Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts: ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. {Examples: Paz, Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.} In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies {climactic moments of high grace or realization} that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts.
LIFE ROLLED UP. {Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.'} In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short.
SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. {Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.} In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome repetition, being locked into a single voice, etc.
LIKE A FABLE. {Examples: Kafka, Keller, von Kleist, Tolstoy's 'Three Hermits.'} Through its very concision, this kind of short short moves past realism. We are prodded into the fabulous, the strange, the spooky. To write this kind of fable-like short short, the writer needs a supreme self-confidence: The net of illusion can be cast only once. When we read such fable-like miniatures, we are prompted to speculate about significance, teased into shadowy parallels or semi allegories. There are also, however, some fables so beautifully complete {for instance Kafka's 'First Sorrow'} that we find ourselves entirely content with the portrayed surface and may even take a certain pleasure in refusing interpretation.
{"Introduction"}
LIFE ROLLED UP. {Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.'} In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short.
SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. {Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.} In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome repetition, being locked into a single voice, etc.
LIKE A FABLE. {Examples: Kafka, Keller, von Kleist, Tolstoy's 'Three Hermits.'} Through its very concision, this kind of short short moves past realism. We are prodded into the fabulous, the strange, the spooky. To write this kind of fable-like short short, the writer needs a supreme self-confidence: The net of illusion can be cast only once. When we read such fable-like miniatures, we are prompted to speculate about significance, teased into shadowy parallels or semi allegories. There are also, however, some fables so beautifully complete {for instance Kafka's 'First Sorrow'} that we find ourselves entirely content with the portrayed surface and may even take a certain pleasure in refusing interpretation.
{"Introduction"}
( Irving Howe )
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