1This issue of the Journal of the Short Story in English is a double-volume featuring a special and a general section. The special section, “Short Crime Fiction,” was guest-edited by Suzanne Bray and Gérald Préher following a one-day conference they organized in Lille in October 2022. The general section includes two contributions (by Alice Mercier and Jeffrey Swartwood) originating from the annual ENSFR conference on “Short Fiction as World Literature” that took place in Lisbon, in October 2022 also, and which Ailsa Cox (Edge Hill University) and Amândio Reis (Universidade de Lisboa) entrusted with JSSE. The same section also contains an article by Shirley Bricout, first presented in the JSSE/SEAC (Society for the Study of Contemporary English Studies) workshop at the annual conference of the SAES (the French Association for English Studies) organized in Clermont-Ferrand, in June 2022, as well as submissions from scholars based in Japan (Shota Yamabe) and in the United States (Terence N. Bowers).

2After an introduction that focuses on mystery and the role of the reader in the text, the “Short Crime Fiction” section opens with a contribution by Gavin Cologne-Brooks that offers a survey of crime fiction beginning with Edgar Allan Poe. Camille Fort then analyzes Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Mr Quin in relation to the modernist story, showing that “generic hybridity is cleverly validated with a framing reference to another mixed tradition, the Harlequinade.” Reading another modernist writer, William Faulkner, Stéphanie Suchet demonstrates that Chick Mallison, one of the central characters in the collection Knight’s Gambit (1949) gains “what Paul Ricoeur calls narrative identity, enabling him to achieve personal identity.” While presenting itself as detective fiction, the collection also relates to the Bildungsroman, giving the reader several scenes to investigate in order to complete a satisfying character profile. In her analysis of Ray Bradbury’s darkly humoristic story “The Very Gentle Murders,” Lisa-Marie Carpentier likewise reflects upon characterization and shows that mirror images and repetition pave the way for the ultimate (albeit “gentle”) crime. Xavier Lachazette takes such depictions of cruelty further by exploring stories by Daphne du Maurier that question patriarchal ideology and invite readers into the minds of both victims and murderers. Still focusing on the workings of the mind of a leading character, Ineke Jolink reads Raymond Carver’s “So Much Water So Close to Home” as a “criminal labyrinth” that traps the reader and the narrator in a place not as clearly defined as might have appeared at the start. Isabelle Boof-Vermesse also introduces us to another author who plays with such liminality, Thomas Ligotti, whose story “The Last Feast of Harlequin” presents a world organized around dark rituals. Tanya Tromble and Stéphanie Maerten then provide us with readings of Joyce Carol Oates stories: Tromble examines Oates’s new take on flash fiction while Maerten focuses on the writer’s interest in the empowerment of “invisible women.” Frédérique Spill’s contribution on William Gay’s “The Paperhanger” echoes Jolink’s in its treatment of a murder that is hinted at but constantly set aside—until, in this case, its circumstances are revealed. The last contribution by Suzanne Bray presents stories that can be called “prequels” or “sequels”—they either introduce a detective to be featured in later works, or a detective who has already appeared in print, but whose story needed to be taken further. The special section thus covers a lot of ground and helps us understand how the genre introduced by Edgar Allan Poe has evolved and been reappropriated.

3In this issue’s general section, figures from the Old and New Testaments provide the backdrop for the first two pieces. First, in her article devoted to D. H. Lawrence’s “The Man Who Died,” Shirley Bricout reads Lawrence’s rewriting of the resurrection of Christ according to what she terms “textual tectonics.” The geological metaphor enables her to delineate the fault-line that runs through the text—in other words, the “tensions maintained between Lawrence’s narrative and the Bible.” As for the contribution by Shota Yamabe, it relies on Freud’s account of the Mosaic myth in Moses and Monotheism to suggest a new reading of William Faulkner’s “The Bear” and reveal the dialectic whereby Ike McCaslin both condemns the wrongdoings of his grandfather and, through this reprobation, elevates his figure as “sacred” and entrusts it with the power to shape his own destiny.

4Shifting the focus away from the (Old and) New Testament(s) to the New World, the three other articles in the general section broach a variety of subjects that bear witness to the richness of the American short story. Examining Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Terence N. Bowers convincingly interprets the text in relation to Émile Durkheim’s assertion that state-sanctioned violence does not so much testify to the survival of brutish instincts as it points to the pragmatic role of violent and exclusionary practices in social organization and individuals’ self-definition. Although its geographical background is never disclosed, Jackson’s enigmatic tale is thus revealed to entertain strong ties with the social dynamics at work in the Jim Crow South, with the sombre and shocking outcome of the story functioning as an allegory and denunciation of lynching.

5Far from the madding crowd and back to the grim reclusion of a New York attorney’s office (that of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby”), Alice Mercier offers a captivating discussion of photography and the short story, fueled by theory ranging from Kaja Silverman to Roland Barthes. At the heart of Mercier’s argument is the idea that the brevity of the short form is not solely a matter of length, but has to do with the sense of duration that photographs intimate: like them, short stories (and notably “Bartleby”) might be examples of “congealed time.” Finally, Jeffrey Swartwood’s essay on early surf stories by Mark Twain and Jack London is not content with riding the original wave of surf literature and tracing its subsequent developments between subcultural and mainstream realities; it also makes clear that the defining characteristics of this literary sub-genre have been present since its earliest iterations (whether in the room it allows for autofiction, its interest in “transnational and transcultural lifestyle,” or in its attention to the figure of the author-participant).

6We would like to pay tribute to John W. Lowe who served as North American Editor for several years and who passed away in the summer of 2023. John always felt it “a pleasure to renew [his] ties with JSSE” and, in recent exchanges, he had written us of “fond memories of [his] times in Angers.” He actively participated in the shaping up of the forthcoming issue of the journal on E. P. Jones and had many projects with the journal. We do hope his idea to have a special issue on Ernest J. Gaines will materialize one day.

7Moreover, at a time when he is moving on to new adventures, we want to thank John Paine who has been the North American Editor since the journal was created back in 1983. Through the years, John has edited several issues, conducted interviews with major short story writers (Peter Taylor, Elizabeth Spencer, Tobias Wolff…), and tirelessly promoted the journal. Many contributions from international scholars came to us through him. Now that John has retired, we have gathered a new team of experts. We approached two American scholars who have accepted to take over the jobs our faithful Johns so aptly carried out: Catherine Seltzer, who is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Park S. Buker, who is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina in Sumter. We wish to take this opportunity to welcome them to the JSSE’s editorial committee and hope our partnership will be fruitful.