The selection of short stories of the last two decades of the twentieth century entitled Cas kratke zgodbe (1998) was significant for forming Slovene theoretical views of the short story, and we cannot overlook it. It systematically describes the short story's features and situates it theoretically, historically, and in terms of the Zeitgeist in the Slovene space, demonstrating that the spread of the genre cannot be attributed "only to American influence-a similar thing happened there in the 1970s and 1980s-but instead likely to the global context, connected with the "spirit of the time" and with the uniqueness of the literary genre we call the 'short story' (Virk 1998: 291). He cites Italian, Spanish, French, Russian, German (Ruth J. Kilchenmann, Erna Kritsch Neuse), and Anglo-American (Poe, J. A. Cuddon) literary theory and observes that Kurzgeschichte and "short story" do not entirely correspond. On the contrary, German literary studies strictly differentiate the novella and short story, while American literary studies criticizes this and refers mostly to the short story" (Virk 1998: 295). He thinks that the problem is that certain Anglo-American handbooks of literary studies define "short story" more broadly than "novella" (while others do not).16 He decides that the short story is a "chimeric muddle" (Virk 1998: 299) of the story and novella, while focusing on the narratological features of both short literary genres, their historical development, structure (especially beginning and ending), and the ethos of the time, which might be thought to give rise to the fact that the short story "lacks plot and 'metaphysical' completion, but often has a kind of irrational note. The short story is thus as a rule a more 'nihilistic' genre than the novella" (ibid.: 299). Alenka Zbogar (2006, 2009) and Blanka Bosnjak (2005) confirm this in their research on contemporary Slovene short prose: the short story is clearly a unique short narrative genre that developed as an inheritance of Edgar Allen Poe's short story and that corresponds to the special historical ethos of postmodern metaphysical nihilism and the so-called subject of talking, or passive subject, whose only action is conversation. Alenka Zbogar makes a comparison between the short prose and novel protagonist. If it is true of the novel's protagonist, to paraphrase Dusan Pirjevec, that just as he ends a journey he realizes, too late, which road he should have taken, the subject of a short story sees innumerable paths that seem endless to him. This usually so flusters him that he does not set offat all, and if he does, he learns nothing. He does not try to save the world because he knows it is impossible. He tries to save himself, his day-to-day life. (Zbogar 2009: 541-42) Blanka Bosnjak (2005) observes that the protagonist in contemporary Slovene short prose is coherent when he has a traditional role and carries the action, and incoherent-that is, a diffuse subject-when he appears in a postmodern or sometimes, too, ultra-postmodern kind of Slovene short prose (141-43). Blanka Bosnjak analyses two hundred short narratives from after 1980 in her monograph Premiki v sodobni slovenski kratki prozi (Changes in contemporary Slovene short prose 2005). She attempts to define the styles of the thirty authors whose collections she considers, as well at to offer typologies, determine the features of the narrative systems, the subject's postmodern role, and works' features connected to special fairytale and mythological elements. At the outset she asserts the thesis that the output is exceptionally diverse and not subject to a single model. She concludes that at least two paradigms arose in Slovene short prose after 1980: the paradigm of "new literary directions" (66), which she calls a postmodern type of short prose, and the paradigm of "past literary directions" (i.e., realism, existentialism, and modernism) (66-67), divided into ultra-modern, irrational and mystical, and neorealist kinds of short prose, with the latter further divided into minimalist and post-existential. She develops the typology on the basis of the Slovene theoretical positions of France Bernik, Miran Hladnik, Gregor Kocijan, Janko Kos, Matjaz Kmecl, Alenka Zbogar, and Tomo Virk; she relies on the non-Slovene theorists Vladimir Biti, Aleksander Flaker, Dominic Head, Charles E. May, Eleazar M. Meletinskij, Allan H. Pasco, Olga Scherer Virsky, Milivoj Solar, Franz K. Stanzel, Michael Lloyd Trussler, and Lucy Ann Wilson. Mieke Bal, Gérard Genette, and Franz Stanzl's ideas provide the bases for analyzing the subject's role and narratological consideration of the actors, focalization, and the narrator's style. The concept of neorealism seems questionable, although Mitja Cander employs it in the anthology O cem govoriva (What we talk about), subtitled Slovenska kratka proza 1990-2004 (Slovene short prose 1990-2004 2004).7 The anthology covers short prose writers born after 1960 in whose poetics there are recognizable neorealistic features.8 She terms "neorealism" contemporary Slovene short prose that discards postmodernism and prefers "post-documentary elements that undergird the impression of being present" (360). Andreja Peric Jezernik (2011) is another scholar who uses this widely criticized term. Blanka Bosnjak understands it as a particular type that "preserves the notion of realism, for which the maximally realistic portrayal of reality is key, on the levels of style, plot, and theme, while also presenting reality through an authentic deptiction of society, social reality, nature, and everyday life" (2005: 89-90). These are texts that yet preserve familiar postmodern stylistic features, and in terms of plot and theme are composed of neorealist descriptions of contemporary urban environments. As an alternative to neorealism, Bosnjak suggests the term "neoverism." Andreja Peric Jezernik thinks that neorealism is a term "better suited to denote minimalism, because the prefix 'neo-' indicates innovation in these literary directions...; in the context of postmodernist pluralism, we understand the term 'neorealism' as a designation that encompasses various understandings of 'realistic'" (Peric Jezernik 2011: 63). In place of these names, Alojzija Zupan Sosic9 proposes the word "transrealism,"10 which derives from previous realistic tendencies but acquires new breadth with the altered condition of the literary subject, something she calls "new emotionality."11