Forum / Dan Cafaro on Flash

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    Marcus Speh
    Sep 22, 11:32am

    Worth reading: Dan Cafaro's essay on flash fiction and especially on the publishing of this art form @ the fabulous Atticus Review edited by fictionaut Katrina Gray. Nobody writes about this more lucidly right now than Dan & I think both the muses and the times are with him. An excerpt:
    <blockquote>
    «Flash fiction is the epitome of immediate gratification. At no time does it allow the reader to zone out. At no time does it allow for a slow-paced, steady bout of rope-a-dope while painting the reader into a corner and having him hold on for dear, desperate life. Instead, flash stands toe-to-toe with the reader and demands surefire readiness and mental acuity as it unleashes a fast and furious staccato delivery of rhythms and images. Instead of a deliberate series of verbal jabs, feints, and left hooks, flash fiction abridges the distance between writer and reader by delivering thundering punches, all registering in a swift, precise attack, a flurry of body blows crescendoing with one final death blow to the skull. Flash does not sneak up on us. It knocks us out. Unconscious. Without fanfare. In the first round. Before the ring card girl even gets to earn her keep.»
    </blockquote>

    Here is a <a href="http://blog.marcusspeh.com/?p=5325">link to the full essay using a little detour</a>. Cafaro publishes <a href="http://atticusbooksonline.com/">Atticus Books</a> & just came out with John Minichillo's beautiful <a href="http://thesnowwhale.com/">The Snow Whale</a>. Enjoy!

  • Jalousie.thumb
    stephen hastings-king
    Sep 22, 12:16pm

    nice, marcus. thanks for the link. cafaro's essay is interesting...i like to think he's right about the potentials for flash forms and that these are only a zealous publisher or two away from maybe turning into something marketable.

    i'm less sure about the emphasis on speed of reading...but maybe that's a personal thing: i'm trying to figure out how to slow people down and manipulate their sense of time so that the shortness of the text reverses into something a space that can be as large as one imagines it that you move through & that can be very dense at times---but it's ok because there's space to breathe, space for nothing.

    i think flash can be to fiction in general what john cage was for euro-classical music---flipping the priority sound/silence in favor of the latter and triggering a rethink of factors like selections and placements (and structures and durations) in the doing.

    i don't think it's just short fiction--it's something else, the potentials of which we're only starting to explore. so it's not necessarily the novel form for the ADD set. though its not other than that.

    this isn't a criticism of what cafaro is saying, btw. i've just been thinking about whether and how to hold open a space for different types of machines. maybe cafaro is right and we are, collectively, a zealous marketing campaign or two away. but once that happens, the form will get more rigid. that's the history of such things.

    anyway, i got to go.
    thanks for posting the link and the mediation in the form of nothing to flawnt.

  • S._tepper--nov--lighter.thumb
    Susan Tepper
    Sep 22, 01:06pm

    Flash fiction's growing popularity was inevitable, considering that everything else passes by in a micro-second now. I think it's fun to write and to read.

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    Christian Bell
    Sep 22, 04:44pm

    Thanks, Marcus, for that article. Dan makes some solid points and seems to have his pulse on what's going on. "How the hell hasn’t a publisher found a way to monetize flash fiction in the same way that Apple has monetized the digital, two-minute and 30-second pop song?" Good question. It seems like it always takes some entity outside the traditional publishing industries to take us into the future.

    On the writing side of flash fiction, there is also a sense of instant gratification. By its nature, flash fiction allows the writer to complete more stories and feel that sense of accomplishment that comes with each one, and posting or publishing online allows for more instant gratification of seeing it out in the world and getting reactions from fellow readers and writers.

    As a writer of flash fiction, I've operated under this system of instant gratification for some time now. Most of it has been the sense of accomplishment, and the rest of it has been seeing it online and getting feedback. In the last few months, though, I've realized that this has become unfulfilling. Much like you, Marcus, I've recently made the decision to end my flash fiction run and move to longer works.

    I might come back to flash someday, perhaps with a recharged focus and attitude, and maybe I'll write the occasional flash piece. But writing flash won't be my goal when I wake up each morning, as it has been for the last good number of years.

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    James Lloyd Davis
    Sep 22, 09:36pm

    Inneresting (sic). Going to let Marcus read everything first so he can pick out the good stuff and post links all over the net for me to follow. That way, I'll have more time to finish my novel before he does.

    Thanks, Marcus!

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