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This feature from the Baltimore City Paper theorizes that the last paragraph of Joyce's "The Dead" has killed modern short story writing:

Let's recapitulate what goes on in that last paragraph. Gabriel Conroy, a college professor in his 30s, looks out the window at the snow falling softly over Ireland and the Bog of Allen, thinking wistfully about the fact that even though his wife isn't sleeping with another man, she wishes she was. She's just told him about her first love, Michael Furey, who died at 17. Generous tears fill his eyes. There's a keen sense of dissolution. Gabriel has coined a phrase for the aesthetic effect: distant music.

Right this moment, there are armies of writers going through workshops, getting their work ruthlessly dissected as they try to create that lyrical effect of waning poignancy.

(Oh, um: Spoiler alert?)

There are lots of problems with short story writers, of course. I think the culture of MFA programs have more to stand trial for than James Joyce does, but I attended a reading just last week that featured a half-baked life lesson that could have erupted straight out of a bad understanding of "The Dead". If I never read another short story that ends with a paragraph that includes the phrase "As I looked out on [the misty morning plains, the ruins of my life, my children's sleeping faces, etc.] I realized..." I will die a happy man.