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The Short-Short Story: a New Literary Genre
by
José Flávio Nogueira Guimarães
Submitted to the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras:
Estudos Literários in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Mestre em Letras: Estudos Literários
Area: Literatures in English
Thesis Adviser: Prof. Thomas LaBorie Burns, PhD
Faculdade de Letras
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Belo Horizonte
2010
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Acknowledgements
To G-d with a pinch of faith, in the Jewish manner, my fear and appreciation.
Above all, to Lázaro e Eneida, my parents, people whom I love the most in this world, all my
gratitude for believing in me and giving, at least seemingly, unconditionally.
To Felipe Araujo, my partner, my thankful heart for the steadfast support and companionship.
I owe much to my adviser, Professor Thomas LaBorie Burns. His correct attitude and
encouragement made all the difference.
I am likewise grateful to all my teachers from the MA program for the good-will to teach and
help.
I also thank the Pós-lit and Secretaria de Estado de Educação for all the support I needed to
conclude this MA program.
A special thanks to all my close friends and students.
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Abstract
This thesis proposes a study of a new postmodern prose fiction genre, the short-short
story. Considerations of generic classifications and boundaries are followed by an historical
overview and analysis of short fiction from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, especially
under the influence of the Russian Anton Chekhov, who is regarded as the father of the
modern short story. The postmodern short-short story is seen as emerging from this trend, a
hybrid genre with characteristics of the narrative language of other prose genres such as the
short story and the journalistic writing. The cluster of features, such as condensation, lack of
character development, surprise endings, etc., which is seen as characteristic of the short-short
story are discussed, and ten examples are summarized and analyzed, including two traditional
short stories for contrast. It is seen that the short-short story may be further broken into what
is called ―the new sudden fiction,‖ and the even shorter and more radical ―flash fiction.‖
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RESUMO
Esta dissertação se debruça sobre o estudo de um novo gênero da ficção literária pós-
moderna – o mini-conto. Discussões sobre classificações genéricas e limites são seguidas por
uma análise e visão geral histórica da ficção curta do século XIX ao XXI, especialmente sob a
influência do russo Antón Pávlovitch Tchekhov, o qual é considerado o pai do conto
moderno. O mini-conto pós-moderno é retratado como que tendo ascendido dessa corrente,
um gênero híbrido com características da linguagem narrativa de outros gêneros da prosa
literária tais como o conto e a escrita jornalística. Um grupo de características, tais como
concisão ou brevidade, ausência de desenvolvimento das personagens, finais surpreendentes,
etc., as quais são vistas como traços do mini-conto, são sugeridas, e dez exemplos são
resumidos e analisados, inclusive dois contos tradicionais para efeito de comparação.
Considera-se que o mini-conto provavelmente se desdobrará no que hoje é chamado ―the new
sudden fiction‖, e na sua outra versão ainda mais curta e radical denominada ―flash fiction‖.
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Contents
1 Introduction: Genre Issues.................................................................................................. 1
2 The Short Story: Origins and Developments…………………………………………….10
2.1. The Short-Story vs. the Novel……………………………………………………...10
2.2. The Short Story vs. the Novella……………………………………………………14
2.3. The Short Story vs. the Tale: the American Connection…………………………..16
2.4. The Emergence of the Modern Short Story………………………………………..19
2.5. The Modern Short Story: the Importance of Anton Chekhov.…..………………...22
2.6. Can the Short Story Be Defined? ............................................................................24
3 The Short-Short: the Emergence of a Genre……………………………………………..28
3.1. Short-Short Story: Condensation…………………………………………………..29
3.2. The Short-Short: Sub-Classifications………………...…………………………….31
3.3. No Limits for the Short-Short Story…….................................................................36
3.4. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………37
4 Short-Shorts: Some Examples…………………………………………………………...39
5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….64
6 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………...67
7 Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………71
7.1. ―A Very Short Story‖ by Ernest Hemingway……………………………………...71
7.2. ―A Lost Grave‖ by Bernard Malamud……………………………………………..72
7.3. ―The Red Fox Fur Coat‖ by Teolinda Gersão……………………………………...78
7.4. ―The Wine Doctor‖ by Frederick Adolf Paola……………………………………..83
7.5. ―The Black Queen‖ by Barry Callaghan …………………………………………..86
7.6. ―My Date with Neanderthal Woman‖ by David Galef…………………………….90
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7.7. ―Popular Mechanics‖ by Raymond Carver………………………………………....92
7.8. ―Jumper Down‖ by Don Shea…………………………...………………………….94
7.9. ―Sitting‖ by H. E. Francis…………………………………………………………..96
7.10. ―The Anatomy of Desire‖ by John L‘Heureux……………………………………..97
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1 Introduction: Genre Issues
The boundaries between literary genres seem blurred, especially when dealing with the
genres emerging from postmodernism, such as the short-short story. Nevertheless, it is
important for the study of such literary genres that some distinguishable features be pointed
out. This thesis will attempt to describe the genre of the short-short story and delineate its
differences from other prose forms and distinguish as far as possible the relatively new
literary phenomenon of the short-short.
As Mose (84) claims, it can no longer be denied that the short-short is a separate genre
and not simply a sub-category of the short story. Mose also points to the growing number of
anthologies that have recently been published (84). Actually, there are very few so far. On the
other hand, however, there are arguments for the presence of what is now called the short-
short story as early as the nineteenth century, although that has rarely been acknowledged in
the critical literature. A 1998 collection by Brixvold and JØrgensen, for example, includes
texts dated from 1882 to 1998 ―to show that the short shorts had been part of the twentieth-
century literary history‖ (Mose 84).
Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, edited by Robert Shapard and James
Thomas, from 1986, contains stories from mid-twentieth century writers such as Tennessee
Williams, Ernest Hemingway, and Bernard Malamud, for instance. The prevailing criterion
for inclusion of those texts in a short-short collection is not form but, as the name indicates,
length. In Sudden Fiction, none of the texts exceeds 1,500 words. In a more recent anthology,
with the title of Flash Fiction Forward: Eighty Very Short Stories (2006), the texts are even
briefer, averaging between 250 and 750 words (Mose 85). As will be discussed in Chapter
Three, there are two sub-genres here: ―flash fiction,‖ a sub-genre of the short-short story, is
even briefer than the ―new sudden fiction,‖ which is longer and more akin to the traditional
short story.
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I was introduced to the short story during a course I took four years ago – The Short
Story Tradition – at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. While spending the year of
2006 in New Jersey, USA, I received a gift card from the publisher Barnes & Noble and in
Brooklyn chose a book, a collection of short-shorts. I became particularly interested in this
new genre due to the innovation of trying to accomplish so much in so little space. The
anthology had an ―Afterword‖ with a forum on the new genre, by forty American writers. As
Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill state in ―Writing about Fiction,‖ printed in The Norton
Anthology of Short Fiction,
… one of the most important functions of fictive art is pleasure. And so the
first rule of thumb for anyone assigned to write a paper about fiction is to find
something that truly does engage you, something about which you can express
yourself in terms other than the artificial, forced, exhausting phrases of false
interest – that awful feeling of trying to guess what you believe your professor
wants to hear, of trying to say something as if you had the slightest interest in
it. (xvii, italics in original)
The expression ―a page turner‖ for a piece of fiction that is exciting to read comes in
here, for I found reading these short-shorts a pleasurable read. The editors of the first
collection of flash fictions (1992) intended to publish only ―texts that could be read without
turning the page‖ so as not to break the reader‘s concentration. However, later on, the plan
was changed and the initial idea was considered too monotonous, ―because the reader actually
expects and likes to turn the pages‖ (Mose 85). ―Turning pages, it would seem, is part of what
fiction is about, part of the passing of the story‖ (Thomas et al., qtd. in Mose 85).
Robert Shapard, in the closure of the introduction to the anthology Sudden Fiction,
which he edited with James Thomas, attempts to give some idea of the genre‘s condensed
power:
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Highly compressed, highly charged, insidious, protean, sudden, alarming,
tantalizing, these short-shorts confer form on small corners of chaos, can do in
a page what a novel does in two hundred. If they can stop time and make it
timeless, they are here for you, above all, as living voices. (xvi)
A short-short writer confessed in an interview that before writing her piece of fiction,
she had all the textual fragments laid scattered before her and ―the composition was solely
directed by the mood of the text bits themselves, not by characters or ideas about plots and
events‖ (Mose 86). A tendency to disregard ―the literary conventions of the highly plotted and
formalized story marked the beginnings of a new or ‗modern‘ kind of short fiction‖ (May,
The Short Story, 16), which some critics think occurred as far back as the nineteenth century,
with the no-beginning, no-end stories, all-middle stories of Anton Chekhov and his ―new‖
realism. American and English writers had access to Chekhov‘s short stories by the beginning
of the twentieth century. These stories focused ―on fragments of everyday reality – and so
[were] characterized as ‗sketches‘, ‗cross sections‘, or ‗slices of life‘‖ (May, The Short Story,
16), even while they did not have the formal construction of what was regarded as the good
short story of the time. For instance, such stories ―did not embody the social commitment or
political convictions of the realistic novel… [rather they] combined the specific detail of
realism with the poetic lyricism of romanticism‖ (May, The Short Story, 15-16). Short-shorts
can be seen as descending from this kind of story, but is a new hybrid form that, as we shall
see, combines ―characteristics of the short story and journalistic writing‖ (Mose 81). By
journalistic writing, I mean a concern to convey a message with simple, colloquial diction
with the fewest possible words.
Therefore, I propose a critical analysis of short-short stories related to their poetical
function and narrative brevity. Below, I question whether there are actual principles of
taxonomy and whether they have ever made a definitive classification of the genres by
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sharply limiting the boundaries among them, especially given the nature of hybrid genre like
the short-short story. Later, I intend to analyze the principles of taxonomy as applied not only
to the short-short story but to the novel and short story as well. For instance, short fiction
writers of the period between 1960 and 1990 are said
to fall into two different groups. On the one hand, the ultimate extreme of the
mythic-romance is the fantastic antistory style of Jorge Luis Borges, Donald
Barthelme, John Barth, and Robert Coover. On the other hand, the extremes of
Chekhovian realism can be seen in the so-called ―minimalism‖ of Ann Beattie,
Mary Robison, Raymond Carver, and Tobias Wolff… [Further], the minimalist
style of Raymond Carver is sometimes called ―hyperrealism‖ and indicates that
the twin streams of romance and realism are inextricably blended in the works
of contemporary short story [and short-short] writers. (May, The Short Story
20)
It is notable that all the writers cited above, except for John Barth and Ann Beattie, have been
published in short-short anthologies. Furthermore, in my own tentative classification, it seems
that the mythic romance has inspired the sub-genre of the short-short that is called ―flash
fiction,‖ and Chekhovian realism the sub-genre called ―new sudden fiction.‖ These
distinctions will be discussed and illustrated in Chapters Three and Four.
In Chapter Two, I trace the origins of short fiction and the rise and development of its
various types up to the birth of the modern short story in the twentieth century. In Chapter
Three I approach the short-short story itself, its origins and development, and discuss the two
sub-genres. In Chapter Four, a case study of ten very different short-shorts will be presented.
The first two are ―traditional‖ stories, included there for the sake of comparison, which were
published in the first American anthology (i.e. Shapard & Thomas‘s Sudden Fiction, 1986)
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for their brevity. The next eight examples are contemporary productions in the postmodern
model.
Genre issues have, in recent decades, engaged critics. Mary Louise Pratt, in her article
―The Short Story: The Long and the Short of It,‖ warns us not to oversimplify when relating
the history of literary genres. She avers that the ―tendency is to see them as related to and
differentiated from each other always in the same ways, and to search for a set of universal
distinctive features of genre‖ (111). This is exactly what the concept of generic identity is: ―a
set of universal distinctive features of genre.‖ The taxonomic principles, which are
conventions created by scholars to classify the literary genres by defining, ―limiting‖ and
posing differences among them, do use the concept of generic identity when classifying
literary genres.
Pratt proposes genre criticism based not only on supposed criterial features, but also
on ―non-essential and occasional ones…characteristics that aren‘t relevant points of contrast
with other genres, or with vaguer tendencies and trends not visible in all members of the
genre, but present often enough to be noticed‖ (93). She does not assert that an attempt to
describe a genre must not make reference to other genres, but does assert that the relations
between genres do not have to be symmetrical (96). These remarks are important, but Pratt
goes on to propose eight points in a rather schematic way, demonstrating a dependent, rather
than interdependent, relation between the short story and the novel.
―Proposition 1 – The novel tells a life, the short story tells a fragment of a life‖ (99).
There are exceptions, however: Virginia Woolf‘s Mrs. Dalloway and James Joyce‘s Ulysses,
novels that portray a one-day fragment in the lives of the protagonists. Conversely, Ernest
Hemingway‘s ―The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,‖ is a short story that attempts to
portray an entire life, albeit a short one. In other words, a novel is never too long for a few
moments of a life, nor is a short story too brief to tell an entire life.
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―Proposition 2 – The short story deals with a single thing, the novel with many things‖
(101). The author‘s emphasis here is on the word single and reminds the author of Poe‘s quest
for a ―single effect‖ in the short story, or, one might add, Brander Matthews‘s dictum that ―a
short story deals with a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series of
emotions called forth by a single situation‖ (Matthew 73). It is commonplace for short stories
to be structured on a single event or incident such as a picnic, a farewell party, a reunion, etc,
and the novel on a series of such episodes. However, Pratt admits that the fact must not be
elevated to a ―criterial feature of the genre‖ (102).
―Proposition 3 – The short story is a sample, the novel is the whole hog‖ (102). Here,
Pratt conveys the idea that short stories tend to be a development of what is summed up in
their titles and suggests it would be a regress to the origins of the short story: the exemplum,
with its moral lesson tagged to its title, and ―the joke with its punch line‖ (103).
―Proposition 4 – The novel is a whole text, the short story is not‖ (103). What the
author seems to mean is that a short story is not printed on its own but always as part of a
collection of its kind, but she may have forgotten that originally, and almost always, short
stories are printed in magazines before being gathered into collections (which is even more
true with the short-short, which may be found in magazines or newspapers, or even on the
radio and electronic media). Pratt states that ―though this is not a determining factor, it is
likely that the fact of not being an autonomous text reinforces the view of the short story as a
part or fragment….This is certainly a more useful distinction than the traditional able to be
read in one sitting‖ (104). Poe was the one who, on theorizing about the tale—the new genre
was not named the short story as yet—discussed this unique trait of brevity in the emerging
genre at the time. A tale should be brief enough, ―able to be read in one sitting‖ (Poe 61).
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Pratt‘s number 5 – ―Subject matter‖ (104) states that the short story is considered a
less important and minor genre when compared to the novel. Nevertheless, it is used to
introduce new subject matter into the social arena. As an illustration,
Maupassant through the short story breaks down taboos on matters of sexuality
and class. In the establishment of a modern national literature in Ireland, the
short story emerges as the central prose fiction genre, through which Joyce …
and so many others first document modern Irish Life. (Pratt 104)
Pratt also mentions the age of empiricism and the use of the short story to present the fantastic
and the supernatural: ―topics marginalized and stigmatized by a novel consolidating itself
around realism‖ (107). One might add that a similar phenomenon occurred with the once
marginalized genre of Science Fiction, which in contemporary American literature has since
Thomas Pynchon been very much mainstream fiction.
Pratt‘s number 6 – ―Orality‖ (107) is another distinction. It is not that the written
format, typical of the novel, is not present in the short story, but there is a trend to incorporate
oral-colloquial speech forms in the language of narration, through instances
where an oral narrative is embedded in the story, e.g. Chekhov‘s
―Gooseberries,‖ to instances where the whole text takes the form of represented
speech, [e.g. Raymond Carver`s short-short story ―Popular Mechanics‖], often
first person narration in an oral setting, e.g. Poe‘s ―The Tell-Tale Heart‖.…
Here the asymmetry between novel and short story appears. (Pratt 107-08)
In number 7 – ―Narrative Traditions‖ (108), Pratt refers to the commencement of short
fiction and the different origins that the two genres, novel and short story, had. As will be
seen in the following chapter, these two genres are associated with different narrative
traditions. We may still perceive in modern children‘s literature the types of tales that are the
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remnants of the origins of the short story. The novel quite often reaches back ―to history and
document‖ and grounds itself very much on these kinds of texts.
Pratt‘s number 8 – ―Craft versus art‖ (109) discusses the more controversial issue on
the generic identity of the short story as the trend to evaluate the genre ―as a skill or craft-
based rather than a creativity-based art‖ (109). The origin of this notion lies in the ties that
link journalism to the short story. Not only the short story, but also the short-short story, have
been influenced by journalistic style. Commercially, having a large spectrum of readers is to
the point, and there is no doubt that many writers aim at a mass public, which, however, goes
against older more elitist views, such as Mallarmé‘s, that ―art is a mystery accessible only to
the very few‖ (Pratt 110). In brief, ―the short story becomes anathema to the art-for-art‘s-sake
values that consolidated themselves in the modernist period‖ (Pratt 110).
It is, however, obvious that a good piece of fiction must be both imaginative and well-
crafted. Craft alone cannot create a convincing work of literature. Jason Sanford, in his paper
―Who Wears Short Shorts? Micro Stories and MFA Disgust,‖ writes about the quality of
contemporary short fiction and the craft-and-skills schools that try to instruct potential writers
who lack creativity and a certain voice. By ―voice,‖ he means a talent
which can take decades to develop. By voice, I mean more than merely the
style or tone of the story – I also mean voice as encompassing an author‘s
vision, thought, and insight. When this total view of voice is combined with a
writer‘s skill and craft, great writing results. (Sanford, screen 4)
If a story is written only with ―craft and skill,‖ it will be something mechanical. Craft is
technique – an ability that one acquires through practice, but creativity or talent – the
imaginative aspect, as it were – makes the difference. It cannot be taught.
I see Pratt‘s eight proposals as an attempt to break through the strict boundaries of the
concept of generic identity and the rigid taxonomic principles of classification in use
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nowadays by genre criticism. Nevertheless, it seems that her proposals are also boundaries
and taxonomic principles. The only difference is that they are not solely based on criterial
features of genres, but also on ―non-essential and occasional ones‖ (Pratt 93), as mentioned
above. In fact, Pratt herself questions the ideological reasons that brought forth the present
genre classifications. She asserts they were made to look natural, but they are culturally
determined. Referring to such cultural influences on principles of generic classification, she
states
they are human institutions, historical through and through. The massive effort
within literary criticism to maintain the lyric-epic-dramatic triad as ahistorical
generic absolutes is seriously misdirected, though of great ideological interest.
The myriad attempts to link the lyric-epic-dramatic triad with other phenomena
… are directed toward making these classical genre distinctions look natural
rather than cultural, thus separating the sphere of art off from other spheres of
discourse, and from social life in general. (Pratt 92)
In the next chapter, an historical view of short fiction will be offered in order to contextualize
the short-short within its parent genre.
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2 The Short Story: Origins and Development
There are several categories of short fiction that are taught informally or referred to
simply as the ―short story,‖ and since its rise it has changed considerably into what we today
call the contemporary short story. And yet, it is difficult to say precisely whether the short
story is positioned asymmetrically, paralleled, embedded in the novel, or bears a relation of
cause and effect. The birth of the English novel was realism, that is, a kind of prose that seeks
―truth,‖ or more precisely verisimilitude (vraisemblance) in the narrative (Watt 11-12). The
short story, on the other hand, is related to oral traditions, genres such as the exemplum, the
fairy-tale, the fable, the biblical parable (Pratt 108). Another important point is that the short
story has developed a great deal since its beginnings in the nineteenth century. This chapter
will trace its development.
2.1. The Short-Story vs. the Novel
Charles E. May, who is the most frequently cited critical expert on the short story as a
genre, says the story preceded the novel in its primal origins: ―Studies in anthropology
suggest that brief episodic narratives, which constitute the basis of the short story, are
primary, preceding later epic forms, which constitute the basis of the novel‖ (May, The Short
Story 1). The origins of the short story reach further back than the epic forms such as Beowulf
in the English language. Éjxenbaum (81) claims that ―the novel derives from history, from
travels; the story – from folklore, anecdote.‖ Pratt also claims that in the short story, we can
perceive ―remains of oral, folk, and biblical narrative traditions, like the fairy tale, the ghost
story, parable, exemplum, fabliau, (and) animal fable‖ (Pratt 108).
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One might begin by mentioning Boccaccio‘s Decameron, written from 1348 to 1353,
and Cervantes‘s Novelas Ejemplares, from 1613, two early collections of short tales.
Boccaccio‘s stories were not marked by the sacred nor did they obey the exemplum format,
which conveyed a moral in the story.
The fable and the exemplum are minimal narrative forms arising from
minimal systematic texts such as maxims, proverbs, and moral precepts… In
the fable, the general appears as the particular; in the exemplum it appears in
the particular. In the first case, the general is represented, in the second it is
implied… The basic rule underlying the unity of the whole is the ―purpose‖ of
the exemplum – the moral precept. (Stierle 21-23)
The exemplum is much older than Boccaccio‘s stories, as old as ancient Greece.
Aristotle made a difference between the fable and the exemplum in his Rhetorica (Stierle 23).
Nevertheless, before the end of the eighteenth century, for historical and philosophical
reasons, the exemplum faded out (Stierle 27). For his part, Boccaccio narrates the ―profane
world of everyday reality,‖ but his characters, although they do not illustrate virtuous conduct,
are still not as-if-real people; on the contrary, ―they are primarily functions of the stories in
which they appear.‖ Boccaccio is a ―collector and teller of formalized traditional tales‖ (May,
The Short Story 3-4).
One step further is Cervantes, who also attempted to transcribe everyday life in his
narratives, but, differently from Boccaccio, the adaptor of traditional tales and creator of
character types, Cervantes presents himself ―as an inventor of original stories…based on the
observation of ‗real‘ people.‖ The shift from the supernatural (sacred) to the natural in the
seventeenth century was influenced by the French and would yield eighteenth-century realism
and the eighteenth-century novel. As May says (The Short Story 3-4), ―…short fiction was
almost completely replaced by the novel during this period.‖ Realism was thus incorporated
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into the English novel, which, in its turn, almost completely replaced short fiction for some
time.
As the short story would find its fruition in the New World, one might at this point
focus on how that happened. Good argues that, by contrast with England, in the United States,
the preconditions of the social novel were not fully present until late in the
nineteenth century, with urbanization and the pacification and settlement of the
West. Instead, the adventure novel, the historical novel and, above all, the
―tale‖ were the most appropriate literary vehicles. Poe‘s aesthetic of intensity
and unity of effects sets the pattern for the development of short fiction in
America. [By contrast], in England during the last two decades of the
nineteenth century the monopoly of the three-volume novel as the standard
fictional form was effectively broken. New magazines appeared which
preferred complete short stories to serials, and many new opportunities were
opened up to writers of short fiction. (Good 158-59)
According to Wendell V. Harris, short fiction held an insignificant place in England
till the nineteenth century. That condition only started to change with the strong rise of the
novel in late eighteenth century and the ―discovery of history‖ through a ―historical
consciousness‖ somewhat later. Ian Watt‘s The Rise of the Novel has shown that the
emergence of the novel also coincided with the rise of a middle class. Influenced by realism,
the novel was ―an attempt to encompass the meaning of history and of society‖ (Harris 184).
Harris, however, suggests that short fiction writers from the 1890s were influenced by
the Gothic romance and the novel. In fact, Harris says that short fiction pieces at the time
were miniatures either of the Gothic romance or the novel. The first led to the
tale, tending, as Northrop Frye has suggested, not only to stylization but to the
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―nihilistic and untamable:‖ to ghost stories, wild adventures, hair-breadth
escapes. The second tended simply to disaster. (Harris 187)
Why disaster? If the novel influenced short fiction at that time, short fiction writers then
tended to copy ipsissima verba the style, tone and form of the novel, but that did not work due
to the size boundaries of the tale. The short fiction piece was hindered by copying literally the
novel within the limited space it offered the writer to create a realistic world.
It tried to translate a vision for which the short fiction piece simply could
not be appropriate… The closer the tale approached the novel, the further it
was forced to move from the essentially ahistorical, sonnet-like, and highly
focused vision which is characteristic of the true short story. (Harris 187)
Harris here points to some structural and thematic features characteristic of the short
story as opposed to the novel: ahistorical rather than tied to an historical context, a greater
focus as opposed to a looser narrative form like the novel, and the suggest of a structure closer
to poetry (sonnet-like) rather than the novel. In addition, the shorter form strove ―to
accommodate realism at the end of the nineteenth century, focused on an experience under the
influence of a particular mood and therefore depended more on tone than on plot as a
principle of unity‖ (May, Chekhov 200, italics in original).
Some critics also believe that the shorter form also showed differences in choices
about subject and theme. Harris, for example, quotes the Irish short-story master Frank
O‘Connor, who also agrees with Pratt when he states the short story is the natural vehicle for
the presentation of the ―defiant, those outside conventional society‖ (O‘Connor, qtd. in Harris
188). Pratt uses a broader concept: ―new subject matters.‖ While the novel adheres to the
―concept of a civilized society,‖ the short story ―remains by its very nature remote from the
community – romantic, individualistic, and intransigent‖ (O‘Connor, qtd. in Harris 188).
Graham Good even believes that the differences in formal structure follow from the different
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thematic choices. In his paper ―Notes on the Novella,‖ comparing the novel and the short
story, again refers to O‘Connor‘s view: ―Where the novel concerns individuals within society,
the short story treats groups which are outside it, or at any rate outside the normal social
experience to be expected of the reader. The formal differences between the two genres stem
from this‖ (156).
2.2. The Short Story vs. the Novella
Good, however, contradicts himself when he states in the same paper that all the
differences described by critics may ―boil down to‖ the idea that short fictions are distinct
from the novel simply because they are shorter (Good 147). Some theorists have even tried to
limit the literary genres by the number of words, such as Mary Doyle Springer, who, in her
book Forms of the Modern Novella takes the novella as a narrative of middle length (roughly
15,000 to 50,000 words) between the short story and the novel. Even so, those attempts seem
arbitrary, and, as Good admits, ―there are always borderline cases‖ (147). Good proposes to
leave behind genre definitions and work individually with separate texts from a certain author,
analyzing them by considering solely the writer‘s oeuvre, ―within a general perspective on
fiction dominated by the novel‖ (147). He suggests the difficulty is caused by the actual
―adjacency‖ of the short fiction to the novel:
Other genres can be opposed to each other more easily by basic plot-form
(comedy versus tragedy) or medium of presentation (drama versus
novel), where novel and short fiction are always in some awkward way next to
each other, overlapping and interpenetrating. Nevertheless, there has been a
number of efforts at disentangling the two. (147, italics in original)
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And, as a result, he attempts to fit all forms of short fiction into the category of novella with
all ―its complex semantic-historical relations with the novel‖ (147). He thus proposes to use
the term novella ―to cover both the short and the medium length‖ stories. In order to convince
his readers of his working thesis, he presents the following justifications:
(1) In the Renaissance the term encompassed both the very brief stories in the
Decameron and the middle-length Novelas Ejemplares of Cervantes. (2) In
post-19
th
century German practice ―Novelle‖ includes texts of under five and
well over a hundred pages. (3) The nineteenth-century English terms ―tale‖ and
―story‖ covered both lengths. (4) ―Short story‖ is a mainly twentieth-century
phrase for a particular type of magazine fiction; it has been applied to earlier
and foreign fictions to which it is not always appropriate, though naturally it
has a place within the family of terms I want to cover with ―novella‖. (5) Short
and medium lengths have enough in common in form, content, and history to
justify opposing them conjointly to the novel in the German manner, and
employing a two-part model (novella / novel) in preference to a three-part one
(short story / novella / novel). [Good 150-51]
In fact, the term novella is gaining acceptance throughout academia, among critics,
writers, and even publishers, as a literary piece of medium length – a genre shorter than the
novel and longer than the short story. As Good points out, however, ―tale‖ and ―story,‖ older
terms, were interchangeable and were actually used to denote short prose of around five up to
a hundred pages (Good 148), but the usage of those terms
was eroded in the late nineteenth century by the magazine term ―short story,‖
which, with its connotations of abruptness and curtailment, tended to confine
itself to the lower end of this range – short story manuals still preach an ascetic
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brevity, attained by diligent cutting and paring away the fat, until the art comes
to seem one of pure omission. (Good 148)
Therefore, some contemporary critics have gone even beyond the feature of length to
suggest other criterial features that characterize modern literature, such as the ―ironic style‖ –
a ―style that, even as it seems realistic on its surface, in fact emphasizes the radical difference
between the routine of everyday reality and the incisive nature of story itself as the only
means to know true reality‖ (May, Chekhov 211). To sum up, brevity is the obvious but not
only difference of short fiction.
2.3. The Short Story vs. the Tale: the American Connection
Tale, the older term for a short piece, whether oral or written, is sometimes used as an
alternative for short story, but, as we have seen, the latter term was introduced relatively late.
In the 1850s, a great number of tales or stories were published in American magazines, and
yet few of them may be regarded as memorable works of art, and because of that, the period
from 1850 to the beginning of the Civil War [1861] ―has been discredited and generally
ignored in the history of American short fiction‖ (Marler 165). The evolution from the
magazine tale to the short story has generally been disregarded because it took place exactly
around that time. Robert F. Marler, in his essay ―From Tale to Short Story: The Emergence of
a New Genre in the 1850s,‖ proposes that ―the decay of the immensely popular tale fostered
the development of the short story as a new genre‖ (165). The mediocrity of such tales in
general, their ―little aesthetic appeal,‖ caused an immense reaction among writers and literary
critics of the time.
Brander Matthews is said to be the first critic to have identified the short story as a
separate genre from the novel in 1901. He was the first one to call it so, in spite of the fact
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that it was successfully produced and developed throughout the whole nineteenth century in
the United States, in America (Shapard and Thomas, Sudden Fiction xii). H. G. Wells called
the 1890s ―the Golden Age‖ of the short story in England. That may have come about, in an
indirect way, from Edgar Allan Poe; for it was, May argues, Poe who inspired Baudelaire,
―who in turn inspired the symbolist movement, which ultimately gave impetus to the
development of the short story during this period‖ (May, The Short Story 14). May supports
the idea that it was not Kipling but Joseph Conrad who ―effectively made the transition…
[from] the old-fashioned tale of the nineteenth century [to] the modern short story‖ (May, The
Short Story 15). And Baudelaire‘s symbolism was ―the basis of Conrad‘s
symbolism/impressionism‖ added by remarks of Poe ―that fiction must aspire to the magic
suggestiveness of music, and that explicitness is fatal to art‖ (May, The Short Story 15). May
concludes stating that ―Conrad tried – where Joyce later succeeded, in such famous stories as
‗The Dead‘ – to convey this magical suggestiveness by focusing on concrete situations in the
real world‖ (May, The Short Story 15).
Éjxenbaum, in his study ―O. Henry and the Theory of the Short Story,‖ states that
the story, precisely as small form (short story), has nowhere been so
consistently cultivated as in America. Until the middle of the nineteenth
century, American literature, in the minds both of its writers and readers, was
merged with English literature and largely incorporated into it as a ―provincial‖
literature. (82-83, italics in original)
In the 1830s and 1840s, American novelists published their novels in English
magazines, while most of the publications in American magazines were short stories: ―the
genre was associated with, not engendered by, the propagation of magazines‖ (Éjxenbaum
83). Periodicals were therefore the springs that launched the short story as well as the short-
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short into the world. Éjxenbaum depicts many differences between the novel and the short
story. He asserts that
The novel derives from history, from travels; the story – from folklore,
anecdote. The difference is one of essence, a difference in principle
conditioned by the fundamental distinction between big and small form…
Short story is a term referring exclusively to plot, one assuming a combination
of two conditions: small size and plot impact on the ending. Conditions of this
sort produce something totally distinct in aim and devices from the novel. (81,
italics in original)
Brander Matthews also spends most of his essay, ―The Philosophy of the Short-Story,‖
by drawing differences between the novel and the short-story, which he insists on
hyphenating. ―A true Short-Story is something other and something more than a mere story
which is short‖ (73). Among the many differences the author stresses one may cite a unity
that the short story has and the novel cannot have:
A Short-story deals with a single character, a single event, a single
emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single situation… The
Short-story is the single effect, complete and self-contained, while the Novel is
of necessity broken into a series of episodes. Thus the Short-story has, what the
Novel cannot have, the effect of ―totality,‖ as Poe called it, the unity of
impression. (Matthews 73)
Poe developed his concept of ―totality of interest‖ when he asserted that
the ordinary novel is objectionable, from its length… As it cannot be read
at one sitting, it deprives itself, of course, of the immense force derivable
from totality [of interest]…in the brief tale, however, the author is enabled to
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carry out the fullness of his intention, be it what it may. (Poe 61, italics in
original)
What Matthews means by ―a single emotion, a single situation‖ is evidently the result
of what Poe means when he says ―can be read at one sitting.‖ As the moment will be a single
moment, the effect will be singular as well, a ―unity of impression.‖ This comparison recalls a
comment by Éjxenbaum, who claims the reverse influence: that of the short story on the
novel; he cites as an example Hawthorne‘s The Scarlet Letter: ―The novel has only three
characters, bound to one another by a single secret which is disclosed in the last chapter
(‗Revelation‘). There are no parallel intrigues, no digressions or episodes; there is complete
unity of time, place and action‖ (Éjxenbaum 87).
2.4. The Emergence of the Modern Short Story
Northrop Frye, in his seminal Anatomy of Criticism, has drawn generic distinctions
between the tale and the short story. The tale is comparable to the prose romance, while the
short story is akin to the novel. The tale depicts no ―real people;‖ characters are ―stylized
figures‖ that expand into ―psychological archetypes‖ made up for their ―subjective intensity‖
and there is therefore a trend toward allegory. On the contrary, the short story portrays
characters that have ―personality‖ and wear ―their personae or social masks.‖ In the same
way, the writer presents a steadfast society, and his world of fiction tends to be a copy of
mankind‘s real world (Frye, qtd. in Marler 166). Unlike the tale, ―characters in the short story
have an inner consciousness‖ (Marler 166). It seems that Frye believes the short story to be
closer to the novel than the tale.
Marler, agreeing with Frye‘s point and explaining why these older stories are
aesthetically less interesting, argues that in the tales from the 19
th
century
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characters are romance figures or stereotypes illustrating popular values and
ideals. They have no interior life beyond what the invariably omniscient
narrator asserts they have. Their virtue or sinfulness accords with notions of
Protestant piety… They tend to be overtly allegorical … [and portrayal] …
simplified outline of an idea or belief. (167)
Tale writers of the time built their themes on ―didactic passages‖ avoiding ―ambiguity,
complexity, and richness… Plots [were] designed to prove the moral, regardless of violations
of a work‘s basic premises.‖ In addition, the authors of tales had an ―inflated literary style,‖
making use of circumlocutions and formal diction in order to insinuate ―that the flattered
reader is intelligent and sophisticated‖ (Marler 167-68). Critics of the time started to see the
exaggeration and the decadence of the genre – a slavery to form to please readers and the
status quo of society. ―The primary targets of attacks on the magazines were sentimentalism
and didactic moralism‖ (Marler 168). Marler explains in details what happened to the form.
Characters and their situations deserved every bit of the emotion the readers
bestowed on them. But the point is that writers exaggerated situations and
attenuated and simplified characters for the sake of emotion… As propaganda,
its emotionalism, anti-intellectualism, and conventional appeal to women had
become epidemic. It was making critics ill… By 1860, Henry Giles obliged to
blast anything remotely attributable to sentimentality…, ―a pretentious
unrealism‖… To summarize: commentary in leading publications attacked the
excesses of sentimentalism, deplored the distortions of moralism and
didacticism, and depreciated the importance of plot. Critics, while
simultaneously retaining the single-effect concept and the necessity of implied
significance, were encouraging the modification of the conventional tale. If
they also advocated a realistic world of fiction, then they had, more or less
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unintentionally, established basic conditions suitable for the development of
the new genre. (169-72)
At this point, the ground was prepared for the emergence of the modern short story.
Marler argues that the three most important short fiction writers of the time were Edgar Allan
Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, ―the three masters of short fiction‖ (175).
Poe wrote only tales. His characters ―would be destroyed by common reality‖ (166).
Hawthorne and Melville wrote both tales and short stories. Hawthorne was praised for the
undercurrent of significance in his tales. ―The ability to suggest, to evoke, without resorting to
explanations was increasingly praised. Tacked-on moral tags became a sign of mediocrity,
even if the brilliancy of style is on them like the sun‖ (Nordhoff, qtd. in Marler 170, italics in
original). These writers signaled the beginning of the metamorphosis from tale to short story.
At that time, critics and reviewers saw realism as the representation of natural men in
their surroundings, but these three key writers have a different concept of realism. The
concept of realism in fiction derived ―from the older vraisemblance or verisimilitude after the
extraordinary or supernatural subjects were stripped away.‖ Poe used the word ―earnestness‖
instead of verisimilitude. The latter term used to be applied as a compliment to an author ―for
making the extraordinary or marvelous convincing by direct references to actual life. [In the
1850‘s], verisimilitude, like vraisemblance, its synonym among reviewers, was deemed Poe‘s
highest achievement‖ (Marler 173).
Actually, to Melville, ―the actual world is a façade, even a lie. The fictive world is an
artifice that leads to Truth, though, paradoxically, the writer must begin with the materials of
real life to penetrate to the core of meaning. Hence, actuality is fundamental to the art of
fiction‖ (Marler 175). Among these three major short fiction writers of the 1850s, Melville
was the closest to the modern short story as opposed to the older tale because his portrayals
were mimetic and he relied ―on facts for the profound probing of everyday reality,‖ which
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was ―a broad shift from Poe‘s overt romance and verisimilitude [and then], Hawthorne‘s
neutral ground of actual and imaginary‖ (Marler 176-77). The modern short story at this
juncture, therefore, is considered better the more it conforms to realism.
2.5. The Modern Short Story: the Importance of Anton Chekhov
May, in his article ―Chekhov and the Modern Short Story,‖ calls attention to ―the
nature of art that has characterized Western culture since the early nineteenth century and
which Ortega y Gasset so clearly delineated in The Dehumanization of Art‖ (215). Those ones
who pinpoint flaws in the short story, and miss the bourgeois comfort of nineteenth century
realism, have forgotten the golden path to art, ―the will to style,‖ which means a deformation
of lifelike reality, a derealization in the perception of current facts in prose fiction. To stylize,
therefore, ―means to deform reality, to derealize: style involves dehumanization‖ (Ortega Y
Gasset, qtd. in May, Chekhov 215). Granted that, the modern short story, particularly the
Chekhovian, broke from certain notions of realism, the mimetic portrayal of reality, to pursue
modernist precepts that prescribed a ban on ―the cause-and-effect nature of plot and the ‗as-if-
real‘ nature of character‖ (May, Chekhov 215). Postmodernist fictions, such as the short-short
story, also follow such modes: ―contemporary fiction is less and less about objective reality
and more and more about its own creative processes‖ (May, Chekhov 215).
On this will to style, May supplies one more difference between the short story and the
Chekhovian version:
.… the Chekhovian short story lies in this will to style in which reality is
derealized and ideas live solely as ideas. Thus Chekhov‘s stories are more
―poetic,‖ that is, more ―artistic‖ than we usually expect fiction to be; they help
define the difference between the loose and baggy monstrous novel and the
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taut, gemlike short story. One final implication of Chekhov‘s focus on the ―will
to style‖ is the inevitable self-consciousness of fiction as fiction. (May,
Chekhov 215)
In this view, Chekhov becomes the father of the contemporary short story – and, as
will be seen in the third and fourth chapters, indirectly the father of the contemporary short-
short story. To sum up, the Russian writer‘s style and voice, all the characteristics of his
writing – the association with lyric poetry, the freedom from highly plotted stories, the
sparing use of language, the minimal plot as a lyricized sketch, atmosphere as an ambiguous
mixture of both external details and psychic projections, the spare dialogue of characters, the
focus of reality as a fictional construct and a function of perspectival point of view, characters
often having no names or only first names and being briefly described, character as mood
rather than realistic depiction, and hybridism, among others (May, Chekhov 199-213) – suit
perfectly the perceived features of modern short fiction such as that found in Joyce‘s
Dubliners, as well as examples of contemporary short-short story writers. Chekhov‘s most
immediate impact was on three important modernists: the Irishman James Joyce, the New
Zealander Katherine Mansfield, and the American Sherwood Anderson. Subsequently, these
writers would influence other important short story writers, such as Bernard Malamud, Ernest
Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Robert Coover.
May points out the two major categories or sub-genres of short fiction: ―the legendary
tale form…, as in Hawthorne‖ and the story with a ―presentation of the single event, as in
Chekhov‖ (May, Chekhov 214). But, again, these sub-genres may be seen to develop
historically into other sub-types, with
two completely different textures in short fiction – the former characterized by
such writers as Eudora Welty in the forties and fifties and Bernard Malamud in
the sixties and seventies whose styles are thick with metaphor and myth, and
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the latter characterized by such writers as Hemingway in the twenties and
thirties and Raymond Carver in the seventies and eighties whose styles are thin
to the point of disappearing. (May, Chekhov 214)
To conclude this section, one might briefly comment on Chekhov‘s piece, ―The Short
Story,‖ which is really a collection of extracts from letters that Chekhov wrote to friends and
relatives commenting on their story writing. He shows a humble attitude when making
assertions, always making it clear that he might be wrong. For instance,
the short story, like the stage, has its conventions. My instinct tells me that at
the end of a novel or a story, I must artfully concentrate for the reader an
impression of the entire work, and therefore must casually mention something
about those whom I have already presented. Perhaps I am in error. (Chekhov
195)
The letters also make it clear that he dislikes subjectivity in short fiction.
I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective elements that
are lacking in the story … Subjectivity is a terrible thing. It is bad in this alone,
that it reveals the author‘s hands and feet…And you did not write for the
reader. You wrote because you like that sort of chatter. (Chekhov 195-96)
Finally, he reinforces the necessity of brevity in short fiction: ―but in short stories it is better
to say not enough than to say too much‖ (198).
2.6. Can the Short Story Be Defined?
If it is not impossible, it is extremely difficult to give a perennial definition of the short
story because, as has been seen in this chapter, the genre has developed and changed over
time. Beyond the differences between terms used for the genre, namely, the tale, the ―story,‖
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the novella, and the short story (or as Matthews would have it, the short-story), and finally,
the short-short story, there have been, as we have seen in earlier sections of this chapter,
proposals that suggest the novella is the great genus and all the other short fiction categories,
including the short story, are species. Nowadays, there is a trend to call all these supposedly
sub-categories or (in Good‘s view) sub-genres, genres.
If genre and sub-genre are viable terms, the short story is not a dead genre like the
epic, but a developing genre with subclassifications constantly being added, which is why we
cannot have a definition with an agreed upon set of features, such as the epic has. The modern
short story, May believes, is a hybrid genre that presents a complex set of generic features
(May, Chekhov 199). Most definitions, however, consider only ―the dominant aspects of the
system‖ (Pasco 117). Since the prevailing system adopted by taxonomic principles to classify
genres in literature makes use only of the dominant aspects of the literary category, as
opposed to Pratt‘s trial, we have a ―deformation of the remaining elements‖ (Pasco 117)
which are not in the foreground but instead in the background, which is exactly what Pratt is
against.
Pasco argues, however, that definition still seems to be needed: ―it may be impossible
to define a genre, but readers do it all the time, and they use their definitions as guides‖ (117).
These are labels we were brought up with, we were taught that way in school; in other words,
they were introjected into our selves, and now it is very difficult to live without them. Pasco
therefore argues the possibility of a successful definition of genre:
The work of defining a genre succeeds when the definition corresponds to
general practice and understanding, when it includes the samples generally
included, and excludes those normally left out, when its categories do not
erroneously focus on elements which cause misapprehensions. (118)
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If the generic markers of genre are helpful and useful because ―at some point
distinctions must be made,‖ at the same time ―inclusion or exclusion from a genre does not
affect the quality of a work, [in spite of the fact] it may encourage readers to read with
inappropriate expectations‖ (Pasco 123).
It is indisputable that most readers are firmly conscious of genre and use their
preconception to guide their reading. The more adequate that preconception,
the more chance there is of an adequate reading which recognizes the true
significance of the story, whether it be in line with or in revolt against that
particular cluster of traits. (Pasco 127)
If a definition is to be derived from distinctive features, the criterion of brevity, Poe‘s
―able to be read at one sitting,‖ seems to be the one most accepted by critics with few
exceptions, Pratt being one of them. The problem with the distinction is its relativity: ―some
people can sit for longer periods than others‖ and some people read faster than others,
thereafter accomplishing more at their time sitting. Nevertheless, ―it emphasizes the absolute
impossibility of extreme arbitrariness, without denying the necessity of shortness, however it
be defined‖ (Pasco 123).
In any case, it seems clear that the size of the short story has no relation to its quality.
There are excellent short stories that due to their size would be called today short-shorts,
which have less than one thousand words, such as Maupassant‘s ―Le Lit,‖ as well as excellent
long ones, such as Joyce‘s ―The Dead‖ which has around fifty pages.
Brevity, however, does impose certain conditions and particular forms. ―C’est que la
brièveté n’est jamais aléatoire, mais qu’elle constitue un modele formalisant [Brevity is never
aleatory, but rather it constitutes a formalizing model]‖ (Zumthor, qtd. in Pasco 124). Among
other generic markers of the genre, Pasco mentions the lack of ―loosely motivated detail, [the
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tendency] toward the general, [the expectation readers have pertaining] the vocabulary to bear
more than its usual significance, [a tendency] to universalize, a frequent use of ellipsis‖ (125).
Brevity may be seen in another way, for example, the American writer-poet Conrad
Aiken‘s comment on Katherine Mansfield, whom he regarded as one of the primary followers
of Chekhov:
Miss Mansfield has followed Chekhov in choosing to regard … the short story
form… as … the presentation of a quintessence, a summation of a human life or
group of lives in the single significant scene or situation or episode. (Aiken, qtd. in
Good 159, italics in original)
Aiken has here conflated a structural feature, brevity, with a thematic one: a
quintessentializing of a complete idea in a representative one.
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3 The Short-Short: the Emergence of a Genre
The short-short story, or sudden fiction, blaster, snapper, sketch, prose poem, prose
fiction, vignette, experimental fiction, anecdote, enigma, flash fiction, mini fiction, fast
fiction, skinny fiction, quick fiction, micro-fiction, draft, picture, text, are some of the names
that this new literary genre has received; and it has only recently been classified as a separate
category. In the last years of the 20
th
century, the short-short was considered a sub-category or
a sub-sub-category of the short story, as for example, in Robert Shapard and James Thomas‘s
Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories (1986), the first anthology of the form. In more
recent publications by the same authors, New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from
America and Beyond (2007) and Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories (2006), they
consider it a separate genre.
Around the 1990s, short fiction had a genuine revival under the influence of the fiction
of Jorge Luis Borges and Raymond Carver (Mose 84). A new kind of short fiction, the
pioneering short-shorts were originally published in magazines and newspapers and began to
appear as ―generic markers.‖ They combined characteristics of the short story, the poem, and
journalism. The hybridism, bricolage and pastiche from postmodernist fiction characterize the
emerging genre as a space without a single identity but with features and traits from distinct
sources. W. S. Penn, in his article ―The Tale as Genre in Short Fiction,‖ writes: ―It [does not]
mean that a combination of elements from different genres could not be used by the story
writer. What it means is that generic theory must evolve – grow or completely change – along
with the development of new genres‖ (54).
I shall propose a critical analysis of short-short stories related to the poetical function
and narrative brevity, which will lead to other concepts, functions, and practices. The short-
short mixes poetic condensation with the fictional narrative language of longer forms, as well
as the more concise prose style of journalism. The lack of a singular, definite, and precise
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form for the contemporary short-short, which would provide a traditional classification for the
genre, is an invitation to critique. It may be more fruitful to suggest features, or a cluster of
features that may be applied to examples in order to define the genre as a hybrid.
3.1 Short-Short Story: Condensation
In terms of condensation, the short-shorts are, as their name indicates, even briefer
than the short story and may be seen as akin to poetry. The writer-critic Joyce Carol Oates, for
example, asserts in the ―Afterwords‖ of Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, that
―the rhythmic form of the short-short story is often more temperamentally akin to poetry than
to conventional prose, which generally opens out to dramatize experience and to evoke
emotion; in the smallest, tightest spaces, experience can only be suggested‖ (Shapard and
Thomas, Sudden Fiction 247). To support her argument, Oates quotes Kafka‘s ―The Sirens:‖
These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It
would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they
knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They
could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful. (Kafka, qtd. in Shapard
and Thomas, Sudden Fiction 246)
Oates thinks that very short fictions are ―reminiscent of Robert Frost‘s definition of a poem –
a structure of words that consumes itself as it unfolds, like ice melting on a stove‖ (Shapard
and Thomas, Sudden Fiction 246).
Not only brevity, but tightness and condensation are points that weigh much, and so
the use of each word, the essentialness and precision of every piece of information form the
framework of the short-short story. The short-short, like the poem, combines power and
brevity in a web of words. In the same book (Sudden Fiction), the writer Grace Paley also
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claims that ―a short story is closer to the poem than to the novel… and when it‘s very very
short – 1, 2, 2 ½ pages – should be read like a poem. That is, slowly. People who like to skip,
can‘t skip in a 3-page story‖ (253). The economy of means in the short-short demands a really
distinct sort of reading from that of the short story and the novel – genres with which short-
shorts have been compared (Mose 82). Other writers have also supported the notion that
short-shorts resemble poetry. Charles Johnson lists two qualities that the short-short demands:
compression and economy (Shapard and Thomas, Sudden Fiction 233). Charles E. May had
even argued that the short story – not even the short-short story - ―has always been more
closely associated with lyric poetry than with its overgrown narrative neighbor, the novel‖
(May, Chekhov 214).
Contrary to this view, Gordon Weaver points out that fiction, either short or long, has
a narrative and poetry does not (Shapard and Thomas, Sudden Fiction 228). He argues
therefore that the short-short is more akin to other narrative genres than to poetry. He thinks
that the prose-poem is a bastard genre, a contradiction in terms (229), but one might argue
that a prose-poem is a lyric written in prose rather than verse, but not containing a narrative.
Poe, early as 1842, sixty years before Brander Matthews attempted to define the art of
the short story, also presented differences between poetry and short fiction, arguing ―the tale
has a point of superiority over the poem‖ (61). He defended the thesis that while the latter
seeks the development of the idea of the Beautiful, the former has its basis in Truth: ―truth is
often, and in very great degree, the aim of the tale‖ (62). Robert Kelly, takes a more
conciliatory intermediate ground, seeing the new genre of the short-short as one that ―has
become the great fertile plain where, for once, poets and novelists can meet together as
equals, and each produce effective work, funded by their separate dispositions and
preparations‖ (Shapard and Thomas, Sudden Fiction 239).
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One might also argue that what makes the contemporary short-short like a poem is not
only condensation but the importance of tone and rhythm. By rhythm, I mean what Robert
Kelly calls ―rhythmic scope,‖ a ―focus on the time of the experience of the text‖ which he
thinks is exactly what characterizes the new form (Shapard and Thomas, Sudden Fiction 240,
italics in original). Gitte Mose calls rhythm ―impressionistic form‖ (81). The writer tries to
capture the impressions, the prints or marks left by the moment of occurrence of an event. By
tone, I mean a style or manner of writing opposed to the traditional form (as defined below).
Robert Fox avers that ―short-shorts can be tone pieces, much like poems… [I see] the
structure of the work in its entirety [but] I know the difference [between a poem and a short-
short] because I‘ve chosen the form deliberately, instinctively‖ (Shapard and Thomas, Sudden
Fiction 252).
Short-short writers are not very much concerned with traditional forms, which is why
the limits that distinguish a prose poem and a short-short are hazy or ―blurring,‖ as Fox
declares (252), but even within the usual features of narrative fiction, short-short story writers
do not often follow any kind of pre-established form in the sense of well constructed
characters and a definite plot with conflict, climax, and resolution. Borrowing the term from
Jason Sanford, in his essay ―Who Wears Short Shorts? Micro Stories and MFA Disgust,‖ the
usual procedures are considered ―antiquated goods‖ (screen 1), tools no longer used.
3.2. The Short-Short: Sub-Classifications
As already mentioned in the second chapter, tales date from the primordia of literature,
even preceding the epic forms, and short fiction can be said to divide into two branches, one
following the trends of the romance, with its typed characters and unreal world; the other
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following realism with its as-if-real characters and depiction of an actual world. The character
was seen as a particular person, not as a type as in the old romance and ancient fables.
In realism, man is contextualized in his physical setting, which is described in detail so
that the story seems to be a transcription of real life. In the other trend, the story has no need
to seem authentic and real. The names, for example, are not ordinary and common for the
time. As an illustration, one may cite the short genre of the beast-fable, an ancient form that
continues into the Middle Ages, as seen in Chaucer‘s ―The Nun‘s Priest‘s Tale‖. In such tales,
where animals stand in for humans, there is a moral point. In Aesop‘s ―The Ant and the
Grasshopper,‖ for example, the ant is industrious, and the grasshopper somewhat of a wastrel.
Characters are not animals or types in modern fiction, although they may be in children‘s
literature or genre fiction, like horror and sci-fi.
In the emergence of the short-short story, one may find both of these tendencies.
Trends may be perceived even if the examples to be analyzed in the next chapter will not suit
perfectly the cluster of features that will be suggested for each sub-genre of the short-short.
Shapard and Thomas have recently attempted to sub-classify the genre and, accordingly, have
made a few distinctions between the two new sub-genres.
Stories of only a page or two seemed to us different not only in length but
in nature; they evoked a single moment, or an idea, whereas a five-page story,
however experimental, was more akin to the traditional short story. Calling on
the Wisdom of Solomon, we split the child (sudden fiction) [short-short story]
into two new children. The longer story became ―new‖ sudden fiction, while
the shorter became flash, named by James Thomas. (Shapard and Thomas,
New Sudden Fiction 15, italics in original)
Granted that, writers and critics have decided that a “new” sudden fiction must be between
one to five pages or 1,000 – 2,000 words and the minimum for a flash fiction is a third of a
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page or 250 words, and its maximum length is 750 words – the same as Hemingway‘s classic
―A Very Short Story.‖
In flash fictions, characters are introduced very informally, without preliminaries, and
they are usually not named. The diction is colloquial (in this aspect, following the Chekhovian
model, although more so, with obscenities, etc.). A good dose of humor, the ascetically short
length, and a de-realization in the perception of current facts, with the fantastic often
presented as commonplace, are the major characteristics of the flash fiction. New sudden
fictions, by contrast are less radical, although also experimental. It could be said the flash
fiction developed from the new sudden fiction, which is itself more akin to the modern short
story, especially the Chekhovian one. In other words, the short-short derives indirectly from,
or is an evolution of the Chekhovian short story. One may think of these features as forming a
cluster, all of which need not occur in every particular example.
As seen in Chapter Two, Chekhov was the first writer to free himself ―from the
literary conventions of the highly plotted and formalized story [which] marked the beginnings
of a new or ‗modern‘ kind of short fiction that combined the specific detail of realism with the
poetic lyricism of romanticism‖ (May, Chekhov 199). The basic characteristics of this modern
kind of short fiction,
this new hybrid form, are: character as mood rather than as either
symbolic projection or realistic depiction; story as minimal lyricized sketch
rather than as elaborately plotted tale; atmosphere as an ambiguous mixture of
both external details and psychic projections; and a basic impressionistic
apprehension of reality itself as a function of perspectival point of view. The
ultimate result of these characteristics is the modernist and postmodernist focus
on reality itself as a fictional construct and the contemporary trend to make
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fictional assumptions and techniques both the subject matter and theme of the
novel and the short story. (May, Chekhov 199)
I would argue that the characteristics that May here delineates are basically the same
as those found in the contemporary short-short. In postmodernist fiction, reality is seen as ―a
fictional construct,‖ a main feature of the short-short. There is also the ―contemporary trend‖
of making the writing itself the theme or subject matter of the short-short. As an illustration,
one may cite Robert Coover‘s flash fiction titled ―A Sudden Story.‖ In this story as in other
examples, rather than presenting itself as if it were real, ―a mimetic mirroring of external
reality – postmodernist fiction makes its own artistic conventions and devices the subject of
the story as well as its theme‖ (May, Chekhov 215). Coover‘s short-short is only 193-word
long and so may be transcribed in full:
Once upon a time, suddenly, while it still could, the story began. For the
hero, setting forth, there was of course nothing sudden about it, neither about
the setting forth, which he‘d spent his entire lifetime anticipating, nor about
any conceivable endings, which seemed, like the horizon, to be always
somewhere else. For the dragon, however, who was stupid, everything was
sudden. He was suddenly hungry and then he was suddenly eating something.
Always, it was like the first time. Then, all of a sudden, he‘d remember having
eaten something like that before: a certain familiar sourness… And, just as
suddenly, he‘d forget. The hero, coming suddenly upon the dragon (he‘d been
trekking for years through enchanted forests, endless deserts, cities carbonized
by dragon-breath, for him suddenly was not exactly the word), found himself
envying, as he drew his sword (a possible ending had just loomed up before
him, as though the horizon had, with the desperate illusion of suddenness,
tipped), the dragon‘s tenseless freedom. Freedom? The dragon might have
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asked, had he not been so stupid, chewing over meanwhile the sudden
familiar sourness (a memory…?) on his breath. From what? (Forgotten.)
[Shapard and Thomas, Sudden Fiction vii]
In this story, which makes no pretense to realism; indeed, it has features of the fairy
tale (The ―once upon a time‖ beginning, the presence of a dragon), and seems to be a
metafictional story, showing how narrative art explains itself. Literary language need not be a
means for something else, a tool used in substitution for something that is missing at the
moment (May, Chekhov 215). The short-short narrative is itself an object of study.
If reality is a fictional construct and the writer wishes to focus on the nature
of reality, then he has little choice but to focus on the nature of art and fiction-
making itself. If reality is a fiction, an artistic construct, then art perhaps
provides the only means to experience reality. (May, Chekhov 208)
Moreover, it is worthwhile mentioning a Danish attempt to classify the new genre
short-short (found in the afterword to an anthology of short prose fiction), wherein the short-
shorts are presented as a generic field because, as the editors aver (Mose 83), ―one of the most
important characteristics of short prose is that it integrates and/or contrasts stylistic features
and linguistic modes from many different literary genres without ever adhering 100 per cent
to one single convention‖ (Brixvold and Jørgensen, qtd. in Mose 83).
In the following table by Brixvold and Jørgensen, the generic field shows an increase
in the fictional elements if read from the bottom up:
tale
fairy tale / fable novelle (Danish novella) / ―short story‖
allegory prose poem
causerie lyrical poem
essay sketch
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report private note
document (Mose 83)
One might assert that the short-short story, especially the flash fiction would be placed
higher even than the tale, with its fictional and metafictional elements.
3.3. No Limits for the Short-Short Story
If the limits and boundaries that settle the borders of this new genre still seem rather
blurred, that is also a characteristic of postmodernism, within which the new genre emerged.
As argued in the previous section, the short-short is a hybrid genre which presents
characteristics from the short story, journalism, and the lyric poem. It is a kind of bricolage,
―a literary piece created from diverse resources,‖ and pastiche, ―a literary piece consisting
wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.‖
1
As seen
before, the only real limits seem to be length.
Hortense Calisher, a short-short story writer, states about the form of short-shorts:
―I‘m not much for limiting statements on the technique or category of anything. All these do
is limit – and sooner or later somebody will come along and defy that, or bypass what
supposedly couldn‘t be‖ (Shapard and Thomas, Sudden Fiction 250). Yet, what Calisher is
considering here is particular prose fiction, because some poetic genres have defined formal
rules as constraints for their forms.
1
The definitions of ―bricolage‖ and ―pastiche‖ are from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved
November 20, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pastiche and
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bricolage
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3.4. Conclusion
This new literary genre has not yet been studied in depth by the academy. Gitte Mose
offers an explanation for this neglect. She states that the emerging genre demands a different
kind of concentration from that of the short story, and also avers that some authors ―have
regarded these texts as hack work, exercise or preliminary studies for work on a larger scale,
using generic designations like ‗drafts,‘ ‗reflections,‘ and ‗experiments,‘ all underlining their
provisional nature‖(82).
It is, however, ―the exploration of what is still unknown that deserves priority‖ (screen
2) as Aldo Nemesio says in his article "The Comparative Method and the Study of
Literature." Surely, as Pasco suggests, ―part of the enjoyment of works which fall on the edge
of or between well established generic boundaries comes from their problematic nature as
genre‖ (117). It is also true, as Jason Sanford says in his essay ―Who Wears Short Shorts?
Micro Stories and MFA Disgust,‖ that
no matter how excellent and mind-blowing a regular-size short-story
might be, it still takes an author several days to write it. In this same time an
author can write any number of mediocre short-shorts… [In fact, this is the
new genre] writers are embracing… Poetic vision rarely shows up. After all,
how can you express vision in 100 words [a good sample of a flash fiction]? …
There is no denying that the short-short can be a powerful form of writing… A
good flash is so condensed that it borderlines poetry. A good flash engages
your mind not only for the short duration of its read, but for a long time after.
(screen 1)
And yet, academic neglect will soon come to an end. The two anthologists, Robert
Shapard and James Thomas, conducted very recent research, recruiting writers, editors, and
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other readers, asking them to rate the best short-shorts they had found so far. The results were
that new suddens, not the flashes, got the most 10s from their readers - new sudden fictions
were everywhere then, even more than flash fictions (Shapard and Thomas, New Sudden
Fiction 16-17). It is perhaps not surprising that the less radical form pleases readers better
than the unconventional form, for the new sudden fiction is more akin to the traditional short-
story than the flash fiction.
Contemporary genres such as the short-short story, which are not steadfast but are in
constant mutation, will never fulfill the prerequisites for a neat classification of generic
identity, except insofar as the cluster of features that I have attempted to identify here. The
contemporary short-short with its whole mélange of stylistic features, open beginnings and
ends, still finds a form of its own even if will always be a hybrid form. We have mentioned its
brevity, open beginnings and ends, hybridism with multifaceted sources of influences, and
finally its evoking of a single moment or single situation, an impressionistic trait, especially
standing out in flash fictions. The short-shorts belong to a generic field where form is never
static but always subject to changes.
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4 Short-Shorts: Some Examples
Modern writers of short stories sometimes wrote stories with a very limited number of
words, but which had what has been called in this thesis a traditional form, i.e. well-
constructed characters and plot, with conflict, climax, and resolution. One might cite
Tennessee Williams‘s ―Tent Worms‖, Bernard Malamud‘s ‖A Lost Grave,‖ and Ernest
Hemingway‘s ―A Very Short Story‖ as examples. These stories have the brief length but not
other features of the contemporary short-shorts discussed in the previous chapter.
In this chapter, I intend to make brief analyses of ten stories, beginning with two
traditional short stories mentioned above by two masters of modern American fiction,
Hemingway and Malamud, followed by eight short-short stories, including three new sudden
fictions, four flash fictions, and one story that seems to hover between the two. For
convenience, I have included a plot summary of each story, followed by commentary (The
complete texts of each story may be found in the Appendix. Note that the page numbers cited
here refer to the collections from which the stories are taken).
1. Ernest Hemingway, ―A Very Short Story‖
Plot Summary – The story takes place in Italy during World War I. A male character
without name, an American in military duty in Italy, and Luz, an American nurse in military
duty as well, live a love story in Padua. He is wounded and Luz takes care of him at the
hospital. He goes back to the front and Luz writes him many letters. After the cease-fire they
decide to get married. They talk it out and he goes back to the States to get a job. Luz would
go later. He goes to America on a ship from Genoa and Luz goes to Pordenone to open a
hospital (127). There she meets a major from the Italian army and makes love to him. It is the
first time she knows an Italian. Luz writes to the American saying she had always loved him
but now she understood their relationship had been a very childish one. She still says that she
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expected to marry the major in the spring. She never receives a reply from Chicago. She does
not get married in the spring, either. Soon after the letter, the American ―contracts gonorrhea
from a salesgirl… while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park‖ (127).
As can be seen in this plot summary, the story is reported in different settings, with
some character development, as well as a well-developed plot, with climax and resolution, in
750 words, or less than two pages, and so one could not therefore call it a flash fiction – a
story that evokes a single moment.
In the first paragraph, the two main characters are introduced, and in the second
paragraph, background information about them is provided. Now we understand that Luz is a
nurse who has taken care of the unnamed American soldier or officer (his rank is not
mentioned), when he was wounded in war and hospitalized in Padua. Their affair is revealed
at this point, as well. In the third paragraph, we are informed about their intention of getting
married. All this background information is necessary for the plot to make sense. The three
first paragraphs form a sort of introduction, with the narrative beginning in paragraph four.
The characters are quickly comprehensible but are individuals, not types. In paragraph four,
the soldier goes back to the front and writes Luz some letters. In paragraph five, a conflict is
introduced – a quarrel between the couple, who say goodbye in Milan. The soldier leaves for
Genoa in order to board a ship to America and she goes back to Pordenone. The final scene of
bathos takes place in America. It is clear to the reader from place names, etc. that most of the
setting is in Italy and the historical context is World War I, from textual cues, such as ―it got
dark and the searchlights came out‖ (126), and the mention of a battalion of Arditi, elite storm
troops quartered in Pordenone, from World War I.
What is the relation of the setting to the action of the story? It is the fact that soldiers
are very lonely, afraid, and insecure, and therefore they need affection and love when abroad
and in a warlike atmosphere. Therefore, if someone shows them affection, there is a strong
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chance that they will immediately fall in love. Soldiers are not selective at this time; and the
outcome of this sort of relationship may not be a long-lasting one. The mood of war is
perceived right away. The setting has an integral connection with the action. As Bausch &
Cassill observe, ―The meaning and emotional impact of [the] story heavily depend[s] on the
working out of the plot‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxi).
It is typical of Hemingway‘s short stories to present ―a seemingly simple external
situation in such a way as to suggest emotional complexities.‖ Hemingway, like Chekhov,
limit radically ―the authorial comment‖ and depend ―on situation, a situation often so limited,
with so much of what we usually expect in narrative left out, that all we have is…
description‖. The present story allows ―the bare situation to express a complex emotional
dilemma‖ (May, Chekhov 204). The action arises ―from the [two] characters depicted in the
story and their relation to each other‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxi). The closure of the story would
be happier if Luz had not made love to the Italian major, and had remained faithful to the
American and married him, her first love. The reader probably expects a happy end rather
than the surprising one offered by the author, but Luz has a conflict with her loneliness, lack
of love and affection, and gives in to an adventurous affair. This second and main conflict
―arises from an opposition between [Luz] and her environment‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxii) –
all her needs and a handsome Italian major from a battalion of Arditi quartered in Pordenone.
The modern reader can be sympathetic to the conflict and its circumstances, although at the
time of the story, Luz might have been seen as immoral. All in all, the suggested theme, love
affairs during wartime, is chiefly accomplished by the outcome of the action: the couple does
not end up together, war love affairs are rarely long-lasting relationships.
2. Bernard Malamud, ―A Lost Grave‖
Plot Summary – Mr. Hecht wakes up one night with the rain dropping on his windows.
He had lost his ex-wife, Celia, many years before and for a long time has not remembered her.
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Now, all of a sudden, the thought of Celia buried in a wet tomb bothers him. Why not go there
and cover her with a plastic sheet? In spite of the fact they had been separated for many years
when she died, he was the one who took care of the funeral and promised to look after the
grave plot once the burial was finished. Hecht goes to the cemetery in search of Celia‘s tomb
but the visit is in vain. He does not have enough information: any exact dates or grave plots.
First, he talks to a young lady who searches for it in a computer but does not succeed; second,
he is introduced to Mr. Goodman, who cannot decipher the mystery, either, but promises to
―institute a careful research‖ (221). Mr. Hecht himself tries to remember something that might
help the investigation. He goes back to the cemetery but cannot recall anything. Another
month goes by and finally the cemetery calls him. Mr. Goodman says that they tracked Celia
and found out that she was buried with a gentleman named Kaplan. She lived the last years of
her life with him after she left Mr. Hecht. After her funeral, Kaplan got a court order and
transferred Celia‘s remains to a different grave. Hecht was very disappointed, but he was
informed he had an empty grave he could use whenever he wanted. Therefore, that was not
the problem. Instead, he was shocked by the story. ―Yet whenever he felt like telling it to
someone he knew, or had just met, he wasn‘t sure he wanted to‖ (223).
Hecht and the deceased Celia, the main characters, are introduced in the first
paragraph through an informal account of a bad night. The author provides little background
information on Hecht and little on Celia, solely when it is necessary. For instance, ―now,
though Hecht had been more or less in business all his life, he kept few personal papers,
…[nevertheless, he could not] establish Celia‘s present whereabouts…‖ (219). Also, on Celia:
―My wife wasn‘t the most stable woman. She left me twice and disappeared for months…
Once she threatened to take her life, though eventually she didn‘t. In the end she died of a
normal sickness, not cancer…‖ (221). Here, a description of Celia‘s personality is provided to
indirectly explain the reason for the separation. The characters are quickly made
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comprehensible, although they are not such familiar types. The initial conflict, first as a
dream, then in actuality, that Hecht cannot locate Celia‘s grave or plot in the cemetery, is used
as a jumping-off place for the action of the whole story.
A Jewish cemetery, Mount Jereboam, is almost entirely the setting of the story and it
has an integral connection with the action. At the resolution point, when a third character, Mr.
Goodman, the director of the cemetery, calls Hecht, he wishes him happy ―Rosh Hashanah,‖
the Jewish New Year. The setting is well indicated but without a detailed description. The
author assumes ―that readers would be familiar with the significant qualities to be found in
this setting‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxi). The action of the plot arises from the initial conflict and
it is resolved when the mystery is cleared up: Celia‘s remains had been transferred from
Hecht‘s grave to Celia‘s last lover‘s tomb. The outcome of the plot is plausible enough and
the ending is not necessarily surprising since Mr. Goodman says that in his twenty-eight years
of work at the cemetery he had never lost a single grave. Celia‘s background has actions that
took place before the narrative had begun. Those actions are decisive to the understanding of
the plot. Celia, after the separation from Hecht, ―lived for a short time with some guy she
[had] met somewhere‖ (221). Hecht‘s insistence on finding Celia‘s grave is necessary to
move the plot along. Hecht‘s insistence contrasts with Mr. Goodman‘s secretary‘s lack of
perseverance. She gives up her search for the lost grave right away and hands the case over to
Mr. Goodman. The secretary is the only passive character in the story, a minor one. The
prevailing point of view is Hecht‘s. The story has astounded him and he does not want to tell
it to anybody. The style and diction are in the mode of traditional short fiction, distinct from
the contemporary short-short. The narrator‘s point of view brings forth a sense of immediacy
and an illusion of reality. May‘s general view of Malamud‘s stories is well expressed in the
following lines:
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Malamud‘s short stories are often [close] to the oral tradition of parable… One
also realizes that his short stories reflect [a] tight symbolic structure and [an]
ironic point of view… Malamud‘s stories move inevitably toward a conclusion
in which complex moral dilemmas are not so much resolved as they are frozen
in a symbolic final epiphany or ironic gesture. His characters are always caught
in what might be called the demand for sympathy and responsibility. But the
moral/aesthetic configuration of his stories is such that the reader is not
permitted the luxury of an easy moral judgment… [After all], the bitter-sweet
conclusion of most of Malamud‘s tales are typical of his Chekhovian refusal to
give in to either sentimentality or condescension. (May, Chekhov 212-13)
One might say that the story makes a general statement about life, and it can be stated
in the form of a proverb: ―Let sleeping dogs lie‖. It is better not to revisit or restart old
conflicts. It seems Hecht and Celia‘s relationship was conflictual: ―he hadn‘t thought of her in
too many years to be comfortable about‖ (219). Perhaps, there is also something positive
about it: Hecht ―had lost a wife but was no longer a widower‖ (223). Also, he ―gained an
empty grave for future use‖ (223).
The following examples are contemporary short-shorts, and the differences from the
previous two stories that have been summarized will hopefully become apparent.
3. Teolinda Gersão, ―The Red Fox Fur Coat‖ (translated from the Portuguese)
Plot summary - A humble bank clerk is strolling around town after work when
suddenly she finds herself before a shop window and a red fox fur coat. The shop was closed
but she comes back next day at lunch-time and tries on the coat. It fits her perfectly; suits her
beautifully. Our main character becomes obstinate concerning the purchase of the item.
However, it cost ―five times more than she could afford‖ (35). Then she decides to spread out
the payment and sacrifice her holidays and part of the money she had saved for a car loan, eat
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less and use less heating. Notwithstanding she would be able to have the coat only after the
third installment would be paid. Meanwhile she dreamed and thought all the time about it.
She stopped by the shop everyday to see it. After a while, as deeper and deeper her wishes
and drives become, she starts to feel and act like an animal, with a much more accurate sense
of smell and hearing and craving desperate for raw meat. As soon as she gets the coat at the
shop, she can hardly get in the car and drive to the nearest forest where she leaps from the car
with her four feet on the ground, waives her tail and shakes her animal body sniffing the air
joyfully and then delving into the depths of the forest.
The main character is introduced in the first line of the story. The author provides no
background information on the unnamed character. We just know that she is ―a humble bank
clerk‖ and therefore cannot afford the expensive fur coat. Further background information on
the main character would in fact be unnecessary in the development of the plot. We are made
aware of the identity conflict in the personality of the main character at the real beginning of
the story when the author hints that after the bank clerk sees the red fox fur coat for the first
time and goes home to sleep, she sleeps very little and awakes ―feeling troubled and slightly
feverish‖ (34). This identity conflict is ―used as a jumping-off place for the present action of
the story‖ and ―the outcome of the plot [is] consistent with the actions that initiated it‖
(Bausch and Cassill xxi). In fact, the woman is so obsessed with the fox fur coat that she ends
up turning into an actual fox, a fantastic ending.
The author‘s idea of a metamorphosis, the main character turning into a fox, suggests a
Kafka story or perhaps the werewolf legend. There are not many details about the setting and
the focus is all on the main character whose personality is not important. Furthermore, there is
no real expansion or development throughout the story but simply ―an impulse toward
concentration‖ – i.e. concentration on the main character. According to May, ―this focusing of
all forces on a single point is the prerequisite for all mythical thinking and mythical
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formulation‖ (May, The Nature 139), the basis for the primal narrative, the germ of the short-
short story.
4. Frederick A. Paola, ―The Wine Doctor‖
Plot Summary – In August 1930, Dottore Controlaò, a conventional doctor is in his
office in Italy when he is taken by surprise by an unexpected visit from Ezio Delli Castelli,
―the wine doctor of Nocera Terinese‖ (137), an oenopath, ―a practitioner of the unique healing
art of oenopathy‖ (137). Ezio Delli Castelli had had an appointment with Dottore Controlaò a
month before and the doctor had requested a chest x-ray due to his complaints of a nagging
cough and coughing up small amounts of blood. We understand while reading that Dottore
Controlaò is not very friendly to his patient at first. He called him Voi, a pronoun Ezio Delli
Castelli disdained and the doctor knew it. Controlaò diagnoses cancer in Castelli‘s throat and
lungs and prescribes morphine. Controlaò pats Castelli‘s shoulder and holds his hands out
before his patient. Now it is Castelli‘s turn to diagnose Controlaò‘s disease: ―Arthritis
deformans,‖ which impresses the conventional doctor. Castelli prescribes white wine from the
Verbicaro region to his new patient. They finally shake hands and thank each other, and
Controlaò calls Castelli Lei - a polite form of ―you‖ better appreciated by the wine doctor.
The action of the plot is closely related to the two characters depicted in the story and
their relation to each other (Bausch and Cassill xxi). Throughout the story, we learn that
before the beginning of the narrative Castelli had had an appointment with Cotrolaò one
month before and the doctor sent his patient to a hospital for a chest x-ray. That is an
important piece of information for the decisive end when Controlaò diagnoses the wine
doctor‘s illness as cancer. The conflict of the story is built on the fact that a wine doctor, an
oenopath, seeks medical treatment from an allopath, which Doctor Controlaò questions,
straightforwardly asking Castelli why he sought help from a conventional doctor instead of an
oenopath. Castelli, the oenopath, seeks treatment from an allopath, and likewise, Cotrolaò, the
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conventional doctor, consults the wine doctor at the end. The outcome of the conflict and the
theme recall the proverb ―The shoemaker's son always goes barefoot.‖ This story, like the
previous one, may be labeled a new sudden fiction. The environment is presented in some
detail and there is careful individual characterization – features that make this story more
seemingly conventional than most short-shorts.
5. Barry Callaghan, ―The Black Queen‖
Plot Summary – Hughes and McCrae, a male couple who have had a long-lasting
relationship, live in a rundown neighborhood at a nice colonial house in which they take
pride. McCrae has his hair longer than the conventional but it is turning grey. He wears Cuban
heels and lacquers his nails. He does all the cooking and drives the car. Hughes is a costume
designer. He has a clipped moustache and a very serious look. Hughes and McCrae have not
been getting along lately. They seem unsettled by how fast they are aging. The pastime they
like the most is stamp collecting. They have a stamp collection worth thousands of dollars.
One afternoon, they go downtown to philatelic shops and stop before the window of one when
they see this ―large and elegant black stamp of Queen Victoria‖ (199), an expensive, rare
stamp. While they are staring at the stamp outside the shop, the fluorescent light catches
McCrae‘s lacquered nails, and Hughes bursts out: ―You old queen, I mean why don‘t you just
quit wearing those goddamn Cuban heels, eh? I mean why not?‖ (199). And then, he walks
away and leaves McCrae embarrassed and hurt. Through the rest of the week, they try not to
quarrel and are polite to each other. Mother‘s Day was approaching, with their annual supper
for friends. They held this meeting for three other male couples every year and it ―often ended
bitter-sweetly [leaving] them feeling close, comforting each other‖ (199).
McCrae spends the whole Sunday preparing the meal. In the evening, when all their
guests are already in the house and McCrae is cutting vegetables in the kitchen, he takes ―a
plastic slipcase out of the knives-and-forks drawer‖ (200) and finds the dead-letter stamp of
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Queen Victoria in the case. He licks the stamp and pastes it on his forehead; takes hold of the
tray and steps into the living room where all their guests are sitting round the coffee table.
Hughes, astounded, yells, ―Oh my God‖ (200) and stares at the black queen.
The two main characters of the story, Hughes and McCrae are introduced in the first
line of the first paragraph and are called ―fastidious men‖ (198). They are introduced along
with the setting, their old colonial house, and the neighborhood where they lived. The narrator
describes Hughes and McCrae‘s house an old colonial one, and the neighborhood where they
lived in a rundown one. At this point, a racist and xenophobic comment is made about the
school located in the area and the foreign children who studied there: ―an area of waste
overrun by rootless olive-skinned children‖ (198). Their house was the ―remnant of good
taste‖ in the area. Now the reader understands the reason why the narrator calls this couple
―fastidious men‖; not only were they excessively delicate people but hard to please and
critical as well.
In the second paragraph, the narrator depicts the couple in details: ―McCrae wore his
hair a little too long now that he was going gray, and while Hughes with his clipped
moustache seemed to be a serious man intent only on his work, which was costume design,
McCrae wore Cuban heels and lacquered his nails‖ (198). In this same paragraph, the narrator
gives the reader a little background information on them. The reader is informed that Hughes
and McCrae had met each other ten years before. This piece of information is necessary since
the third paragraph will deal with a certain intimacy of the couple; although the characters are
not conventional, being a homosexual couple, a minority among marital unions.
The preexisting conflict is presented as early as in the second paragraph. The narrator
informs the reader that Hughes did not approve McCrae‘s Cuban heels and lacquered nails.
About those Hughes warned his partner when they had met ten years before: ―You keep
walking around like that and you‘ll need a body to keep you from getting poked in the eye‖
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(198). This preexisting conflict is used as a jumping-off place for the action of the story, when
the couple will argue before the philatelic shop window when staring at the black stamp of
Queen Victoria (199).
The story‘s plot is subordinate to the preexisting conflict but the meaning and
emotional impact of the story depends on its working out. Who is the black queen? The stamp
on McCrae‘s forehead or McCrae himself? Queen is a slang term for homosexual, especially
a flamboyantly campy one, like McCrae. The thematic statement at the end of the story is
accomplished chiefly by the outcome of the final action, an ironic closure, when McCrae,
accused of being an ―old queen‖ defiantly wears another old queen on his forehead, and the
outcome becomes consistent with the action that initiated it.
Since it is a queer short-short, the narrator/author may be protecting himself by telling
the story in third person. Although queer fiction is a new development in contemporary
literature, hints and suggestions of homosexual relationships may be found in 19
th
century
American literature, as, for example, in Twain‘s Jim and Huck Finn, or Cooper‘s Natty
Bumpo and Chingachook, who by fleeing bourgeois domestic arrangements (respectability
for Huck and slavery for Jim, the woods versus the decadent town for Natty and his Indian
companion) suggest an alternative male life-style.
This super-masculine world of male couples, however, need not be the only queer
alternative. In the nineteenth century American short story writer Bret Hart‘s ―Uncle Jim and
Uncle Billy,‖ for example,
it is shown that men can create a home without women and without all the
appurtenances of bourgeois domestic establishments. Thus, he [Harte] is not
transcending domestic ideology but transforming it and creating an alternative,
same-sex domesticity that problematizes and subverts the essentialism of
Victorian domesticity‘s gender roles and ideals… At the same time, Harte
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shows that a marriage and marital devotion and fidelity are not necessarily
limited to cross-sex couples. (Nissen 188)
In ―The Black Queen,‖ Callaghan likewise portrays a same-sex liaison, Hughes and
McCrae‘s, as steady and as alternative as Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy‘s. Concerning mode, the
sadness, the aging of the couple in Callaghan‘s short-short, the decay of their youthfulness,
counterbalances the ironic closure.
The next four examples are flash fictions.
6. David Galef, ―My Date with Neanderthal Woman‖ (awarded the Mona Schreiber
Prize for Humorous Fiction and Non-Fiction in 2003).
Plot Summary – Glena is a Neanderthal who lives in a cave in the woods. Robert is a Homo
Sapiens who lives in the city, but the story supposedly takes place in modern times. Robert
hires the service of TransWorld Dating Agency to set up a rendezvous with Glena. He is tired
of modern women. The Neanderthal woman has ―a more natural sense of time than those of
us dominated by Rolexes and cell phones‖ (109); ―I‘d grown tired of modern women and
their endless language games‖ (110); ―God, I hate all the introductory explanations of a first
date – which is why I was so happy none of that mattered to Glena‖ (110). The date works out
wonderfully in spite of the unavoidable differences. Robert, character and narrator, intends to
solve them even though they are separated by ―millennia.‖
The narrator, Robert, introduces himself and Glena at the beginning of the story,
supposedly familiar ―types:‖ Glena, the Neanderthal woman and Robert, the modern Homo
Sapiens. The anthropological typing makes the preposterousness of the story – that prehistoric
people live in modern times – an acceptable fiction to the reader. The only background
information is the fact that the date was arranged by TransWorld Dating Agency, obviously
fictional. The sole ―smooth‖ conflict, around which the whole story develops, is the
incompatible differences between the two characters – an opposition between their life-styles
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and environments. These differences are presented from beginning to end and are devices
used by the author ―to heighten the comic effect of the story‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxiii).
When Robert takes Glena out for dinner at ―Chez Asperge, a French-fusion-vegan restaurant,‖
we learn that it is not far from the woods where Glena‘s cave is found.
Again, the relation between the two characters, their radical differences and possible
arising of conflicts are the main action of the plot. The first-person narration adds a sense of
actuality to this flash fiction, despite the use of ―exaggerations‖ and ―distortions of reality;‖
all ―have been used to shape the… story to a particular purpose‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxiii), to
the casual treatment of the unreal premise. The whole story can be summed up in the form of
the saying: ―opposites attract‖ (with a possible allegory on interracial dating). In spite of the
seemingly overwhelming differences, Robert is still attracted to Glena. He finds her sexy and
beautiful, and so the short-short appeals to a romantic sensibility. It stirs up a desire that life
should be different (Bausch and Cassill xxiii).
This short-short may be called a flash fiction because of its minuscule size, 752 words,
approximately two pages, and because it evokes a single moment and a single idea. The
narrative tone is humorous, a feature of many flash fictions. The text resembles an anecdote,
which is one of the sub-classifications of the short-shorts proposed by Stephen Minot in the
―Afterwords‖ of Shapard and Thomas‘s Sudden Fiction (236). The theme of the story recalls
what has been said about the ―the field of research for the short story. [It] is the primitive,
antisocial world of the unconscious, and the material of its analysis are not manners, but
dreams‖ (May, The Nature 133).
7. Raymond Carver, ―Popular Mechanics‖
Plot Summary – It is probably spring because the snow is melting and the weather a
little warmer. Nevertheless, it is darker on the inside of a house. A husband and a wife are in
the midst of an argument while the husband is packing to leave her behind. Meanwhile, the
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husband remembers their baby who was being held by the mother. The husband wants to take
the baby and the wife wants to keep it. Each one of them firmly takes hold of an arm of the
baby and pulls hard. That is how ―the issue was decided‖ (69).
The first description, the setting, is of the weather, the surroundings of the house
where the whole story takes place, and finally the internal atmosphere of the building; which
was as dark as the outside weather. Then, two characters are introduced. The author does not
provide background information for the characters at any point in the story. Even their names
are not provided, but right away we learn that a serious marital quarrel is underway, which is
the sole action of the story. The reader is already made aware of the conflict in the second
paragraph, when the husband is introduced packing his suitcase in the bedroom to leave
home. The wife comes to the door and the quarrel takes over the scene. The setting is
exploited wisely and enhances the mood of the short-short. When the marital argument moves
from the bedroom to the kitchen with a third character in the scene, the baby, the wife stands
behind the stove while the husband leans over to crab the baby and knocks down a flowerpot,
a sense of tightness and compression is felt. ―The kitchen window gave no light,‖ adds the
narrator.
The story‘s atmosphere gets darker and tenser. There is no way out of the strife. It is
near the end of the story and there is no resolution. When the reader approaches the end of the
short-short, a working out of the plot is expected, but it depends on the action of the
preexisting conflict, which does not seem to have an end. The story is seen as a picture of a
moment, an impression of the narrator, and is subordinated to the two main active characters
and their relation to each other; and a third, passive character, the baby, who seems more like
a prop.
The story is very brief, 498 words, less than two pages. Ninety percent of the short-
short is composed of dialogue. The closure would obviously be so interesting if a solution to
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the argument had been found. The end is left to the imagination of the reader. The two active
characters resemble types; they stand in for a familiar domestic scene, a husband-wife
argument and a threat to leave home. The narrator‘s role is limited; if the third-person
narration had been first-person, the short-short would have gained more vraisemblance and
the effect might have been lost. If the story were to be summed up in the form of a maxim, it
might be: ―After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can‘t face
each other.‖ And no one wants to interfere in their quarrel – even the narrator of the story.
The title is not only ironic but darkly comic. The resolution also suggests the Biblical story of
Solomon the judge and the two women arguing over who is the real mother of the baby, with
the prospect of the baby being literally divided in half here becoming horribly real.
May suggests that perhaps Carver is the closest contemporary short story writer to
Chekhov, as both of them created ―an illusion of inner reality by focusing on external details
only… [They found] an event that … expressed properly … by the … [wise] choice of
relevant details … [would] embody the complexity of the inner state‖ (May, Chekhov 202).
8. Don Shea, ―Jumper Down‖
Plot Summary – Henry is a paramedic who works for a university hospital in New
York City with a team that specializes in rescuing ―jumpers‖ – suicides who are about or have
already jumped from buildings, bridges, and other locations. Henry is retiring and this is his
last day of work. The rescuing team of paramedics throws him a party at the hospital when
suddenly a call comes in: ―Jumper up on the Brooklyn Bridge‖ (18). Our narrator is not Henry
but another paramedic. Henry had always been excellent with calls ―jumper up,‖ that is,
someone ready to commit suicide. When the call was ―jumper down,‖ anyone from the team
could go; it did not matter. When the team got this call in the middle of the party, everybody
agreed it was fate since it was Henry‘s last day of work. The jumper was not on the
Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, which is over water, but on the Brooklyn side, over
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land. By the time the rescuing team got there, the police had already spotted some light on the
potential suicide, who looked relaxed. As soon as Henry was about ready to climb up the
bridge and approach the suicide, the latter jumped. His jump the narrator describes as a circus
act: ―Two half gainers and a backflip‖ (18), under the spotlights from the police. The narrator
and Henry run to the man who was still alive. His eyes are open and since hearing is the last
sense to go, Henry whispers in his ear: ―That jump was fucking magnificent! ‖ (19) At first,
the narrator thought the comment improper and insensitive, but after a few days of meditation
on the occasion, he understood that words of admonition would hardly suit the situation since
the suicide had likely been rejected and suffered throughout his life. The narrator finally saw
Henry‘s words as an attempt to bring some comfort, recognition and congratulations to a
human being in his last minutes of life.
The main character, Henry, is introduced in the first line of the story. He is introduced
very informally and colloquially. Also in the first line (condensation), the narrator, a minor
character along with Big John and the suicide, gives some background information on Henry:
a ―jumper up expert – had been for years‖ (17). That is very important because the whole
story will center on a supposed jumper up, who will actually become a jumper down, as the
title suggests. Another important piece of background information is the fact that Henry, a
jumper up specialist, was retiring, and the story takes place on his last day of work, during a
farewell party, which is clear by the fourth paragraph. The characters are made quickly
comprehensible in spite of the fact they are not familiar types, due to the extreme brevity of
the flash fiction.
The setting is the city of New York, at the university hospital and the Brooklyn
Bridge. Something interesting and significant in the setting of the story is the curiosity that the
Brooklyn Bridge has a side that is over land and a side that is over water. We are informed
about that in the middle of the story, in the sixth paragraph. It is an essential piece of
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information since the suicide jumps onto land and therefore dies. The setting is not vividly
represented, nor is there need for detailed descriptions since what the reader needs to know is
provided by it. As New York is known worldwide and a hospital is a place that anyone has
been at least once in life, the author may assume ―that readers would be familiar with the
significant qualities to be found‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxi) at those locations. The bridge scene
enhances and controls the mood of the story. It helps ―to bring out the feelings [and] emotions
experienced by‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxi) Henry and the narrator. The story is vivid in its
first-person narration. And we learn something about the narrator, that he is astonished at
Henry‘s attitude of complimenting the suicide on his ―magnificent‖ dive or jump.
―The meaning and emotional impact of this story heavily depend on the working out
of the plot‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxi). The action of this plot arises from the fact Henry is a
specialist in ―jumper up‖ calls, and on his last day of work the team receives a jumper-up call
which ends up with the jumper down. The outcome of the plot, however, is not consistent
with the initial information – that Henry is a jumper up expert. The jumper is down, but
Henry, perhaps because it is his last case, insists on taking it, so the ending is surprising
because what should naturally be condemned is unexpectedly complimented. What does not
seem plausible at first is revealed as something quite comprehensible. The plot would be
banal and predictable if the suicide had not jumped down but instead had been talked into not
jumping at all. The plot is moved along by the jumper-up call, the interruption of the farewell
party, and the consequent response of Henry to the rescuing mission. Henry is the jumper-up
expert and that is what motivates him.
In flash fictions generally, there is, as in Carver‘s and Galef‘s stories, not enough time
to develop characters, so that the characters are not individualized but are there to make the
plot move forward. For example, Henry is the jumper up expert, the suicide the necessary
suicide, the narrator the necessary commenter on the action. All are active, moving the plot
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forward. There is no character development; Henry only makes an unexpected decision,
which becomes possible because of the unusual circumstances. There is no conflict but a
climax, the singular death of the suicide. The reader might be at first shocked at his words, but
then is given time to take a deep breath and assess the situation, after which the final words
seem weirdly appropriate. The narration is confined to a single point of view in spite of the
fact the narrator changes his opinion regarding Henry‘s words to the suicide. The narrator‘s
point of view is neutral concerning the subject of suicide. He does not utter any value
judgment or moral opinion on the topic.
The story might remind the reader of the maxim ―Look before you leap.‖ The reason
for the remark is because the narrator says that once the suicide was on the ground ―he looked
somewhat surprised by what he had done to himself‖ (19). However, the proverb does not
provide a complete statement of the story. Suicide is a common enough theme in literature,
but the black humor of flash fiction gives it a new twist.
9. H.E. Francis, ―Sitting‖
Plot Summary – One morning, a gentleman finds a couple sitting on the front steps of
his house. Throughout the day, he often looks through the window and sees the couple hardly
moves. Time passes and he wonders whether they eat, sleep, and perform their daily
necessities. The next-door neighbors call to inquire who those people are and what they are
doing there. After a few days, neighbors farther down the street pass by the house, see the
couple, and then call to ask the same questions. The couple remains quiet and motionless.
Suddenly, the owner of the house starts to get calls from all over the city. Now everybody
knows about a couple sitting in front of the gentleman‘s house. At this point, he attempts to
contact the couple, and when they do not respond, he threatens them, saying he will call the
police. They say nothing and look indifferent. The police come and take them away. As the
jails are full, however, they are back in the next morning. The gentleman argues with the
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police, who return and again remove the pair. When the gentleman looks out the next
morning, however, the man and woman are once more sitting on his front steps. Years and
years go by. The gentleman wonders how they do not freeze to death during the long winters,
but in the end it is the gentleman who dies. As he has no relatives, his house goes to the city.
The man and woman still do not move from the front steps of the house. When the city
authorities threaten to remove them, neighbors and other citizens sue the city, arguing that
after sitting there for so many years, the couple has a right to the house. ―The petitioners won‖
(102). The man and woman move into the house. The next morning, there are strangers, men
and women, ―sitting on front steps all over the city‖ (102).
The author introduces the three main characters informally in the first line. The author
provides no background information for the main characters. The story is really brief, a few
more lines than a page, 358 words. This information is unnecessary since the characters are
plot movers more than as-if-real people. However, the characters are quickly comprehensible
because of the clear depiction of the action that smoothly moves along and unravels the comic
plot. None of the characters have names. The single conflict is introduced in the same first
line the three main characters are also introduced. A couple of strangers decide to sit on the
front steps of this man‘s house and never leave that spot. The conflict starts with the
beginning of the story; there is no preexisting conflict. The setting is quite scanty: the outside
of the house and the street where it is situated. We are not informed about the details of this
setting; except the front of the house had steps and the street was long since there were other
neighbors. The setting is merely implied by the way in which events unfold. Therefore, there
is a city that has a post office, a police station, and a court, for there is a mailman, police
officers and the filing of a lawsuit, familiar institutions to be found in a city.
As in all flash-fictions, the plot is the most important thing: ―The meaning and
emotional impact of this story heavily depend on the working out of the plot‖ (Bausch and
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Cassill xxi). The action of the plot arises from the relation, or lack of it, of the couple who sits
on the front steps to the owner of the house. This gentleman is not happy with the presence of
the strangers, and at first, neither are his neighbors, and therefore, the outcome of the plot is
not consistent with the actions that initiated it. There is, as usual, a surprise, because the
gentleman‘s neighbors are also bothered by the presence of the strangers at the beginning of
the story; nevertheless, at the end they file a lawsuit in order for the strangers to take over the
house. Yet, the ending is plausible because there is a reversal, or a change in direction of the
plot line – the owner of the house dies and has no relatives to inherit his assets. If the owner
did not die and the strangers did not take over the house, the story would not be humorous but
more like Melville‘s story ―Bartleby, the Scrivener,‖ where that archetypal squatter, Bartleby,
is hauled away to prison and dies.
Paradoxically, the insistence on the strangers‘ stasis, their refusal to move or even
justify their not moving, moves the plot along. The qualities of the strangers who sit are
perseverance and steadiness. As the proverb suggests, actions speak louder than words or,
here, eloquently, non-action. The other main character, the owner of the house, has an
important quality – curiosity. He wonders about the life story of the strangers, whether they
eat, sleep, etc. These three main characters can be seen as types by their actions. All the three
main characters are active; as well as the police officer and the neighbors, minor characters.
Only the neighbors, taken as a collective group, change and the story‘s meaning depends on
that reversal. The strangers, and perhaps the whole story, may be read as an allegory of the
legal prescription called Usucaption, defined by Webster‘s as ―the acquisition of the title or
right to property by the uninterrupted possession of it for a certain term prescribed by law.‖
The story is conditioned by the time the strangers spend on the steps of the house.
The author has not confined the story to a single point of view, which can be seen by
the point of view of the strangers and as well as the owner‘s. The theme, Usucaption, is
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accomplished chiefly by the outcome of the action – the neighbors file a Prescription lawsuit,
and the strangers acquire the right to property of the house. The legal theme is traditional,
especially in the countries where the Common Law is adopted. Once the rule of precedent is
created, any other supplicant can file a petition utilizing that decision as jurisprudence to
support his / her claim if the case has similar issues or facts.
The last sentence, ―In the morning strange men and women were sitting on front steps
all over the city‖ is the one that gives a strong pinch of humor, a staple of flash fiction. If the
couple of strangers had lost the lawsuit, the story would not be comic. Another maxim might
be relevant here, the Chinese saying ―The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying
away small stones.‖
10. John L‘Heureux, ―The Anatomy of Desire.‖ This last example might be classified
as either new sudden or flash fiction.
Plot Summary - Hanley is a war ex-combatant whose skin has ―been stripped off by
the enemy‖ (117). They spared only his face and genitals. He is at a vets‘ hospital being
looked after by a nurse called the saint. He is alive just because of a new medication – a blood
retardant. All in all, as Hanley wanted to be possessed and loved and was so despised by
everybody, even his family, the saint caresses him and manifests her affection in every way.
Nonetheless, that is not enough for Hanley and then they make love. And yet Hanley is not
satisfied; his thirst and desire for possession is so great, the saint lets him strip off her skin
and then he puts it on, but he is still not fulfilled. He sees ―there can be no possession, there is
only desire‖ (121). This story is intertwined with Hanley‘s stripping off during war. Hanley
had been an infiltrator and had to be punished. The stripping off of Hanley‘s skin was done by
this foreign general who after the war becomes the mayor of his country‘s capital city and
later on runs for senator. After war was over, he feels very guilty and starts to have
nightmares about Hanley. He also fears an investigation of his previous life and career and is
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afraid that would cause damages to his new political life. Scenes of Hanley‘s previous relation
with the general and the general‘s subsequent psychological conflict caused by what he had
done to Hanley are interconnected with scenes from the saint‘s relationship with Hanley.
Some events that happened between Hanley and the general are repeated exactly the same
between the saint and Hanley. The narration is ipsissima verba the same. For instance, the
stripping off of Hanley‘s skin and the stripping off of the saint‘s skin. The strippers were
different. The first one was the general and Hanley the victim. The second one was Hanley
and the saint the victim. Nevertheless, some actions, procedures and manners are repeated
literally. The general kissed Hanley
on the brown and on the cheek and finally on the mouth. He gazed deep and
long into Hanley‘s eyes until he saw his own reflection there looking back. He
traced the lines of Hanley‘s eyebrows, gently, with the tip of his index finger.
―Such a beautiful face‖, he said in his own language. He pressed his palms
lightly against Hanley‘s forehead, against his cheekbones, his jaw. With his
little finger he memorized the shape of Hanley‘s lips… (Shapard and Thomas,
Sudden Fiction 118)
It seems the perversions in both cases were very similar, almost equal. The need to be inside
someone, infiltrate the other, the identification with and the desire to be the other, to be
possessed by him / her, and the idolatry, the wish to ―wear‖ the other. The only difference in
both cases of our story is that homosexual desire and acts are suggested between the general
and Hanley. During the stripping off of Hanley by the general, at the end the narrator says
―afterward he [the general] did some things down below‖ (118). The whole scene suggests
such an intimacy that only sex would fulfill the desires aroused. And as the scene is repeated
twice, it is important to stress that there was sex between the saint and Hanley. ―And so they
[Hanley and the saint] made love…‖ (119).
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This example might be regarded as somewhere between the new sudden fiction and
the flash fiction, as it shares features of both types. This is from the first collection of short-
shorts from the eighties, which ―blurs the lines between fantasy and reality‖ (May, Chekhov
206). Characteristic of postmodernism, it has a ―focus on reality itself as a fictional construct‖
(199). It is a good illustration of the dehumanization and deformation of reality. Regarding
length, five pages, it may be considered a new sudden fiction. We see no humor or comic
scenes in it, but rather a touch of fantastic, surreal, horror, which is often found in flash
fictions.
Two of the three main characters of the story are introduced in what seems to be the
first part of the short-short, since there is a division established by the author by breaks in the
text. Hanley is introduced in the first line and the saint a few lines below. The general, the
third main character, is introduced in the beginning of the second part, which, coincidently, is
the second page as well. All the three main characters are introduced informally, colloquially
– a characteristic of the short-shorts. Characters are constructed according to the mood of the
story and to serve a specific purpose. The narrator provides background information for
Hanley that amounts, basically, to half of the plot of the story – the stripping off of his skin.
Likewise, all we know about the general‘s past is his active role in the stripping off.
Regarding the saint, no background information is provided, which would be redundant
anyway. All those three characters are made quickly comprehensible; the gay general and the
man without a skin are not familiar types, although the saint is. A preexisting conflict, Hanley
living in a vets‘ hospital without skin, is used as a jumping-off place for the unraveling of the
plot. We are made aware of it in the first line of the text. The saint is then introduced as the
closest nurse to Hanley. Solely the strictly necessary information about the setting is
provided. And the objective is to enhance the mood of horror. The camp was surrounded by
barbed wire; the hospital had long corridors that were stained by Hanley‘s bloody steps along
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their floor, for example, which are the only specific details about the setting, but a hospital
and a camp near a battlefield can easily be pictured by the reader. The settings have integral
connections with the actions, which could not take place meaningfully in other settings.
The meaning and emotional impact of this story do not heavily depend on the working
out of the plot, which is subordinate to the mood. The action arises from the relation among
the three main characters. The chain of events is intertwined, but the outcome is not consistent
with the action that initiated it. Hanley wanted to be loved and possessed, and so a happy
ending might be expected. In fact, he is finally loved and possessed, and even gets a new skin.
Nevertheless, he does not end up happy but weeping of sadness. He finds out, ―staring deep
into the green and loving eyes of the saint … that there can be no possession, there is only
desire‖ (121). Yet, the surprise ending is plausible. Hanley‘s desire to be loved and possessed,
his dream of being enveloped by someone else, having a new skin, moves the plot along.
The saint may be considered a type since she is so unconditionally giving her love
away, as would be expected of a saint. Hanley and the general are more complex characters
and might be seen as individuals rather than types. The two men are active characters and the
saint passive within the pattern of the story. The story does not really show growth or change
of character. The main conflict in the story, Hanley‘s skinless body and his search for
possession, arises from his previous war trauma and his relationship with the foreign general.
A minor conflict would be the general‘s nightmares and wounds caused by the stripping off of
Hanley‘s skin. Those two conflicts are ―inherent in the personality of [those two] characters
assembled by the author‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxii). In spite of surrealism of the story, the
feelings the characters experience are quite human and therefore ―contribute to the reader‘s
assessment of the issues of the conflict … [and] the reader‘s sympathies for certain
characters‖ (Bausch and Cassill xxii). It could be said the general is conditioned by the
warfare, Hanley by his war trauma, but the saint is not conditioned by time and place.
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Part of the narration is conveniently told from Hanley‘s point of view and part of it
from the general‘s. When the narration is subordinated to the general‘s point of view, and the
narrator describes the preliminaries of the stripping off of Hanley‘s skin, the general‘s
possible homosexuality is omitted. The narration is in the third person, for the story is so
surreal that a first-person narration would not suit the context, for the narrator could not be
reliable. In spite of the fantastic and derealized story, the reader still gets involved in the
narration due to the informal style and diction, which reinforce the emotional impact of the
story and makes it very easy to focus on.
One might sum up the theme of the story in a general statement or maxim such as ―Do
not trust your feelings,‖ and not only feelings, but especially drives, impulses, and desires. A
possible appeal to rationalism could be posited regarding Hanley‘s point of view at least. The
saint seems to be happy and satisfied even having lost her skin. Hanley is the one who does
not end up happy and satisfied.
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5 Conclusion
Short fiction has been in a steadfast development since the primordium of literature.
Nothing comes from void. A genre has always operated as the germ for the newcomer, the
new genre. In my review of the development of short fiction from the nineteenth century in
the second chapter, I attempted to show both continuities and breaks. For the present purpose,
the description of a new genre that has emerged only in recent decades, I attempted to show
how modernism, mainly through the fiction of Anton Chekhov, brought new trends and
techniques to short fiction. His unique style, breaking the rules of the well-made story by
dismantling the highly-plotted stories and the traditional form, influenced a variety of modern
and postmodern short fiction writers. I would suggest therefore that Chekhov has not only
fathered the modern short story but likewise, indirectly, the postmodern or contemporary
short-short story. Many writers whom Chekhov influenced would become short-short authors,
Raymond Carver and Robert Coover, for example.
Among the innovations that characterize the short-short story are those features that
characterize postmodern fiction in general: the focus on reality as a fictional construct,
character as mood; a form minimally developed; atmosphere with a mixture of a familiar
setting with strange psychic projections. Overall, the short-short story is deliberately
unconventional, eccentric, and formally experimental. It is always condensed, making use of
colloquial language. The characters are not well-developed within the confines of space but
are used as tools to move the plot along. The descriptions of the setting are limited to the
strictly necessary. Often, as seen in my examples, the outcome suggests a parable or may be
summed up in a maxim or familiar saying, which, however, does not really serve as a ―moral‖
in the traditional sense but may be ironic. The short-short is a hybrid form, bordering on chaos
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but in the end achieving a kind of balance. Black humor is a tone and effect often achieved in
the short-short, especially in the flash fictions.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the time during which the short-short story
arose, scholars and writers searched for a sole name and common traits for the emerging
genre. Among the short-shorts analyzed there were modern and postmodern examples. As I
attempted in my analyses in Chapter 4, the stories of Malamud and Hemingway are of similar
length but qualitatively different from the contemporary examples that followed.
Now, very recently, in 2007, the two major critics and anthologists of the short-short
story, Shapard and Thomas decided on labels for two kinds, new sudden fiction and flash
fiction, which in this thesis were regarded as sub-genres and their respective descriptions
provided in the examples. That this sub-classification need not be considered a rigid one in its
turn, the last story was seen as the hybrid of a hybrid.
Basically, stories of 1/3 of a page to 750 words or two pages are different not only
because of their brevity and lack of space to fully develop a plot and characterization, but
seem to evoke a single idea or moment, have a reversal, usually comic, in which the initial
circumstances of the plot are reversed at the end and as a result are called flash fictions.
Meanwhile, stories of one to five pages or 1,000 to 2,000 words, also experimental, which,
however, share features more akin to the traditional short story, are called new sudden
fictions.
This study has attempted an overall description and taxonomy of the new and
emerging genre in prose fiction by summarizing and citing critical positions, organizing ideas,
and suggesting connections. Further research on the short-short story might focus on how
generic boundaries tend to blur as new examples of each form emerge. It has been frequently
hypothesized, for example, that every genre has a trajectory in which a form develops as a
deviation from an earlier one, reaches its peak of quality, and then is so repeated that it
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becomes overused and begets its successor. One might expect that the short-short will develop
further ―wrinkles,‖ new subjects, new modes of narration from the most current tendency, the
flash fiction.
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6 Works Cited
Bausch, R., and Cassill, R. V. ―Writing about Fiction.‖ The Norton Anthology of Short
Fiction. Ed. Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill. New York and London: W. W. Norton
& Company, 2006. xvi-xxiii.
Callaghan, Barry. ―The Black Queen.‖ Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. Ed.
Robert Shapard and James Thomas. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986. 198-
200.
Carver, Raymond. ―Popular Mechanics.‖ Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. Ed.
Robert Shapard and James Thomas. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986. 68-
69.
Chekhov, Anton. ―The Short Story.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May.
Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 195-198.
Coover, Robert. ―A Sudden Story.‖ Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. Ed. Robert
Shapard and James Thomas. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986. vii.
Éjxenbaum, B.M. ―O. Henry and the Theory of the Short Story.‖ Trans. I. R. Titunik. The
New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 81-88.
Francis, H. E. ―Sitting.‖ Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. Ed. Robert Shapard
and James Thomas. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986. 101-102.
Galef, David. ―My Date with Neanderthal Woman.‖ Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short
Stories. Ed. Robert Shapard and James Thomas. New York and London: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2006. 109-111.
Gersão, Teolinda. ―The Red Fox Fur Coat.‖ Trans. Margaret Jull Costa. New Sudden Fiction:
Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond. Ed. Robert Shapard and James
Thomas. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 34-39.
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Good, Graham. ―Notes on the Novella.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May.
Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 147-164.
Harris, Wendell V. ―Vision and Form: The English Novel and the Emergence of the Short
Story.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994.
182-191.
Hemingway, Ernest. ―A Very Short Story.‖ Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories.
Ed. Robert Shapard and James Thomas. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986.
126-127.
L‘Heureux, John. ―The Anatomy of Desire.‖ Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories.
Ed. Robert Shapard and James Thomas. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986.
117-121.
Malamud, Bernard. ―A Lost Grave.‖ Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. Ed.
Robert Shapard and James Thomas. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986. 219-
223.
Marler, Robert F. ―From Tale to Short Story: The Emergence of a New Genre in the 1850‘s.‖
The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 165-181.
Matthews, Brander. ―The Philosophy of the Short-Story.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed.
Charles May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 73-80.
May, Charles E. ―The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction.‖ The New Short Story Theories.
Ed. Charles May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 131-143.
---. ―Chekhov and the Modern Short Story.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May.
Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 199-217.
---. The Short Story: The Reality of Artifice. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.
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Mose, Gitte. ―Danish Short Shorts in the 1990s and the Jena-Romantic Fragments.‖ The Art
of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis. Ed. Per Winther, Jakob
Lothe, and Hans H. Skei. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2004. 81-95.
Nemesio, Aldo. "The Comparative Method and the Study of Literature." West Lafayette:
Purdue UP, 1999. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1.1. Available at:
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol1/iss1/1 Accessed on 25 November 2008.
Nissen, Axel. ―The Queer Short Story.‖ The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction
Theory and Analysis. Ed. Per Winther, Jakob Lothe, and Hans H. Skei. Columbia: U
of South Carolina P, 2004. 181-190.
Paola, Frederick A. ―The Wine Doctor.‖ New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from
America and Beyond. Ed. Robert Shapard and James Thomas. New York and London:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 137-141.
Pasco, Allan H. ―On Defining Short Stories.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles
May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 114-130.
Penn, W.S. ―The Tale as Genre in Short Fiction.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles
May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 44-55.
Poe, Edgar Allan. ―Poe on Short Fiction.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May.
Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 59-72.
Pratt, Mary Louise. ―The Short Story: The Long and the Short of It.‖ The New Short Story
Theories. Ed. Charles May. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994. 91-113.
Sanford, Jason. ―Who Wears Short Shorts? Micro Stories and MFA Disgust.‖ storySouth: a
journal of literature from the New South. Minneapolis, 2004. Available at:
<http:www.storysouth.com/fall2004/shortshorts.html> Accessed on 20 September
2007.
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Shapard, R., and Thomas, J. Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories. Salt Lake City:
Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1986.
---. New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond. New York and
London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.
---. Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories. New York and London: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2006.
Shea, Don. ―Jumper Down.‖ Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories. Ed. Robert
Shapard and James Thomas. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
17-19.
Stierle, Karl-Heinz. ―Story as Exemplum – Exemplum as Story: On the Pragmatics and
Poetics of Narrative Texts.‖ The New Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles May. Athens:
Ohio UP, 1994. 15-43.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1984.
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7 Appendix
7.1. “A Very Short Story” by Ernest Hemingway
One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over
the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the
searchlights came out. The others went down and took the bottles with them. He and Luz
could hear them below on the balcony. Luz sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot
night.
Luz stayed on night duty for three months. They were glad to let her. When they
operated on him she prepared him for the operating table; and they had a joke about friend or
enema. He went under the anesthetic holding tight on to himself so he would not blab about
anything during the silly, talky time. After he got on crutches he used to take the temperatures
so Luz would not have to get up from the bed. There were only a few patients, and they all
knew about it. They all liked Luz. As he walked back along the halls he thought of Luz in his
bed.
Before he went back to the front they went into the Duomo and prayed. It was dim and
quiet, and there were other people praying. They wanted to get married, but there was not
enough time for the banns, and neither of them had birth certificates. They felt as though they
were married, but they wanted everyone to know about it, and to make it so they could not
lose it.
Luz wrote him many letters that he never got until after the armistice. Fifteen came in
a bunch to the front and he sorted them by the dates and read them all straight through. They
were all about the hospital, and how much she loved him, and how it was impossible to get
along without him, and how terrible it was missing him at night.
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After the armistice they agreed he should go home to get a job so they might be
married. Luz would not come home until he had a good job and could come to New York to
meet her. It was understood he would not drink, and he did not want to see his friends or
anyone in the States. Only to get a job and be married. On the train from Padua to Milan they
quarreled about her not being willing to come home at once. When they had to say goodbye,
in the station at Milan, they kissed goodbye, but were not finished with the quarrel. He felt
sick about saying goodbye like that.
He went to America on a boat from Genoa. Luz went back to Pordenone to open a
hospital. It was lonely and rainy there, and there was a battalion of arditi quartered in the
town. Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter, the major of the battalion made love to
Luz, and she had never known Italians before, and finally wrote to the States that theirs had
been only a boy and girl affair. She was sorry, and she knew he would probably not be able to
understand, but might someday forgive her, and be grateful to her, and she expected,
absolutely unexpectedly, to be married in the spring. She loved him as always, but she
realized now it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great career and
believed in him absolutely. She knew it was for the best.
The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer
to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a salesgirl in
a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.
7.2. “A Lost Grave” by Bernard Malamud
Hecht was a born late bloomer.
One night he woke hearing rain on his window and thought of his young wife in her
wet grave. This was something new, because he hadn‘t thought of her in too many years to be
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comfortable about. He saw her in her uncovered grave, rivulets of water streaming in every
direction, and Celia, whom he had married when they were of unequal ages, lying alone in the
deepening wet. Not so much as a flower grew on her grave, though he could have sworn he
had arranged perpetual care.
He stepped into his thoughts perhaps to cover her with a plastic sheet, and though he
searched in the cemetery under dripping trees and among many wet plots, he was unable to
locate her. The dream he was into offered no tombstone name, row, or plot number, and
though he searched for hours, he had nothing to show for it but his wet self. The grave had
taken off. How can you cover a woman who isn‘t where she is supposed to be? That‘s Celia.
The next morning, Hecht eventually got himself out of bed and into a subway train to
Jamaica to see where she was buried. He hadn‘t been to the cemetery in many years, no
particular surprise to anybody considering past circumstances. Life with Celia wasn‘t exactly
predictable. Yet things change in a lifetime, or seem to. Hecht had lately been remembering
his life more vividly, for whatever reason. After you hit sixty-five, some things that have two
distinguishable sides seem to pick up another that complicates the picture as you look or
count. Hecht counted.
Now, though Hecht had been more or less in business all his life, he kept few personal
papers, and though he had riffled through a small pile of them that morning, he had found
nothing to help him establish Celia‘s present whereabouts; and after a random looking at
gravestones for an hour he felt the need to call it off and spent another hour with a young
secretary in the main office, who fruitlessly tapped his name and Celia‘s into a computer and
came up with a scramble of internet dates, grave plots and counter plots, that exasperated him.
―Look, my dear,‖ Hecht said to the flustered young secretary, ―if that‘s how far you
can go on this machine, we have to find another way to go further, or I will run out of
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patience. This grave is lost territory as far as I am concerned, and we have to do something
practical to find it.‖
―What do you think I‘m doing, if I might ask?‖
―Whatever you are doing doesn‘t seem to be much help. This computer is supposed to
have a good mechanical memory, but it‘s either out of order or rusty in its parts. I admit I
didn‘t bring any papers with me but so far the only thing your computer has informed us is
that it has nothing much to inform us.‖
―It has informed us it is having trouble locating the information you want.‖
―Which adds up to zero minus zero,‖ Hecht said. ―I wish to remind you that a lost
grave isn‘t a missing wedding ring we are talking about. It is a lost cemetery plot of the lady
who was once my wife that I wish to recover.‖
The pretty young woman he was dealing with had a tight-lipped conversation with an
unknown person, then the buzzer on her desk sounded, and Hecht was given permission to go
into the director‘s office.
―Mr. Goodman will now see you.‖
He resisted ―Good for Mr. Goodman.‖ Hecht nodded only and followed the young
woman to an inner office. She knocked once and disappeared, as a friendly voice talked
through the door.
―Come in, come in.‖
―Why should I worry if it‘s not my fault?‖ Hecht told himself.
Mr. Goodman pointed to a chair in front of his desk and Hecht was soon seated,
watching him pour orange juice from a quart container into a small green glass.
―Will you join me in a sweet mouthful?‖ he asked, nodding at the container. ―I usually
take refreshment this time of the morning. It keeps me balanced.‖
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―Thanks,‖ said Hecht, meaning he had more serious problems. ―Why I am here is that
I am looking for my wife‘s grave, so far with no success.‖ He cleared his throat, surprised at
the emotion that had gathered there.
Mr. Goodman observed Hecht with interest.
―Your outside secretary couldn‘t find it,‖ Hecht went on, regretting he hadn‘t found
the necessary documents that would identify the grave site. ―Your young lady tried her
computer in every combination but couldn‘t produce anything. What was lost is still lost, in
other words, a woman‘s grave.‖
―Lost is premature,‖ Goodman offered. ―Displaced might be better. In my twenty-
eight years in my present capacity, I don‘t believe we have lost a single grave.‖
The director tapped lightly on the keys of his desk computer, studied the screen with a
squint, and shrugged. ―I am afraid that we now draw a blank. The letter H volume of our
ledgers that we used before we were computerized seems to be missing. I assure you this
can‘t be more than a temporary condition.‖
―That‘s what your young lady already informed me.‖
―She‘s not my young lady, she‘s my secretarial assistant.‖
―I stand corrected,‖ Hecht said. ―This meant no offense.‖
―Likewise,‖ said Goodman. ―But we will go on looking. Could you kindly tell me, if
you don‘t mind, what was the status of your relationship to your wife at the time of her
death?‖ He peered over half-moon glasses to check the computer reading.
―There was no status. We were separated. What has that got to do with her burial
plot?‖
―The reason I inquire is, I thought it might refresh your memory. For example, is this
the correct cemetery, the one you are looking in – Mount Jereboam? Some people confuse us
with Mount Hebron.‖
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―I guarantee you it was Mount Jereboam.‖
Hecht, after a hesitant moment, gave these facts: ―My wife wasn‘t the most stable
woman. She left me twice and disappeared for months. Although I took her back twice, we
weren‘t together at the time of her death. Once she threatened to take her life, though
eventually she didn‘t. In the end she died of a normal sickness, not cancer. This was years
later, when we weren‘t living together anymore, but I carried out her burial, to the best of my
knowledge, in this exact cemetery. I also heard she had lived for a short time with some guy
she met somewhere, but when she died, I was the one who buried her. Now I am sixty-five,
and lately I have had this urge to visit the grave of someone who lived with me when I was a
young man. This is a grave that everybody now tells me they can‘t locate.‖
Goodman rose at his desk, a short man, five feet tall. ―I will institute a careful
research.‖
―The quicker, the better,‖ Hecht replied. ―I am still curious what happened to her
grave.‖
Goodman almost guffawed, but caught himself and thrust out his hand. ―I will keep
you well informed, don‘t worry.‖
Hecht left irritated. On the train back to the city he thought of Celia and her various
unhappinesses. He wished he had told Goodman she had spoiled his life.
That night it rained. To his surprise he found a wet spot on his pillow.
The next day Hecht again went to the graveyard. ―What did I forget that I ought to
remember?‖ he asked himself. Obviously the grave plot, row, and number. Though he sought
it diligently he could not find it. Who can remember something he has once and for all put out
of his mind? It‘s like trying to grow beans out of a bag of birdseed.
―But I must be patient and I will find out. As time goes by I am bound to recall. When
my memory says yes, I won‘t argue no.‖
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But weeks passed and Hecht still could not remember what he was trying to. ―Maybe I
have reached a dead end?‖
Another month went by and at last the cemetery called him. It was Mr. Goodman
clearing his throat. Hecht pictured him at his desk sipping orange juice.
―Mr. Hecht?‖
―The same.‖
―This is Mr. Goodman. A happy Rosh-ha-shonah.‖
―A happy Rosh-ha-shonah to you.‖
―Mr. Hecht, I wish to report progress. Are you prepared for an insight?‖
―You name it,‖ Hecht said.
―So let me use a better word. We have tracked your wife, and it turns out she isn‘t in
the grave there where the computer couldn‘t find her. To be frank, we found her in a grave
with another gentleman.‖
―What kind of gentleman? Who in God‘s name is he? I am her legal husband.‖
―This one, if you will pardon me, is the man who lived with your wife after she left
you. They lived together on and off, so don‘t blame yourself too much. After she died he got a
court order, and they removed her to a different grave, where we also laid him after his death.
The judge gave him the court order because he convinced him that he had loved her for many
years.‖
Hecht was embarrassed. ―What are you talking about? How could he transfer her
grave anywhere if it wasn‘t his legal property? Her grave belonged to me. I paid cash for it.‖
―That grave is still there,‖ Goodman explained, ―but the names were mixed up. His
name was Kaplan but the workmen buried her under Caplan. Your grave is still in the
cemetery, though we had it under Kaplan and not Hecht. I apologize to you for this
inconvenience but I think we now have got the mystery cleared up.‖
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―So thanks,‖ said Hecht. He felt he had lost a wife but was no longer a widower.
―Also,‖ Goodman reminded him, ―don‘t forget you gained an empty grave for future
use. Nobody is there and you own the plot.‖
Hecht said that was obviously true.
The story had astounded him. Yet whenever he felt like telling it to someone he knew,
or had just met, he wasn‘t sure he wanted to.
7.3. “The Red Fox Fur Coat” by Teolinda Gersão
On her way home one day, a humble bank clerk happened to see a red fox fur coat in a
furrier‘s shop window. She stopped outside and felt a shiver of pleasure and desire run
through her. For this was the coat she had always wanted. There wasn‘t another one like it,
she thought, running her eyes over the other coats hanging from the metal rack or delicately
draped over a brocade sofa. It was rare, unique; she had never seen such a color, golden, with
a coppery sheen, and so bright it looked as if it were on fire. The shop was closed at the time,
as she discovered when, giving in to the impulse to enter, she pushed at the door. She would
come back tomorrow, as early as possible, on her lunch break, or during the morning; yes, she
would find a pretext to slip out during the morning. That night she slept little and awoke
feeling troubled and slightly feverish. She counted the minutes until the shop would open; her
eyes wandered from the clock on the wall to her wristwatch and back, while she dealt with
various customers. As soon as she could, she found an excuse to pop out and run to the shop,
trembling to think that the coat might have been sold. It had not, she learned, been sold; she
felt her breath return, her heartbeat ease, felt the blood drain from her face and resume its
measured flow.
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―It could have been made for you,‖ said the saleswoman when the bank clerk put the
coat on and looked at herself in the mirror. ―It fits perfectly on the shoulders and at the waist,
and the length is just right,‖ she said, ―and it really suits your skin tone. Not that I‘m trying to
pressure you into buying it,‖ she added hurriedly, ―obviously you‘re free to choose anything
you like, but if you don‘t mind my saying so, the coat really does look as if it had been made
for you. Just for you,‖ she said again, with the hint of a smile.
―How much is it?‖ the bank clerk asked, half turning round – thus setting the hem of
the coat swinging – because she found it hard to take her eyes off her own image in the
mirror.
She recoiled, stunned, when she heard the reply. It cost far more than she had thought,
five times more than she could possibly afford.
―But we can spread out the payment if you like,‖ said the saleswoman kindly.
She could always sacrifice her holidays, the bank clerk thought. Or divert some of the
money intended for a car loan. She could use less heating, eat smaller meals. It would do her
good, really, because she was beginning to put on a bit of weight.
―All right,‖ she said, doing rapid calculations in her head. ―I‘ll give you a deposit and
start paying next week. But it‘s definitely mine now, isn‘t it?‖
―Absolutely,‖ said the saleswoman, attaching a ―Sold‖ label to the coat. ―You can take
it away with you when you‘ve paid the third installment.‖
She started visiting the shop at night, when it was closed and no one would see her, in
order to gaze at the coat through the window, and each time it brought her more joy, each
time it was brighter, more fiery, like red flames that did not burn, but were soft on her body,
like a thick, ample, enfolding skin that moved when she moved…
It would be admired, as would she, people would turn to stare after her, but it was not
this that provoked a secret smile; rather, she realized, it was an inner satisfaction, an obscure
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certainty, a sense of being in harmony with herself, that spilled over in all kinds of small
ways. It was as if the rhythm of her breathing had changed, had grown calmer and deeper. She
realized too, perhaps because she no longer felt tired, that she moved more quickly, that she
could walk effortlessly now, at twice her usual speed. Her legs were agile, her feet nimble.
Everything about her was lighter, quicker; her back, shoulders, and limbs all moved more
easily.
It must be all the keep-fit I‘ve been doing, she thought, because for some reason she
had started taking regular exercise. For a few months now she had been spending two hours a
week running at the track. But what she liked most was to go running in the forest, on the
outskirts of the city, feeling the sand crunch beneath her feet, learning to place her feet on the
ground in a different way – in direct, perfect, intimate contact with the earth. She was
intensely aware of her body; she was more alive now, more alert. All her senses were keener
too, she could hear, even from some distance away, infinitesimal sounds which, before, would
have gone unnoticed: a lizard scurrying through the leaves, an invisible mouse making a twig
crack, an acorn falling, a bird landing on a bush; she could sense atmospheric changes long
before they happened: the wind turning, a rise in humidity, an increase in air pressure that
would culminate in rain. And another aspect of all the things to which she had now become
sensitized was the discovery of smells, a whole world of smells; she could find paths and
trails purely by smell; it was strange how she had never before noticed that everything has a
smell: the earth, the bark of trees, plants, leaves, and that every animal can be distinguished
by its own peculiar smell, a whole spectrum of smells that came to her on waves through the
air, and which she could draw together or separate out, sniffing the wind, imperceptibly lifting
her head. She suddenly became very interested in animals and found herself leafing through
encyclopedias, looking at the pictures – the hedgehog‘s pale, soft, tender underbelly; the swift
hare, of uncertain hue, leaping; she pored over the bodies of birds, fascinated, pondering the
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softness of the flesh behind their feathers; and a single word kept bobbing insistently about in
her mind: predator.
She seemed to be hungrier too, she thought, as she put away her books and went into
the kitchen, and this negative aspect to all the physical exercise displeased her greatly. She
tried to find a way to avoid putting on weight and prowled, dissatisfied, past patisseries, never
finding what she was looking for, because the smell of coffee was repellent to her and made
her feel nauseous. No, she was hungry for other things, although she didn‘t quite know what,
fruit perhaps; this might be an opportunity to lose a little weight. She bought a vast quantity of
grapes and apples and ate them all in one day, but still she felt hungry, a hidden hunger that
gnawed at her from inside and never stopped.
She was cheered by an unexpected invitation to a party, welcoming any diversion that
would make her forget that absurd hunger. She reveled in getting dressed up and in painting
her lips and nails scarlet. Her nails, she noticed, were very long, and even her hands seemed
more sensitive, more elongated. Anyone she touched at the party that night would remain
eternally in her power, she thought, smiling at herself in the mirror – a feline smile, it seemed
to her. She narrowed her eyes and widened the smile, letting it spread over her face, which
took on a pleasingly triangular shape that she further emphasized with make-up.
In the middle of the party, she noticed someone slicing up some meat, cooked very
rare – roast beef, she thought, although these words had suddenly ceased to have any
meaning. She reached out her hand and devoured a whole slice. Ah, she thought, the taste of
almost raw meat, the action of sinking her teeth into it, of making the blood spurt, the taste of
blood on her tongue, in her mouth, the innocence of devouring the whole slice, and she took
another slice, already sensing that using her hand was now a pointless waste of time, that she
should just pick it up directly with her mouth.
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She burst out laughing and began to dance, waving her bloodstained hands in the air,
feeling her own blood rise, as if some tempestuous inner force had been unleashed, a malign
force that she could transmit to others, a plague or a curse, but this idea was nevertheless
sweet, quiet, almost joyful, she felt, as she swayed, slightly drunk, listening to the echo of her
own laughter.
She would spend the night obeying all these newly released forces and, in the
morning, she would go and fetch the coat, because the day had come when it would be hers; it
was part of her; she would know it even with her eyes closed, by touch alone, the soft, thick
pelt burning her skin, cleaving to her, until she could no longer tell skin from skin…
―It could have been made for you,‖ the saleswoman said again, as she removed it from
the coat hanger.
The coat cleaving to her, until she could no longer tell skin from skin, as she could see
in the mirror, as she turned the collar up around her head, her face disfigured, suddenly
thinner, made up to look longer, her eyes narrow, restless, burning… ―Goodbye, then, and
thanks,‖ she said, rushing out of the shop, afraid that time was getting short and that people
would stop in alarm to stare at her, because suddenly the impulse to go down on all fours and
simply run was too strong, reincarnating her body, rediscovering her animal body; and as she
fled, as she left the city behind her and simply fled, it took an almost superhuman effort to get
into her car and drive to the edge of the forest, keeping tight control of her body, keeping tight
control of her tremulous body for just one more minute, before that slam of the door, that first
genuine leap on feet free at last, shaking her back and her tail, sniffing the air, the ground, the
wind, and, with a howl of pleasure and joy, plunging off into the depths of the forest.
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7.4. “The Wine Doctor” by Frederick Adolf Paola
It was a late afternoon in August in the year of our Lord 1930, in year VIII of the Era
Fascista. Dottore Cotrolaò, just back in his second-floor office after a meal of morzeddu
washed down with an exceptional local wine from the Savuto Valley, did a double take when
he saw who had entered his office as his first patient of the evening.
It was Ezio Delli Castelli, the wine doctor of Nocera Terinese. A chemist who had
made his living chiefly as an oenologist, a specialist in wine making, he was also a part-time
oenopath, a practitioner of the unique healing art of oenopathy. Patients came to him with
ailments of various sorts, and he prescribed a course of treatment with this particular wine or
that. The wines he recommended depended, of course, upon the patient‘s diagnosis – and
circumstances. While he closely guarded his therapeutic secrets, it was thought that his
prescriptions took into account the types of grapes that went into the wine; the composition of
the soil from which the grapes had been harvested; how long they had been allowed to
ferment before racking; and even the condition of the barrels in which the wine was stored.
Ezio Delli Castelli was well-versed in Italian wines in general, and had a working
knowledge of imported wines as well. Most of his patients, however, were limited for
financial reasons to wines produced locally, by the likes of Carmine Mauri, Vittorio Ventura,
Leopoldo Rossi, Nicola Mancini, Carmine Nicoli, and Annunziato Palarchio, using Calabrian
grape varieties such as Aglianico, Gaglioppo, Guarnaccia, Pecorello, Nerello, Sangiovese,
Magliocco, Nocera, Trebbiano Toscano, Zibibbo, Greco, Malvasia, and Mantonico. Ezio
Delli Castelli did not charge for his oenopathic services, and most patients were quite satisfied
with the treatment they received from him, as well as with the results they experienced.
Dottore Cotrolaò knew that many of the townspeople had sought the advice of Ezio
Delli Castelli for health problems, either instead of or in addition to more conventional
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medicine. He supposed it might have something to do with the fact that in those days there
were eighteen bettole or cantinas in Nocera Terinese and only one pharmacy. The patients,
not wanting to offend Dottore Cotrolaò, didn‘t mention it to him; nor would Dottore Cotrolaò
deign to broach the subject, other than in the form of an occasional sarcastic remark to a
patient he had not seen in a while, such as, ―Eh, Don Francesco, long time no see. Had any
good wine lately?‖
―Buona sera, Don Delli Castelli.‖ While Cotrolaò had heard Ezio Delli Castelli‘s
clients refer to him as dottore, damned if he was going to address him by that honorific title.
―Che posso fare per Voi?‖ he asked. ―What can I do for you?‖ He had used Voi (the polite
form of ―you‖ favored by Mussolini) rather than Lei (the equally polite form of ―you‖
discouraged by Mussolini as Iberian) because Cotrolaò knew Ezio Delli Castelli disdained the
use of Voi, though he wasn‘t sure whether this aversion was grounded in politics or
linguistics.
Ezio Delli Castelli, a slight man dressed in a worn but freshly pressed brown three-
piece suit, looked perplexed and somewhat embarrassed. Fumbling with the hat on his lap, he
looked at the taller, heavier man seated behind the dark wood desk before him.
―Dottore, i raggi,‖ he said. ―The x-rays.‖
―Of course,‖ Dottore Cotrolaò answered, slapping himself on the forehead. Now he
remembered. How had he forgotten? Ezio Delli Castelli had visited him about a month before
with a nagging cough and had reported coughing up small amounts of blood. Dottore
Cotrolaò had sent him to the hospital in Catanzaro for a chest x-ray. Searching for the film in
the pile on his desk, Dottore Cotrolaò studied Ezio Delli Castelli surreptitiously. Today he
was noticeably thinner and appeared mildly dyspneic.
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Locating the envelope in a pile of mail that had been delivered only the day before,
Dottore Cotrolaò opened it and held the film up to the light. It showed an extensive
mediastinal mass involving the bifurcation of the trachea. Erosions were evident in the ribs.
There was silence in the room, and the two men were unaware of the sounds of life
from the world in the street below. The only connection between the two worlds was the
aroma of espresso wafting up from the bars down the street.
When Dottore Cotrolaò spoke, it was not without some irritation in his voice. ―Don
Ezio, tell me something. You practice your healing craft, your…‖
―Oenopathy.‖
―… oenopathy. Then you get sick and you come to me. Why?‖ Even as he asked his
question, compelled as he was by frustration and curiosity, Dottore Cotrolaò regretted both
the tone of his voice and his inability to control his own tongue.
Ezio Delli Castelli smiled. ―Dottore, I don‘t know any other oenopaths, and it would
be improper and certainly foolish of me to treat myself.‖
Ezio Delli Castelli continued, ―That‘s not to say you were my second choice. Not at
all.‖ He shook his head. ―I am most grateful for the care you have rendered me, and,‖ he went
on, good-naturedly, ―if you can heal me I will gladly admit that your healing art is stronger
than mine.‖
Dottore Cotrolaò sadly shook his head no.
In the conversation that followed, he told Ezio Delli Castelli, as best he could, what
the near future would likely hold for him, and prescribed morphine for management of his
symptoms. It was, alas, a short conversation during which Dottore Cotrolaò, who had
delivered his share of bad news to patients in this very room, avoided looking directly at Ezio
Delli Castelli. Instead, he monitored his patient‘s reflection in a mirror on a side wall. At a
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certain point, Ezio Delli Castelli followed his doctor‘s gaze to that same mirror, and for a
moment they studied each other‘s reflection.
When Dottore Cotrolaò finished speaking, Ezio Delli Castelli nodded and put on his
hat as he got up to leave. Cotrolaò quickly came out from behind his desk and placed a gentle
hand on Delli Castelli‘s shoulder to stop him. ―Just a moment, please,‖ he said.
Cotrolaò held his hands out before him, palms up, and slowly turned them over,
showing them to Ezio Delli Castelli, who, holding them in his own, studied them for a
moment.
―Arthritis deformans,‖ Ezio Delli Castelli remarked empathetically. Impressed,
Cotrolaò raised his eyebrows and nodded.
The two men looked directly at each other.
―There is a small producer near Verbicaro,‖ said Ezio Delli Castelli, taking a fountain
pen from his pocket and writing the name of the producer on a piece of paper that had been
handed to him by Cotrolaò. ―Il bianco, non il rosso,‖ he emphasized. ―The white, not the red.
No more than 300 milliliters a day. I would try it.‖
―I will,‖ Cotrolaò answered.
They shook hands.
―Grazie, dottore,‖ said Ezio Delli Castelli.
―Gracie a Lei, dottore,‖ answered Cotrolaò.
7.5. “The Black Queen” by Barry Callaghan
Hughes and McCrae were fastidious men who took pride in their old colonial house,
the clean simple lines and stucco walls and the painted pale blue picket fence. They were
surrounded by houses converted into small warehouses, trucking yards where houses had
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been torn down, and along the street, a school filled with foreign children, but they didn‘t
mind. It gave them an embattled sense of holding on to something important, a tattered
remnant of good taste in an area of waste overrun by rootless olive-skinned children.
McCrae wore his hair a little too long now that he was going gray, and while Hughes
with his clipped moustache seemed to be a serious man intent only on his work, which was
costume design, McCrae wore Cuban heels and lacquered his nails. When they‘d met ten
years ago Hughes had said, ―You keep walking around like that and you‘ll need a body to
keep you from getting poked in the eye.‖ McCrae did all the cooking and drove the car.
But they were not getting along these days. Hughes blamed his bursitis, but they were
both silently unsettled by how old they had suddenly become, how loose in the thighs, and
their feet, when they were showering in the morning, seemed bonier, the toes longer, the nails
yellow and hard, and what they wanted was tenderness, to be able to yield almost tearfully,
full of a pity for themselves that would not be belittled or laughed at, and when they stood
alone in their separate bedrooms they wanted that tenderness from each other, but when they
were having their bedtime tea in the kitchen, as they had done for years using lovely green
and white Limoges cups, if one touched the other‘s hand then suddenly they both withdrew
into an unspoken, smiling aloofness, as if some line of privacy had been crossed. Neither
could bear their thinning wrists and the little pouches of darkening flesh under the chin. They
spoke of being with younger people and even joked slyly about bringing a young man home,
but that seemed such a betrayal of everything that they had believed had set them apart from
others, everything they believed had kept them together, that they sulked and nettled away at
each other, and though nothing had apparently changed in their lives, they were always on
edge, Hughes more than McCrae.
One of their pleasures was collecting stamps, rare and mint-perfect, with no creases or
smudges on the gum. Their collection, carefully mounted in a leatherbound blue book with
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seven little plastic windows per page, was worth several thousand dollars. They had passed
many pleasant evenings together on the Directoire settee arranging the old ochre and carmine
colored stamps. They agreed there was something almost sensual about holding a perfectly
preserved piece of the past, unsullied, as if everything didn‘t have to change, didn‘t have to
end up swamped by decline and decay. They disapproved of the new stamps and dismissed
them as crude and wouldn‘t have them in their book. The pages for the recent years remained
empty and they liked that; the emptiness was their statement about themselves and their
values, and Hughes, holding a stamp up into the light between his tweezers, would say, ―None
of that rough trade for us.‖
One afternoon they went down to the philatelic shops around Adelaide and Richmond
Streets and saw a stamp they had been after for a long time, a large and elegant black stamp of
Queen Victoria in her widow‘s weeds. It was rare and expensive, a dead-letter stamp from the
turn of the century. They stood side-by-side over the glass countercase admiring it, their
hands spread on the glass, but when McCrae, the overhead fluorescent light catching his
lacquered nails, said, ―Well, I certainly would like that little black sweetheart,‖ the owner,
who had sold stamps to them for several years, looked up and smirked, and Hughes suddenly
snorted, ―You old queen, I mean why don‘t you just quit wearing those goddamn Cuban
heels, eh? I mean why not?‖ He walked out leaving McCrae embarrassed and hurt and when
the owner said, ―So what was wrong?‖ McCrae cried, ―Screw you,‖ and strutted out.
Through the rest of the week they were deferential around the house, offering each
other every consideration, trying to avoid any squabble before Mother‘s Day at the end of the
week when they were going to hold their annual supper for friends, three other male couples.
Over the years it had always been an elegant, slightly mocking evening that often ended
bitter-sweetly and left them feeling close, comforting each other.
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McCrae, wearing a white, linen shirt, starch in the cuffs and mother-of-pearl cuff
links, worked all Sunday afternoon in the kitchen, and through the window he could see the
crab apple tree in bloom and he thought how in previous years he would have begun planning
to put down some jelly in the old pressed glass jars they kept in the cellar, but instead, head
down, he went on stuffing and tying the pork loin roast. Then in the early evening he heard
Hughes at the door, and there was laughter from the front room and someone cried out, ―What
do you do with an elephant who has three balls on him… you don‘t know silly, well you walk
him and pitch to the giraffe,‖ and there were howls of laughter and the clinking of glasses. It
had been the same every year, eight men sitting down to a fine supper with expensive wines,
the table set with their best silver under the antique carved wooden candelabra.
Having prepared all the raw vegetables, the cauliflower and carrots, the avocados and
finger-sized miniature corn-on-the-cob, and placed porcelain bowls of homemade dip in the
center of a pewter tray, McCrae stared at his reflection for a moment in the window over the
kitchen sink and then he took a plastic slipcase out of the knives-and-forks drawer. The case
contained the dead-letter stamp. He licked it all over and pasted it on his forehead and then
slipped on the jacket of his charcoal brown crushed velvet suit, took hold of the tray, and
stepped out into the front room.
The other men, sitting in a circle around the coffee table, looked up and one of them
giggled. Hughes cried, ―Oh my God.‖ McCrae, as if nothing were the matter, said, ―My dears,
time for the crudités.‖ He was in his silk stocking feet, and as he passed the tray he winked at
Hughes who sat staring at the black queen.
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7.6. “My Date with Neanderthal Woman” by David Galef
I didn‘t know whether to bring flowers, which don‘t say much to someone from a
basic subsistence culture. But a raw beefsteak might come across as too suggestive, and I‘d
read somewhere that Neanderthals were supposed to be vegetarians. I opted for the middle
road, a box of chocolates.
I arrived just as the sun was sinking below the tree line. Glena lived in a cave by the
edge of the forest and had, I‘d heard, a more natural sense of time than those of us dominated
by Rolexes and cell phones. Still, she wasn‘t there when I hurt my hand knocking on the cave
entrance.
I tried twice, the second time with my foot. Then I called out, emphasizing the glottal
G I‘d heard when her name was pronounced by the TransWorld Dating Agency. She appeared
as if suddenly planted in front of me, barrel-chested and bandy-legged, not much taller than a
high-cut tree stump. Her furry brown hair was matted with sweat, but she smiled in a flat-
faced way as I held out the chocolate.
Grabbing the box, she ripped it open and crowed in delight. She stuffed several
candies with their wrappers into her mouth and chewed vigorously. The agency had told me
not to waste time with complicated verbal behavior, so I just pointed at her and myself and
said, ―Glena, Robert.‖
She nodded, then pointed to the chocolate and rubbed her belly. Such a primal
response! Frankly, I‘d grown tired of modern women and their endless language games. She
offered me one of the remaining chocolates from the box, and I was touched: pure reciprocity,
though she looked disappointed that I didn‘t eat the wrappers. I mimed eating and pointed
away from the forest. I would take her out to dinner.
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Neanderthals, I recalled, were often on the cusp of starvation. She seemed to
understand and followed me obediently as I led her to Chez Asperge, a small French-fusion-
vegan restaurant not far from the woods.
Chez Asperge is elegant but casual, and we were greeted heartily by Claude the maitre
d’. I didn‘t know the place had a dress code. In fact, the little loincloth Glena wore made me
feel overdressed. Anyway, the situation was fixed with a borrowed jacket, which Glena wore
in a charmingly asymmetric fashion.
God, I hate all the introductory explanations of a first date – which is why I was so
happy none of that mattered to Glena. With a familiarity as if she‘d known me for years, she
spread her arms on the table and scooped up the mashed lentil dip. It‘s true, a woman who
enjoys her food is sexy. Of course, she offered me some, and I showed her how to spread it on
pita. But knives seemed to frighten her, and I‘m sorry about that scar on the table. Still, we
had a lovely meal – she particularly enjoyed the raw vegetable plate.
After dinner, I walked her home along the forest path. Movies and clubs could come
later. I didn‘t want to overstimulate her. Even electric lights made her twitch. But along the
path the moon was out, illuminating Glena‘s short but powerful body in a way that was
weirdly beautiful. When I reached for her hand, she jerked back – different cultures have
different intimacy rites, the agency guy said – so I took pains to explain that my intentions
were honorable. Maybe she couldn‘t understand the words, yet I think she got the gist.
Anyway, there‘s a limit to what I can achieve by gestures.
Eventually, her hand crept into mine and nearly crushed it. My miming of pain,
hopping on one foot and flailing, made her laugh. A sense of humor is important in a
relationship.
We paused at the entrance to her cave. She smiled, the gaps in her teeth drawing me
in. Her earthly aroma was a definite aphrodisiac. What came next was sort of a kiss, followed
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by a rib-cracking embrace that the osteopath says is healing nicely. Still, whenever I think
about it, I feel twinges. What a woman! I‘d like to invite her out this weekend, but I can‘t e-
mail her. Maybe I‘ll just drop by her cave accidentally on purpose with a bouquet of broccoli.
Yes, I know all the objections. Some couples are separated by decades, but we‘re
separated by millennia. I like rock music and she likes the music of rocks. I‘m modern Homo
Sapiens and she‘s Neanderthal, but I think we can work out our differences if we try.
7.7. “Popular Mechanics” by Raymond Carver
Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks
of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the back yard. Cars slushed by
on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too.
He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door.
I‘m glad you‘re leaving! I‘m glad you‘re leaving! she said! Do you hear?
He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.
Son of a bitch! I‘m so glad you‘re leaving! She began to cry. You can‘t even look at
me in the face, can you?
Then she noticed the baby‘s picture on the bed and picked it up.
He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going
back to the living room.
Bring that back, he said.
Just get your things and get out, she said.
He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the
bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room.
She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.
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I want the baby, he said.
Are you crazy?
No, but I want the baby. I‘ll get someone to come by for his things.
You‘re not touching this baby, she said.
The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head.
Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.
He moved toward her.
For God‘s sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen.
I want the baby.
Get out of here!
She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.
But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.
Let go of him, he said.
Get away, get away! she cried.
The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot
that hung behind the stove.
He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and
pushed with all his weight.
Let go of him, he said.
Don‘t, she said. You‘re hurting the baby, she said.
I‘m not hurting the baby, he said.
The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers
with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near
the shoulder.
She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.
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No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.
She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby‘s other arm. She caught the
baby around the wrist and leaned back.
But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back
very hard.
In this manner, the issue was decided.
7.8. “Jumper Down” by Don Shea
Henry was our jumper up expert – had been for years. When the jumper was up, by
which I mean when he or she was still on the building ledge or the bridge, Henry was superb
at talking them down. Of all the paramedics I worked with, he had the touch.
When the call came in ―jumper up,‖ Henry always went, if he was working that shift.
When the call was ―jumper down,‖ it didn‘t matter much which of us went – we were all
equally capable of attending to the mess on the ground or fishing some dude out of the water.
The university hospital we worked out of got more than its share of jumpers of both
varieties because of its proximity to the major bridges – Manhattan, Brooklyn, and
Williamsburg. Over the years, dealing with his jumpers and the other deranged human
flotsam the job threw his way, Henry got a tad crusty – you might even say burned out –
although he was still pretty effective with the jumper ups. He always considered them a
personal challenge.
Henry was retiring. On his last shift, we threw him a little party in the lounge two
doors down from the ER, even brought some liquor in for the off-duty guys, although that was
against the rules. Everyone was telling their favorite jumper stories for Henry‘s benefit; he‘d
heard them all before, but that didn‘t matter. Big John told the story of the window cleaner
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who took a dive four stories off his scaffolding. They got him in the bus, started a couple of
IV lines, and John radioed ahead to the ER, ―Bringing in the jumper down.‖ Now this guy
was in sad shape, two broken legs, femur poking through the skin, but he sits right up and
says with great indignation, ―I did not jump, goddamnit! I fell!‖
Just as Big John finished this story, a call came in. Jumper up on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Everyone agreed it was meant to be, it was Henry‘s last jumper, and I went along since it was
my shift too.
The pillar on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge is over water. Our jumper up
had climbed the pillar on the Brooklyn side, which is over land. By the time we got there, the
police had a couple of spotlights on him, and we could see him clearly, sitting on a beam
about a hundred feet up, looking pretty relaxed. Henry took a megaphone and was preparing
to climb up after him when the guy jumped.
It looked like a circus act. No exaggeration. Two half gainers and a backflip, and every
second of it caught in the spotlights. The guy hit the ground about thirty yards from where we
were standing, and Henry and I were over there on the run, although it was obvious he was
beyond help.
He was dead, but he hadn‘t died yet. His eyes were open, and he looked somewhat
surprised by what he had done to himself. Henry leaned in close and bellowed in his ear.
―I know you can hear me, ‗cause hearing‘s the last thing to go. I just gotta tell ya, I
wanted you to know, that jump was fucking magnificent!‖
At first I considered Henry‘s parting shot pretty insensitive. Then I thought about it
some. I mean, it was clearly not the occasion to admonish the jumper, who had obviously
suffered enough defeats and rejections in his life. Why should he spend his last few seconds
on this earth hearing how he blew it once again?
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Seems to me if I was a jumper on the way out, right out there on the ragged edge of
the big mystery, I might, indeed, upon my exit, find some last modicum of comfort in Henry‘s
words, human words of recognition and congratulation.
7.9. “Sitting” by H. E. Francis
In the morning the man and woman were sitting on his front steps. They sat all day.
They would not move.
With metronomic regularity he peered at them through the pane in the front door.
They did not leave at dark. He wondered when they ate or slept or did their duties.
At dawn they were still sitting there. They sat through sun and rain.
At first only the immediate neighbors called: Who are they? What are they doing
there?
He did not know.
Then neighbors from farther down the street called. People who passed and saw the
couple called.
He never heard the man and woman talk.
When he started getting calls from all over the city, from strangers and city fathers,
professionals and clerks, garbage and utilities men, and the postman, who had to walk around
them to deliver letters, he had to do something.
He asked them to leave.
They said nothing. They sat. They stared, indifferent.
He said he would call the police.
The police gave them a talking to, explained the limits of their rights, and took them
away in the police car.
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In the morning they were back.
The next time the police said they would put them in jail if the jails were not so full,
though they would have to find a place for them somewhere, if he insisted.
That is your problem, he said.
No, it is really yours, the police told him, but they removed the pair.
When he looked out the next morning, the man and woman were sitting on the steps.
They sat there every day for years.
Winters he expected them to die from the cold.
But he died.
He had no relatives, so the house went to the city.
The man and woman went on sitting there.
When the city threatened to remove the man and woman, neighbors and citizens
brought a suit against the city: after sitting so long, the man and woman deserved the house.
The petitioners won. The man and woman took over the house.
In the morning strange men and women were sitting on front steps all over the city.
7.10. “The Anatomy of Desire” by John L’Heureux
Because Hanley‘s skin had been stripped off by the enemy, he could find no one who
was willing to be with him for long. The nurses were obligated, of course, to see him now and
then, and sometimes the doctor, but certainly not the other patients and certainly not his wife
and children. He was raw, he was meat, and he would never be any better. He had a great and
natural desire, therefore, to be possessed by someone.
He would walk around on his skinned feet, leaving bloody footprints up and down the
corridors, looking for someone to love him.
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―You‘re not supposed to be out here,‖ the nurse said. And she added, somehow
making it sound kind, ―You untidy the floor, Hanley.‖
―I want to be loved by someone,‖ he said. ―I‘m human too. I‘m like you.‖
But he knew he was not like her. Everybody called her the saint.
―Why couldn‘t it be you?‖ he said.
She was swabbing his legs with blood retardant, a new discovery that kept Hanley
going. It was one of those miracle medications that just grew out of the war.
―I wasn‘t chosen,‖ she said. ―I have my skin.‖
―No,‖ he said. ―I mean why couldn‘t it be you who will love me, possess me? I have
desires too,‖ he said.
She considered this as she swabbed his shins and the soles of his feet.
―I have no desires,‖ she said. ―Or only one. It‘s the same thing.‖
He looked at her loving face. It was not a pretty face, but it was saintly.
―Then you will?‖ he said.
―If I come to know sometime that I must,‖ she said.
. . .
The enemy had not chosen Hanley, they had just lucked upon him sleeping in his
trench. They were a raid party of four, terrified and obedient, and they had been told to bring
back an enemy to serve as an example of what is done to infiltrators.
They dragged Hanley back across the line and ran him, with his hands tied behind his
back, the two kilometers to the general‘s tent.
The general dismissed the guards because he was very taken with Hanley. He untied
the cords that bound his wrists and let his arms hang free. Then slowly, ritually, he tipped
Hanley‘s face toward the light and examined it carefully. He kissed him on the brow and on
the cheek and finally on the mouth. He gazed deep and long into Hanley‘s eyes until he saw
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his own reflection there looking back. He traced the lines of Hanley‘s eyebrows, gently, with
the tip of his index finger. ―Such a beautiful face,‖ he said in his own language. He pressed
his palms lightly against Hanley‘s forehead, against his cheekbones, his jaw. With his little
finger he memorized the shape of Hanley‘s lips, the laugh lines at his eyes, the chin. The
general did Hanley‘s face very thoroughly. Afterward he did some things down below, and so
just before sunrise when the time came to lead Hanley out to the stripping post, he told the
soldiers with the knives: ―This young man could be my own son; so spare him here and here.‖
The stripping post stood dead-center in the line of barbed wire only a few meters
beyond the range of gunfire. A loudspeaker was set up and began to blare the day‘s message.
―This is what happens to infiltrators. No infiltrators will be spared.‖ And then as troops from
both sides watched through binoculars, the enemy cut the skin from Hanley‘s body, sparing –
as the general had insisted – his face and his genitals. They were skilled men and the skin was
stripped off expeditiously and they hung it, headless, on the barbed wire as an example. They
lay Hanley himself on the ground where he could die.
He was rescued a little after noon when the enemy, for no good reason, went into
sudden retreat.
Hanley was given emergency treatment at the field unit, and when they had done what
they could for him, they sent him on to the vets‘ hospital. At least there, they told each other,
he will be attended by the saint.
It was quite some time before the saint said yes, she would love him.
―Not just love me. Possess me.‖
―There are natural reluctancies,‖ she said. ―There are personal peculiarities,‖ she said.
―You will have to have patience with me.‖
―You‘re supposed to be a saint,‖ he said.
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So she lay down with him in his bloody bed and he found great satisfaction in holding
this small woman in his arms. He kissed her and caressed her and felt young and whole again.
He did not miss his wife and children. He did not miss his skin.
The saint did everything she must. She told him how handsome he was and what
pleasure he gave her. She touched him in the way he liked best. She said he was her whole
life, her fate. And at night when he woke her to staunch the blood, she whispered how she
needed him, how she could not live without him.
This went on for some time.
The war was over and the occupying forces had made the general mayor of the capital
city. He was about to run for senator and wanted his past to be beyond the reproach of any
investigative committee. He wrote Hanley a letter which he sent through the International Red
Cross.
―You could have been my own son,‖ he said. ―What we do in war is what we have to
do. We do not choose cruelty or violence. I did only what was my duty.‖
―I am in love and I am loved,‖ Hanley said. ―Why isn‘t this enough?‖
The saint was swabbing his chest and belly with blood retardant.
―Nothing is ever enough,‖ she said.
―I love, but I am not possessed by love,‖ he said, ―I want to be surrounded by you. I
want to be enclosed. I want to be enveloped. I don‘t have the words for it. But do you
understand?‖
―You want to be possessed,‖ she said.
―I want to be inside you.‖
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And so they made love, but afterward he said, ―That was not enough. That is only a
metaphor for what I want.‖
The general was elected senator and was made a trustee of three nuclear-arms
conglomerates. But he was not well. And he was not sleeping well.
He wrote to Hanley, ―I wake in the night and see your face before mine. I feel your
forehead pressing against my palms. I taste your breath. I did only what I had to do. You
could have been my son.‖
―I know what I want,‖ Hanley said.
―If I can do it, I will,‖ the saint said.
―I want your skin.‖
And so she lay down on the long white table, shuddering, while Hanley made his first
incision. He cut along the shoulders and then down the arms and back up, then down the sides
and the legs to the feet. It took him longer than he had expected. The saint shivered at the cold
touch of the knife and she sobbed once at the sight of the blood, but by the time Hanley lifted
the shroud of skin from her crimson body, she was resigned, satisfied even.
Hanley had spared her face and her genitals.
He spread the skin out to dry and, while he waited, he swabbed her raw body carefully
with blood retardant. He whispered little words of love and thanks and desire to her. A smile
played about her lips, but she said nothing.
It would be a week before he could put on her skin.
The general wrote to Hanley one last letter. ―I can endure no more. I am possessed by
you.‖
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Hanley put on the skin of the saint. His genitals fitted nicely through the gap he had
left and the skin at his neck matched hers exactly. He walked the corridors and for once left
no bloody tracks behind. He stood before mirrors and admired himself. He touched his breasts
and his belly and his thighs and there was no blood on his hands.
―Thank you,‖ he said to her. ―It is my heart‘s desire fulfilled. I am inside you. I am
possessed by you.‖
And then, in the night, he kissed her on the brow and on the cheek and finally on the
mouth. He gazed deep and long into her eyes. He traced the lines of her eyebrows gently, with
the tip of his index finger. ―Such a beautiful face,‖ he said. He pressed his palms lightly
against her forehead, her cheekbones, her jaw. With his little finger he memorized the shape
of her lips.
And then it was that Hanley, loved, desperate to possess and be possessed, staring
deep into the green and loving eyes of the saint, saw that there can be no possession, there is
only desire. He plucked at his empty skin, and wept.
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