Tämä sivusto käyttää evästeitä palvelujen toimittamiseen, toiminnan parantamiseen, analytiikkaan ja (jos et ole kirjautunut sisään) mainostamiseen. Käyttämällä LibraryThingiä ilmaiset, että olet lukenut ja ymmärtänyt käyttöehdot ja yksityisyydensuojakäytännöt. Sivujen ja palveluiden käytön tulee olla näiden ehtojen ja käytäntöjen mukaista.
"How short can a story be and still truly be a story? This volume of seventy-two very short fictions, none much more than 750 words in length, demonstrates to our repeated satisfaction that less can be more, small can stand tall, and the diminutive can be dynamically and dramatically complete. Here for enjoyment and study are very short pieces by acknowledged modern masters -- including Raymond Carver, Richard Brautigan, Margaret Atwood, Julio Cortázar and Tim O'Brien -- as well as fiction by newer talents, who have embraced the short form with much gusto and considerable grace. With a rich variety of stories and authors, subjects and styles and sensibilities, these flashes of fiction make for eclectic -- and often electric -- reading. The volume is a must for readers and writers, indeed for anyone interested in the finely sharpened edge of contemporary literature"--Jacket.… (lisätietoja)
Certainly everything it advertises to be, 'Flash Fiction' compiles the best of the briefest of short stories by some of the top writers in the field. In the short amount of time that they have, the stories pack a lot of punch and have some powerful imagery that probably wouldn't sustain itself in a traditional length story.
I could try and list off the highlights, but it would quickly dissolve into a list of over a dozen titles that would be hard to differentiate while reading the review. There is something for everybody in this collection; more than one thing.
There were a couple stories, only a few, that were so brief that the overall point of them was lost, but not nearly as many as some reviewers would have you believe. Like poetry, most of these stories capture a rare moment, or feeling, and isolate it to better keep our attention. ( )
Overall, this is a very good collection of short stories. As with most short story collections though, there were a few short stories that were nearly impossible to finish. Luckily, the editors did a pretty good job selecting stories for this collection, so those bad stories are few and far between. The stories are the perfect length to take this book with you on the go. ( )
Apparently this was the anthology that coined the term 'flash fiction'. Which is defined here as shorter than 'sudden fiction'. The stories included are mostly from the 80's and 90's. There were 3 names I recognized: Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, and... drat, some white guy I forget. The rest of the names were unknown to me, but this was a clearly literary anthology and I am not a literary reader. A few of the stories were English translations.I had the notion that I should take some short stories, distill the plot, and rewrite them. I figured the shorter the better for this exercise. So when I searched the library catalog, this is the best option that turned up. I did not do the exercise I had invented for myself. But I did read all the way through this in about a day.Short short stories (as I came to know them, having been first exposed to them from Asimov anthologies) are pretty awesome. Get in, get out. It works particularly well for science fiction idea stories. Which these were not.The first couple of stories were okay. Somewhat interesting. The first one was even sf/f-ish (gasp! don't tell them that!) But then I started to hit some real duds.Why duds? Because I didn't sharding understand them. Did it mean this? Did it mean something else? Does the story mean exactly what it seems to mean and nothing else? Ie, rather trite. Does the story mean what I've guessed it means? I'm not sure. Does the story mean something else entirely and I'm just too dumb to get it? Or does the story not really mean anything at all?I'm not so keen on uncertainty when it comes to stories. I'm fine with 'engaging' with the text and trying to work out what is meant. I just like to know I'm right! Or know that I'm probably not thinking what the author was thinking, and that's okay, because my idea is better.But too many of these stories left me with a sense of 'wha? huh?' and an utter vagueness about the whole thing.Still, there is something about the shortness and the sheer quantity of them that makes my brain start sparking. The problem is, to keep that up, you need more and more and more! ( )
When they say very short, they mean it: 72 stories are packed into these 215 pages (and the spacing is generous). Sometimes this format works for me; usually I just feel like the story ends before I can get anything out of it.
"Deportation at Breakfast" by Larry Fondation is one of my favorites; in googling it, I've learned that others must like it too, because a lot of students seem to have to write term papers on it. I could list other favorites, but honestly it would serve no one: these are so short that giving any more than the title would spoil the whole thing!
One interesting thing is there are not a lot of big names in this collection. Looking through the authors, I recognized the names of only seven.
As one might expect, a collection of stories by 72 different authors is rather a mixed bag, but Flash Fiction will surely have something for everyone. And because the stories are so short (none longer than four pages), it was a great way to get introduced to some styles and writers that I otherwise might never have read. A few familiar, regularly anthologized stories are included, like Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" and Julia Alvarez's "Snow." But I also enjoyed "Mandy Shupe," Kristin Andrychuk's tale of a Mennonite girl gone bad, Pamela Painter's quirky "I Get Smart," about a woman who gets three "new" cats by renaming the ones she already has, and Mary Morris's melancholy "The Haircut," in which a wife finds evidence that her husband is cheating again. Overall, an interesting collection, and I found some authors whose longer works of fiction I will be seeking out. ( )
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta.Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
For Steve Molen, In Memoriam. His life story was far too short.
Ensimmäiset sanat
Sitaatit
Viimeiset sanat
Erotteluhuomautus
Julkaisutoimittajat
Kirjan kehujat
Alkuteoksen kieli
Kanoninen DDC/MDS
Kanoninen LCC
▾Viitteet
Viittaukset tähän teokseen muissa lähteissä.
Englanninkielinen Wikipedia
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▾Kirjojen kuvailuja
"How short can a story be and still truly be a story? This volume of seventy-two very short fictions, none much more than 750 words in length, demonstrates to our repeated satisfaction that less can be more, small can stand tall, and the diminutive can be dynamically and dramatically complete. Here for enjoyment and study are very short pieces by acknowledged modern masters -- including Raymond Carver, Richard Brautigan, Margaret Atwood, Julio Cortázar and Tim O'Brien -- as well as fiction by newer talents, who have embraced the short form with much gusto and considerable grace. With a rich variety of stories and authors, subjects and styles and sensibilities, these flashes of fiction make for eclectic -- and often electric -- reading. The volume is a must for readers and writers, indeed for anyone interested in the finely sharpened edge of contemporary literature"--Jacket.
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Google Books — Ladataan...
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I could try and list off the highlights, but it would quickly dissolve into a list of over a dozen titles that would be hard to differentiate while reading the review. There is something for everybody in this collection; more than one thing.
There were a couple stories, only a few, that were so brief that the overall point of them was lost, but not nearly as many as some reviewers would have you believe. Like poetry, most of these stories capture a rare moment, or feeling, and isolate it to better keep our attention. (