"Excuse me," Schwartzman said to the Home Depot man, "can you tell me where to find tar?" "Tar?" asked the Home Depot man. "What're you using tar for?" "I'm building an ark," said Schwartzman. If there was anything that two years of completing God's preposterous homework assignments had taught Schwartzman it was that there was absolutely nothing you could tell Home Depot Man you were building that would surprise him, that would get any reaction from him at all, for that matter, aside from the usual skepticism about your choice of building materials.
Shalom Auslander recasts Jewish history in short story form. Start with the aforementioned "
Prophet's Dilemma," and work your way backwards to "
Plagued."
[more inside]
posted by anjamu
on Jul 24, 2006 -
19 comments
2 4 8 16 32 64...
Storybytes, an ordered archive of nanofiction. It's been done before, by syllables (
17), by the masters (
Classic Short Stories), and by comedians (
Book-a-Minute). But in a dense natural language, with a high meaning-per-word, perhaps bytes would value infodensity more objectively:
256b,
1k,
4Kb. But then again, isn't a
spec as much of a cop out as a rigged dictionary? Perhaps the highest infodensities are achieved by works which will have
no human readers.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water
on Feb 14, 2006 -
8 comments
Flash Fiction is a site which publishes short stories (under 1000 words). While the format (3 columns, not evenly filled) is a little annoying, the concept is interesting. My favorite story so far is 'A leaf falls', in the first column scroll halfway down the page. The site is maintained by a writer/ artist/musician, whose eventual aim is to print the stories on coffee mugs. Morning reading anyone?
posted by darsh
on Feb 10, 2005 -
6 comments
Everyone is talking about Clint Eastwood's new movie,
Million Dollar Baby (
trailer). What you may not know however is that the movie was based on a short story in a book by the name of
Rope Burns: Stories From The Corner by the late F.X. Toole (aka Jerry Boyd). The book by the way was called, "...the best boxing short fiction ever written," by
James Ellroy of L.A. Confidential fame. Back in 2000 Toole gave an amazing
interview on Fresh Air about spending the last 20 years of his life as a cut man and the last 40 years of writing while trying to overcome his fear of rejection before getting his first book published at age 70.
posted by pwb503
on Jan 18, 2005 -
19 comments
Stories by Joe R. Lansdale If you're a fan of Joe Lansdale (or wonder who came up with the idea for
Bubba Ho-Tep), this site's for you. A different short story is posted every Thursday. Most of the stories are from his early years.
posted by joaquim
on Sep 2, 2004 -
6 comments
Spiritual Cockroaches the life and work of
K. Ungeheuer
Ungeheuer wrote short stories. Very short stories. Some are no more than a couple of sentences. The longest of them barely fills a half dozen pages. Ungeheuer explained his penchant for short short fiction in an interview with Jared Green in 1970:
"There's something enigmatic about the economy of these short pieces. Something about the lack of context that forces the reader to fill in the larger picture. I don't care about plotting a story, characterization or setting. I'm looking for a feeling, an instant in time. An uncomfortable floating instant, with no sense of anything that may have come to pass before it."
posted by tenseone
on Jan 12, 2004 -
18 comments
Professor Barnhardts Journal could become one of my favorite ezines. This week they have a short story from MST3000's Mike Nelson, and last week they had essays from Roger Ebert and T. Coraghasen Boyle. Bored with McSweeneys? Still bummed that Feed is gone? This zine looks like fun.
posted by braun_richard
on Oct 9, 2002 -
2 comments
Tom Perrotta may be one of the best novelists working today, yet not that many folks know his name.
His books and
short stories portray prosaic suburbia accurately and without condescension, and he has uncanny insight into the mind of the terminally adolescent. Not to mention an uproarious sense of humor. If the films of Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater, the music of Weezer, or
Pete Bagge's comics resonate with you, you may want to check out their literary equivalent. As an added treat, here's an
audio link of Perrota reading his work. For my money, this guy is one of our best American writers right now, although you wouldn't know it.
posted by jonmc
on Mar 2, 2002 -
10 comments
George Saunders imagines the future of advertising: "But Teddy of course did not see Gene Kelly, Gene Kelly not being one of his Preferences, but instead saw his hero Babar, swinging a small monkey on his trunk while saying that his data indicated that Teddy did not yet own a Nintendo." Hilarious Vonnegut-like short fiction.
posted by BT
on Jan 25, 2002 -
9 comments
third times a charm. after three different deadlines, two different formats, and a partidge in a pear tree, i'm still not sure if my entry got through. it's true, writers get no respect
posted by ethylene
on Nov 30, 2000 -
8 comments
