Flash, Flesh, Flush, Fish or Cut Bait?
Reading my way through the 500+ entries to the Bevel Summers Short Short Story Contest, I’ve been coming to a better understanding of the elements, besides brevity (that “soul of wit”), I respond to and which in this genre or sub-genre compensate for the loss of heft, development, grandeur, abundance. The thrift part is obvious — the funeral meats must serve as wedding treats, no time for a second round in the kitchen, compression and accelerant, even smoke and mirrors. But I think a twist, a slipknot, an oddity that results in surprise and disorientation can really overthrow the reader’s standard expectation in matters of pace, pitch, duration and provide a satisfying substitute. Perhaps an incongruity accepted as matter-of-fact provides the key, perhaps a character or scene (not room for many scenes) which might not be bearable or credible across the span of a 6,000 word story. Or a whispery secrecy that exaggerates the normal text-to-subtext ratio. But they’re not all stunts, not all self-conscious sideshows. Some short shorts actually manage to perform that greatest of the short story’s potential feats — to reveal the full person by just showing the thumbprint.
Our Bevel Summers contest allows for no story longer than 1000 words, which is pretty stingy, but it’s not hard to think of really fine and familiar, nearly canonical stories that don’t exceed that scale by far — Cheever’s “Reunion,” Kincaid’s “Girl,” Beattie’s “Snow,” Garcia Marquez’s “One of These Days,” Carter’s “The Werewolf,” Carver’s “Popular Mechanics,” Chopin’s “The Storm,” Oates’s “Politics” and “Happy,” Wolff’s “Powder,” Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story,” Ozick’s “The Shawl,” Robison’s “Yours,” Vivante’s “Can-Can,” Jane Martin’s brilliant “Twirler,” Banks’ “The Neighbor,” Williford’s “Prendergast’s Daughter,” Faulkner’s . . . well, you’ve got me there, but there are others.
Some of the stories named above employ radical structural tactics, others feature eccentric narrators or extremes of diction, a few twist a simple plot ingeniously, but some are as matter-of-fact and lacking in gymnastics as anyone can imagine. They’re simply so confident, bold (even if in their modesty) and exacting that they seem to be written in lightning. Those are the stories I’m looking for as I winnow from the original entries to a group of 20-25 semi-finalists. It’s not easy, but every day my respect for those who succeed deepens.
By early June, we hope to announce a winner and the runners-up, which I’m already sure will all make our readers winners. For now, back to the bale of submissions. You can imagine Sisyphus happy.
