A Thoroughly Modern Form
June 19, 2023 10:29 AM Subscribe
But very short fictions need not be concessions to workshop practicalities, the Internet, or shallow attention spans. They can also be—as my extracts show us—serious explorations of the formal possibilities of extreme compression. from The Art of Compression by Richard Hughes Gibson
I love flash fiction and it's what first got me into creative writing as a high schooler. I was kind of upset when I entered my English major and wasn't allowed to write flash fiction anymore for my classes, and that department was extremely strange and conservative. This post reminds me that I'd like to get back to doing that.
posted by yueliang at 12:05 PM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by yueliang at 12:05 PM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I love short pieces that to me read like prose even though they're often presented as poems. Here are some examples*:
1/
In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind,
I think of a girl
Who is not here.
2/
Out in the marsh reeds
A bird cries out in sorrow,
As though it had recalled
Something better forgotten.
3/
Others may forget you, but not I.
I am haunted by your beautiful ghost.
4/
Although I hide it
My love shows in my face
So plainly that he asks me,
"Are you thinking of something?"
5/
I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.
-----
However, whenever I read super short writing that is presented as story, such as with Lydia Davis' work, of which I have read countless pieces, I get absolutely nothing from them. I've read her entire Collected Stories (750+ pages!) and cannot recall a single thing about any of them. Never have I re-read a line of hers for its beauty — only when seeking clarity. When reading her work, I usually feel like I'm overhearing a one-sided conversation on a bus, but not one worth taking the effort to listen to, and certainly nothing I'd miss my stop for. No other author's success baffles me as much.
Kawabata, mentioned in the linked piece, can be amazing to read. I came to his work via the introduction to William T Vollman's Atlas, which has much to offer those who like short works.
*All of the above are from 100 Poems from the Japanese, translated by Kenneth Roxroth.
posted by dobbs at 1:19 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
1/
In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind,
I think of a girl
Who is not here.
2/
Out in the marsh reeds
A bird cries out in sorrow,
As though it had recalled
Something better forgotten.
3/
Others may forget you, but not I.
I am haunted by your beautiful ghost.
4/
Although I hide it
My love shows in my face
So plainly that he asks me,
"Are you thinking of something?"
5/
I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.
-----
However, whenever I read super short writing that is presented as story, such as with Lydia Davis' work, of which I have read countless pieces, I get absolutely nothing from them. I've read her entire Collected Stories (750+ pages!) and cannot recall a single thing about any of them. Never have I re-read a line of hers for its beauty — only when seeking clarity. When reading her work, I usually feel like I'm overhearing a one-sided conversation on a bus, but not one worth taking the effort to listen to, and certainly nothing I'd miss my stop for. No other author's success baffles me as much.
Kawabata, mentioned in the linked piece, can be amazing to read. I came to his work via the introduction to William T Vollman's Atlas, which has much to offer those who like short works.
*All of the above are from 100 Poems from the Japanese, translated by Kenneth Roxroth.
posted by dobbs at 1:19 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." And all this time I thought Hemmingway wrote it.
posted by mono blanco at 1:30 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mono blanco at 1:30 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Neither is quite flash short but compression was just on my mind because I encountered the longer (I think earlier?) edit of Raymond Carver’s “So Much Water So Close To Home,” which I had only ever known in its shorter, truly minimalistic version. And boy, I find the version that lets almost everything about the narrator’s relationship with her husband be said implicitly a lot stronger than the version that doesn’t.
posted by atoxyl at 1:37 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 1:37 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
From r/nyc What is your NYC seven-word horror story?
posted by lalochezia at 1:41 PM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 1:41 PM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I taught a class in sudden fiction to high school students a few times long ago, and I bristled a bit at the false dichotomy in the quoted sentence -- plenty of writing students have pursued serious explorations of formal possibilities within the constraints of a workshop. That said, I'm glad to be brought back to that memory. It was great fun preparing by reading as many short short fiction anthologies as I could find, and then coaching the students as they generated something quickly and then spent much much longer revising.
posted by cubby at 1:48 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by cubby at 1:48 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Any discussion of flash fiction needs to include:
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.”
― Frederic Brown
posted by Ignorantsavage at 5:13 PM on June 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door.”
― Frederic Brown
posted by Ignorantsavage at 5:13 PM on June 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
― Frederic Brown
Ignorantsavage, I'd always heard that Asimov wrote that, in a back and forth contest with Clarke to see who could write the shortest SF story. Nuts. Nice to know the actual origin, though.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:24 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ignorantsavage, I'd always heard that Asimov wrote that, in a back and forth contest with Clarke to see who could write the shortest SF story. Nuts. Nice to know the actual origin, though.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:24 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Asimov had About Nothing, which fit on a postcard:
About Nothing By Isaac Asimovposted by Ignorantsavage at 5:45 PM on June 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
All of Earth waited for the small black hole to bring it to its end. It had been discovered by Professor Jerome Hieronymus at the Lunar telescope in 2125 and it was clearly going to make an approach close enough for total tidal destruction.
All of Earth made its wills and wept on each other’s shoulder, saying, “Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.” Husbands said good-bye to their wives, brothers said good-bye to their sisters, parents said good-bye to their children, owners said good-bye to their pets, and lovers whispered good-bye to each other.
But as the black hole approached, Hieronymus noted there was no gravitational effect. He studied it more closely and announced, with a chuckle, that it was not a black hole after all.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Just an ordinary asteroid someone has painted black.”
He was killed by an infuriated mob, but not for that. He was killed only after he publicly announced that he would write a great and moving play about the whole episode.
He said, “I shall call it Much Adieu About Nothing.”
All humanity applauded his death.
I'm always interested in the promise of flash fiction and always unimpressed by what folks laud as the juicy examples. I really like the two-fisted couplets of David Berman or those Don Delillo paragraphs that make you read and reread them. I love a 20 word Vonnegut chapter or the cacophony of Kundera's stacked vignettes. This is How You Lose the Time War is pretty good, guys. But I've been hearing about great flash fiction for over a decade and my beak is dry as biscoff.
posted by es_de_bah at 5:48 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by es_de_bah at 5:48 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Fredric Brown called The Last Man on Earth the world's shortest horror story.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 5:53 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Ignorantsavage at 5:53 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Most flash genre fiction is about implied plot and the turn. Basically the structure of a joke. It has real limitations. If you can appreciate how those limits are worked with then the investment is low for a significant return. If you want the rhythm and language that tends to be with poets, but occasionally you might get something like Nicholas was… by Neil Gaiman:
Nicholas Was...posted by Ignorantsavage at 6:04 PM on June 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.
The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.
Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.
He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.
Ho.
Ho.
Ho.
George Saunders explains short stories quite well in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
Talks quite a bit about compression, though I don't think he used that word.
posted by Ayn Marx at 6:14 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Talks quite a bit about compression, though I don't think he used that word.
posted by Ayn Marx at 6:14 PM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sleepless #3 by Joe Kapitan is one of my favorite pieces of flash fiction.
Talk about compreasion, it's one (not so) simple sentence.
Talk about compreasion, it's one (not so) simple sentence.
My ex-girlfriends live in a pastel-drenched cabin on the edge of a hemlock forest in Canada somewhere, along with a few of the kids we almost had, and they all get along fine, for the most part, even tolerating the schizophrenic one, because they like to wager on which voice she'll wake up in, and they grow their own baconless food, and tend a sprawling flower garden, full of the varieties I never bought them occasionally, but mostly they are just "there for each other," "emotionally," which was always the point at which I jammed their signals and drifted down the dial to booze or strippers or coke, and that happens to be exactly what they're all talking about right now, around their campfire, with the almost-tots tucked in their bunks and the bottle of schnapps nearly empty, and the schizo pulls out the crocheted doll that looks like a little perforated version of me, and they take turns prodding its cotton stuffing with needles, and they've taken to calling it karma, while my doctor prefers carcinoma, but all I know is that their relentless stabs keep me up most nights, coughing tiny crimson droplets onto my pillowcase.posted by hoodrich at 8:09 PM on June 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by not_on_display at 10:38 PM on June 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
The article briefly touches on Haiku, a form that has given me immense satisfaction as a casual practioner. From a creator's point of view, they are the diametric opposite of a shallow attention span. I am still endeavouring to find the perfect keystone to complete some Haikus I started in the the 1980's.
posted by fairmettle at 3:57 AM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by fairmettle at 3:57 AM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am reminded of Borges: “Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential.”
posted by grimjeer at 4:53 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by grimjeer at 4:53 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
My own shortest mystery ever.
. Mr. ?
(Translated as: Dot missed her period. Question mark.)
Also,
Do-re-mi-so-la-ti.
Whodunnit?
Anti-fa!
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:34 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
. Mr. ?
(Translated as: Dot missed her period. Question mark.)
Also,
Do-re-mi-so-la-ti.
Whodunnit?
Anti-fa!
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:34 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
But I've been hearing about great flash fiction for over a decade and my beak is dry as biscoff.
I think the other side of the “limitations breed creativity” coin is that limitations can be an excuse to set the bar low. I mean that Gaiman joke story is all in good fun but it’s obvious where it’s going from the second line.
That’s what’s impressive to me about the Carver story - he wrote (and got published) a good, 8000 word story, then rewrote it as a better, 2500 word story. That’s setting the bar high!
posted by atoxyl at 1:05 PM on June 20, 2023
I think the other side of the “limitations breed creativity” coin is that limitations can be an excuse to set the bar low. I mean that Gaiman joke story is all in good fun but it’s obvious where it’s going from the second line.
That’s what’s impressive to me about the Carver story - he wrote (and got published) a good, 8000 word story, then rewrote it as a better, 2500 word story. That’s setting the bar high!
posted by atoxyl at 1:05 PM on June 20, 2023
I'm like dobbs in that I sometimes appreciate very brief texts in other contexts but when they're packaged and sold as short stories they tend to leave me cold.
Newly-arrived in today's post was a volume of stories by the Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, Complete Works and Other Stories. My heart sank a little when I saw just how short some of the stories were. The briefest of them is the following:
posted by misteraitch at 11:38 AM on June 21, 2023
Newly-arrived in today's post was a volume of stories by the Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, Complete Works and Other Stories. My heart sank a little when I saw just how short some of the stories were. The briefest of them is the following:
The DinosaurTrue to form, I didn't think much of it, although it went up a little in my estimation having since read (via wikipedia) that in Mexico "the Institutional Revolutionary Party remained in power for more than seven decades" for which reason it was sometimes known as El dinosaurio, with Monterroso's words "often used to mock them".
When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.
posted by misteraitch at 11:38 AM on June 21, 2023
For future thread browsers: I too have wanted to like flash fiction, but tend to bounce right off it because it simply does not linger in the mind. I'm not sure why this is so often true, when even briefer poetry can be so striking. I suspect it's mostly an issue of structure. I think it is very very tough to write a meaningful piece that is extremely truncated, and yet not bound by any particular form beyond the prose paragraph. Flash seems to discourage, all at once: experimentation with language, actual arcs of plot and character, AND striking or cinematic images (flash does tends to be image-heavy, but the images just aren't sticky, somehow...perhaps because the author is so busy juggling other concerns like how to make something happen for a character within some preposterous word limit). This is all amounts to a really hard sell for me.
All that said, I wanted to share with you a piece of flash fiction that has legitimately clung to me: "How to Develop (Film)," by Candice May. This piece is so successful in part because it's found a way to put some real structure on the page. (In a very literal sense!) It is also unwavering in its emotional focus. It does not go off onto needless byways or spin acrobatics with random imagery (the downfall of so much other flash). Second person is tough in general, but it sits so well here, in terms of the age and tenor of the narrative voice.
The story knows what it's going to do and then simply does it.
(I do think it's super amusing that "How to Develop (Film)" placed third in the contest that initially published it. Why is it that 95% of the time, when there is a tiered literary contest, the second or third place winner is like...very obviously superior to whatever the heck won outright? An ageless mystery. Anyway, this piece went on to be published in Best Small Fictions, which has a very reliable set of editors IMO.)
posted by desert outpost at 2:06 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
All that said, I wanted to share with you a piece of flash fiction that has legitimately clung to me: "How to Develop (Film)," by Candice May. This piece is so successful in part because it's found a way to put some real structure on the page. (In a very literal sense!) It is also unwavering in its emotional focus. It does not go off onto needless byways or spin acrobatics with random imagery (the downfall of so much other flash). Second person is tough in general, but it sits so well here, in terms of the age and tenor of the narrative voice.
The story knows what it's going to do and then simply does it.
(I do think it's super amusing that "How to Develop (Film)" placed third in the contest that initially published it. Why is it that 95% of the time, when there is a tiered literary contest, the second or third place winner is like...very obviously superior to whatever the heck won outright? An ageless mystery. Anyway, this piece went on to be published in Best Small Fictions, which has a very reliable set of editors IMO.)
posted by desert outpost at 2:06 AM on June 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
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Jules Renard's Nature Stories are more snapshots than narratives - the arc is.. limited in most of the stories, but I found it quite compelling and outside of genre somehow. Closer to poetry in it's impact, which I thought applied to the Lydia Davis 'story' as well. Feneon's Novels in Three Lines are really cool too.
posted by latkes at 11:23 AM on June 19, 2023 [2 favorites]