FLASH STUFF

When I first got wind of something called 'flash fiction', I had to ask about to find out what it was. The Republic is a backward sort of place when it comes to what is fashionable in New York.

In case my readers are no more trendy than I, let me explain: flash fiction is a new fad designed for the dumb who write with their thumbs. Short, very short, even exiguous 'stories' a few lines long. They've sprouted like weeds, get distributed on the Net and sent to all and sundry like so much literary spam. I have been sent several score in the last week alone.

This would not matter had it not been brought to my attention that our Contributing Editor, James Wood, had written in praise of someone called Lydia Davis. I could not check this out, for I do not subscribe the The New Yorker. I used to, but my copies never arrived. Supposing the report to be true, and knowing James, I have to believe the woman has something going for her. And if she doesn't, it is also true that any critic can have his idiosyncrasies, and if you're as good a reader and as thoughtful a critic as Mr. Wood, so be it. After all, there are people who think Alberto Manguel is Hot Stuff.

Now it turns out that Harper's -- once a solid, even stollid magazine -- has published some FF. I read but one, so banal and inane I had to read its 40 words or so several times to see if it did not contain a coded message of great import. No, it didn't. It was what it appeared to be: boy, girl, two kids and the perfect life.

I think this form has great potentiality for porn. You read it here first. Flash Porn. I offer the first (though not to Harper's):

He didn't know where to put it. He tried a flower poet; it broke. The mare bolted. Then came Amanda.

I particularly like the double entendre in Amanda coming.

As any fifty pieces of this rubbish could be written in an hour and sent --for instance to the once rigorous Farrar, Strauss & Giroux -- let the Creative Imagination flow freely! There's nothing difficult about writing. Or flashing. Whether you open the mental, or the trouser zip.

Oh no! Not you, James!