SOURCE: "A Son of Scheherazade," in Book World—The Washington Post, Vol. XXXVI, No. 17, April 28, 1996, pp. 1, 8.

In the following essay, Fuentes describes his perceptions of the short story and his literary influences in the genre. In the process, he discusses his desire to mesh the "realistic" with the "fantastical" and how this desire resulted in the stories "The Doll Queen," "Chac Mool, " and "A Garden in Flanders."

The novel is an ocean liner; the short story, a sailboat hugging the coast. Writing a novel requires an Olympic team. Singular as he or she may seem, the novelist is a team of painters, city planners, gossip columnists, fashion experts, architects and set designers; a justice of the peace, a real estate agent, midwife, undertaker, witch and high priest, all in one.

The short story writer, on the other hand, is a lonely navigator. Why this fidelity to solitude? Why...