Tag: Short Story Form

  • Short Story Review: “Poetry Is Not About the Price of Gasoline” by Amorak Huey

    (The flash fiction story “Poetry Is Not About the Price of Gasoline” by Amorak Huey appeared in Okay Donkey.)

    I am aware that I should know this, but sometimes I just am not sure what the difference is between absurdist literature and postmodern literature. Some of my favorite writers fall into one, or the other, or both of these categories. And I don’t want to get started about what makes something post-postmodernism or post-irony.

    So, what is “Poetry Is Not About the Price of Gasoline” by Amorak Huey? I guess you could define it with one of the above terms, but that feels like a pointless academic exercise. What the piece reminded me of was how many people see poetry as a useless commodity, while gasoline, especially the price of gas, commands an important space in their daily lives. This juxtaposition is humorous, though it does leave a bitter aftertaste in the realization how poetry is vastly undervalued. Not a revolutionary observation, but it is presented well here, especially with this wonderfully encapsulating line:

    “Which is to say this poem is nine-tenths of the way to being yours, with the final tenth of the process being determined by the rest of the laws, the ones written—like poems—out of language and granted meaning by our need to have shared words for how we interact with each other.”

    And then those baboons somehow got on that flight to LA.

  • Short Story Review: “Why I didn’t Immediately Load the Car When My Husband Texted that the Fire Was Getting Closer” by Claudia Monpere

    (The flash piece “Why I didn’t Immediately Load the Car When My Husband Texted that the Fire Was Getting Closer” by Claudia Monpere, appeared in Milk Candy Review.)

    I like flash fiction; it is my preferred form of storytelling now. It’s a very malleable form as well. It can be a straight forward very short short story, it can boarder right up to poetry, a snapshot of stream of consciousness – whatever it needs to be to tell a story, or complete a thought, or action – flash fiction can do it.

    In Claudia Monpere’s “Why I didn’t Immediately Load the Car When My Husband Texted that the Fire Was Getting Closer,” we are presented with an impressively short flash piece (193 words) that consists of 10 sentences. The title also functions as an essential setup, as the body of the piece is answering that question. A device is employed with 9 of the sentences beginning with the word “Because,” except for the last one. Though this is not the most original device, Monpere uses it effectively to create a rhythm and a pace that builds to the concluding final sentence. Also, the third, sixth, and eighth sentences are about the impending fire, creating a dramatic effect, like a ticking clock, adding to the tension of this moment. “Why didn’t I…” is a good example of why the flash fiction form is so intriguing when it comes to telling stories and expressing feelings and thoughts.

    As a person who also had to load a car quickly as a wildfire approached my home, I deeply identified with this piece. When a natural disaster is an abstract, and just a mental exercise, you think you know how you’ll react, and prioritize what is important when that moment arrives. But when you open your front door and can smell the fire, see the sky changing color, and hear the fire trucks, you don’t know what to do at first, and I grasped for the things I thought were important, before I realized what was important. And maybe I am biased due to my personal experience, but Claudia Monpere captured an emotional truth in the middle of a disaster perfectly.

  • Goodnight Springton! There Will Be No Reviews!

    Yeah, I tried my best, but this week just had it out for me.

    There will be no reviews this week.

    Which is annoying as I had several pieces in the hopper that I just haven’t read yet.

    Such as:

    When She Falls by Louise McGuinness, from Milk Candy Review

    Mr. Mollusk by Didi Wood, from Okay Donkey

    An Excerpt from “Howling Women” (Shelby Hinte), from Rejection Letters

    BOZO by Souvankham Thammavongsa, from The New Yorker

    Hopefully, I will get them read, and feel free to check them out yourself.

    If it helps, here’s a picture of my dog back from the groomers, contemplating if free will is an illusion.

  • Short Story Review: “This is a Dog” by Joanna Theiss

    (The story “This is a Dog” by Joanna Theiss appeared in Milk Candy Review.)

    It is hard to pack an emotional pay off in under 1,000 words. Not impossible, just hard.

    Joanna Theiss does this rather masterfully in her flash piece “This is a Dog,” which is one of the best examples of a story paired down to the essential, the marrow of it, and at the same time, leaving enough gaps for the reader to fill in, thus allowing the story to come alive, and have an impact.

    The story is about a dog, if you couldn’t figure it out. And it’s about loving another, and the hope that you did right by them, maybe never knowing for sure.

    Theiss does use a story trick of starting each sentence with “This is…” I’ve seen this type of trick before, from armature writing groups to the pages of The New Yorker. Yet, I will say that Theiss does it correctly. The “This is…” creates a rhythm to the story, helping it charge ahead, and as the piece progresses, the “This is…” begins to take on different meanings from the narrator. Also, Theiss structures her story very well, dividing the piece in five sections, each with a specific narrative function, that not only builds to the climax, but lands perfectly at the conclusion. And that conclusion also nicely ties up the “This is…” motif, making the whole story feel that we have completed a journey with the narrator, who has been changed forever by the events.

  • Short Story Review: “Neighbors” by Zach Williams

    (The short story “Neighbors” by Zach Williams appeared in the March 25th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Devin Oktar Yalkin

    A movie I love, just deeply admire, is Picnic on Hanging Rock by Peter Weir. For a movie that was a hit, and enormously influential, I have met very few people who have seen it. I won’t go into too much detail on it, but it’s a movie about the experience of being involved with a mystery. The characters in the film evolve and grow because of the mystery, and in a sense, the resolution of the mystery is not needed for the story. I can’t prove it, but Zach Williams might have seen this movie, and if he hasn’t, he should watch it, as I think he’d like it.

    “Neighbors” is the second story I have read by Williams, and it is 100% the opposite of “Wood Sorrel House,” yet both stories, just like Hanging Rock, revolve around mysteries that never get solved,  but aren’t really about the mysteries. “Neighbors” is about a man doing a favor and checks in on his elderly neighbor. And I am leaving it at that because I don’t want to ruin the fun of this story.

    Just like in “Wood Sorrel House,” “Neighbors” just got stuck in my head, and wouldn’t go away. The story kept poking at me, asking me to reflect on some of the experiences that I have had, how I reacted in the moment, and how I processed them after. I wish I could point to the one thing, phrase or moment in the story where I got captured by it, but that “thing” remains elusive, unable to be grasped. The closest I can come to is the narrator talking to his wife on the beach about his experience, as that moment felt very honest and true, but I also feel like I was swept up in this story at that point.

    If I had Zach Williams in front of me, and besides asking him if he’s seen Hanging Rock, I might ask him what this story was about, and I’m pretty sure he’d answer with asking me, what did I think the story was about? Except, I don’t think he’s being a smart aleck if he did that. Williams is a very capable writer, who is in control of his craft and is purposefully creating a story that lives in the gray arears that populate most people’s lives. So, if you’re asking what the story was about, then you’re focusing on the mystery, and not what the experience was.