Margaret Wappler

Flash fiction. Sudden fiction. Briefs. Prose poems. Vignettes. Several monikers later, the genre that eludes definition has been pinned down to the following scant set of guidelines by literary pundits: Short-shorts should be 250-2,000 words, and if it doesn't grab you within fifty words, there's not much point in reading further.

The best short-shorts are rife with a contradictory set of characteristics. They are brisk and deep. Content and style is all over the map: sometimes rhapsodic and intimate, other times formal and even rhetorical. And, like drugs, most everyone's at least dabbled in it -- from essayists to poets, from Frank McCourt to Margaret Atwood.

It's worth noting that plenty of writers out there see a distinct difference between some of the above names. For instance, the editors of the collection "Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories" say they didn't call this sudden fiction, as they had called past collections, because "quantitatively there is a big difference between 1,750 words [the apparent maximum for sudden fiction] and 750 words." But chances are, if you asked a random group of writers, they could no more explain this than tell you the difference between a chick pea and a garbanzo bean. Trying to define the difference between the two is a cocktail-party argument that can seep into all the shady borders of writing; who wants to dissect the flick of the wrist that separates, for instance, memoir from creative non-fiction?

And speaking of creative non-fiction, it certainly has its place in the flash realm. Frank Huyler, author of the new "The Blood of Strangers," a collection of creative non-fiction shorts, has embedded the sweep and grind of his daily E.R. doctor's life into the structure and tone of his stories. Huyler works around the grimness and repetition to find the intimate, quiet moments in his job, the last moments of the old and dying where time seems to stand still. Huyler is a fine writer, aware of the perverse oddity of his sudden and invasive role as caretaker and companion in death in so many stranger's lives. Some of these stories fall apart because Huyler gets too self-aware, too distantly philosophical, but most work. A particular standout is the short "A Difference in Opinion," a snapshot detailing Huyler's time as an intern taking contradictory directions from two attending residents. This story and others excel because it brings out the often overlooked fact that the practice of medicine is just like any other job in many ways -- care is sometimes compromised by managerial disputes, office romances and careless mistakes.

Denise Duhamel, to take a line directly from one of her poems, says "prosepoems [sic] are the look-alike cousins of the shortest short stories." And many of the prose poems from her latest collection "The Star-Spangled Banner" read like flash fiction. Flash or prose, no matter, her works are deliciously humorous, a lip-biting sort that grows more clever as you mull it over. "From now on the Saviour and his Mom keep their giddy goo-gah playing times to themselves/... When they pose for the rest of the artists,/they bit the insides of their cheeks/or think of the saddest of things,/like wars and injustices and heathens." Meditative and arresting, "The Star-Spangled Banner" is a particularly soothing balm for those who have been burned by one too many esoteric word-puzzles pushed on them by English Lit professors.

Dan O'Brien's "Crossing Spider Creek," from the anthology "Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories," is one of the better pieces in a somewhat standard collection. A short that just crawls over the 750-word count, it concerns the life-or-death moment of a man with a broken leg, who must convince his squeamish colt to cross a stream of ice-cold water.

"Tom thinks that there might be time, if he falls, to grab at the rifle and drag it from the scabbard as he goes down... Though he would hate to, it might be possible to shoot the horse from where he would fall. With luck he would have the strength to crawl to it and hold its warm head for a few moments before they died." A short-story writer, from the first word on, must be ever-mindful of the ending, and it is in short-shorts that this circular structure is most obvious. The story begins and ends with the same sentence -- "Here is a seriously injured man on a frightened horse -- " the first time, informative and intriguing; the second time, ominous.

Reading a good short story starts with a tickle in the ear, a twinge in the bones, and then whoosh! -- like wind shooting through prairie grass -- and it's over. You're left feeling a little breathless, and melting with awe. So many whooshes are packed into "In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal" that it's easy to surrender a day to this eclectic collection, packed with names both recognizable (Rick Bass, Charles Baxter, Edwidge Danticat) and new.

As for riding on the coattails of certain literary trends, this book scores a double-whammy by highlighting both short-shorts and the increasingly popular genre of creative non-fiction. A particular gem is Brady Udall's "One Liar's Beginnings," the story of 3-year-old Brady's precipitous start as a fibber (his first one is innocent enough: He lies to Mom about eating the cinnamon red-hots she was saving for cupcakes). The telling is pure and hilarious, the kind that a friend tells you over a beer and you never forget.

One parting note: If you are unwise enough to think that these bang-for-your-buck tellings are a writer's vacation, think again. It was for good reason that Mark Twain once sent a long letter to a friend with an apology -- he simply didn't have enough time to write a short letter.

"Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories"
(W.W. Norton, $16.99)
James Thomas, Denise Thomas and Tom Hazuka, ed.

"The Blood of Stangers"
(university of california press, $19.95)
Frank Huyler

"The Star-Spangled Banner"
(Southern Illinois University Press, $11.95)
Denise Duhamel

"In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal"
(W.W. Norton, $12.95)
Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones, ed. (2000-03-02)

Also by Margaret Wappler

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