."