Thinking Through Microfiction

THINKING THROUGH MICROFICTION Marc Botha 1. HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS 1.1 Stories for now The sho t sto fo , i its e it a d o de satio , fits ou age , ites Mi h le Roberts i he aptl ief i t odu tio to De o ah Le s olle tio Black Vodka . It fits the short attention span of modern readers, the gaps and fragmentedness of modern o s ious ess .1 If this is true of the short story, how much truer might it be of the very short story? Is the increasing prominence of microfiction as a contemporary literary genre indicative of the fact that even the short story cannot convey the speed and immediacy of contemporary life, and that only the extremities of narrative scale are able to communicate the relentless intensity of the present, and indeed, the future? If the short story is the genre of today, might the very short story – which is as comfortable on the page as it is on the screen, matching the shifting media and ever-accelerating pace of the present – be the genre of tomorrow?2 Although the capacity of microfiction to communicate the immediacies of the present has seen it increasingly embedded in the infrastructures of academic criticism, the publishing industry, and competitive writing in recent years, miniature narrative genres are by no means new to the literary scene. Even a cursory survey of literary history reveals that a great variety of very short forms have emerged in different periods and cultural contexts,3 each bringing with it a singular set of aesthetic concerns while also exemplifying a shared commitment to the relationship of minimal scale to maximal intensity which allows us to trace a certain generic unity across distinctive species of microfiction. 1.2 The significance of names Literary genres do not emerge fully formed – as immutable laws, stable structures or established sets of texts – but are the product of an ongoing, relational process marked by disagreement regarding inclusion and exclusion, and the accumulation of differences alongside similarities.4 What defines the health of a particular genre at any point is the degree 1 Mi h le ‘o e ts, I t odu tio , De o ah Le , Black Vodka (High Wycombe: And Other Stories, 2013), pp. vii–viii (p. vii). 2 “ee Willia Nelles, Mi ofi tio : What Makes a Ve “ho t “to Ve “ho t , Narrative, 20.1 (2012), 87–104 (88). 3 Both D e k a d Joh so e phasize the p otea atu e of the e sho t sto Cha les Joh so a d “tua t D e k i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Robert Shapard and James Thomas (Layton: Gibbs Smith, 1986), pp. 233; 241 respectively. 4 See John Frow, Genre (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 51-5, 124- ; Ja ues De ida, The La of Ge e , Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 228-31 (221-52).5 See “tephe Mi o i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 235. to which it is disputed, and the extent to which its boundaries prove permeable and its conventions responsive to the shifting contexts and demands of literary production and reception. The very short form is thriving in this sense. Ongoing debate around its origins and precursors, its formal and stylistic features, its optimal length, how it might best be named, and its relation to the changing media of publication and dissemination complicate matters further, and preclude any single, authoritative definition.5 Accepting that literature constitutes the site of an event – a generative occurrence through which something new emerges into the world – it is o th taki g se iousl Caputo s lai that [ ]a es o tai e e ts a d gi e the a ki d of te po a shelte . 6 Far from empty rhetorical posturing, critical debate around names and naming often has considerable ontological, historical and ideological implications. The various terms offered to describe contemporary short fictional forms – very short story, short-short story (or often just short- short), shorter and shortest story, skinny fiction, curt fiction, sudden fiction, flash fiction, quick fiction, and microfiction – constitute a polemical field; one which is further intensified by the long and complex histories of antecedents of the contemporary genre which include the aphorism, parable, fragment, digression, paradox, anecdote, joke, riddle, epigram, exemplum, emblem, myth, fable, tale, tableau, vignette, character, sketch, prose poem, miniature, and indeed, short story. This chapter uses the term microfiction – which is maximally descriptive but minimally prescriptive – to refer to the overall field of very short fiction, and it uses more specific terms where necessary to pinpoint certain historical practices. A conjunction of the Greek mikros (small) and the Latin fictio (formation), microfictions are small literary forms, either historical or contemporary, which are suited to representing a wide range of subjects while remaining responsive to the shifting contexts of literary production and reception. It becomes clear in this light how the very short form, hile ei g o te po a , is also ti eless, i the esti atio of Jo e Ca ol Oates – [a]s old as the hu a i sti t to o i e po e a d e it i a st u tu e of o ds , 7 a u - fo of a atio ,8 deepl ooted i the hu a ps he a d i the histo of hu a o u ities .9 1.3 Precursors Broadly endorsing this notion that microfiction constitutes one of several fundamental ways in which literature comes to grips with reality itself, contemporary critics frequently seek to trace these works to archaic sources. While there is general consensus that oral folk forms, 5 “ee “tephe Mi o i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 235. 6 John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 2. 7 Jo e Ca ol Oates i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, ed. Shapard and Thomas, p. 246. 8 Philip “te i k, U titled, Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, ed. Robert Shapard and James Thomas (Layton: Gibbs Smith, 1986), 242. 9 Je o e “te , I t odu tio , Micro-Fiction: An Anthology of Really Short Stories (New York and London: Norton, 1996), pp. 15–9 (p. 17). such as the tale and parable, or the even more concise proverb and anecdote, are the precursors to contemporary microfiction,10 there exist a range of views regarding the precise moment at which extreme narrative brevity becomes a technique consciously employed by writers with a specific effect in mind. For some, this point is located as far back as the exemplum and fable of Classical antiquity,11 while others trace it to the medieval genres of the fabliau, nouvelle and lai.12 The Renaissance certainly brought an intensified interest in the i iatu e, ith the e eptio all fi e detail of Hillia d s ti po t aits efle ted i the controlled p ose of Tho as O e u s Characters (1614) and the didactic microcosms of F a is Qua les s Emblems (1635).13 The intermittent prominence of a variety of very short forms in diverse contexts – the Athenaeum fragments of the Jena Romantics (1798–1800), the ig ettes of Chekho s , the p ose poet of “tei s Tender Buttons (1914), and the i i alist sto ies of Ca e s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976) are exemplary of this range – confirms that the complex genealogical network upon which contemporary microfiction draws is both transhistorical and transcultural. The point at which brevity becomes significant in itself, rather than simply as an attribute of a specific work, is tied to the subsumption of these diverse miniature forms under the banner of the short story. The short story comes to prominence between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries, and although a distinct genre – a point argued by Matthews, Friedman and Baxter14 – it becomes secondary, and to this extent a ou te ge e, 15 to the o el. Although the e a e eithe logi al o a e pi i al e essit 16 fo the do i atio of the sho t sto the o el, it is o etheless a fa t of histo 17 which can be explained in part by the ideological currency of the novel as an e p essio of e pa sio is , e pi e- uildi g a d the fo atio o Bildung of the he oi i di idual. 18 Thus despite being popular for much of the nineteenth century, the short story 10 Karl-Hei z “tie le, “to as E e plu – E e plu as “to : O the P ag ati s a d Poeti s of Na ati e Te t , The New Short Story Theories, ed. Charles E. May (Athens: Ohio University Press), pp. 15–43 (p. 21). 11 Ja k Matthe s i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 235. 12 “ee Nelles, Mi ofi tio , ; . 13 “ee ‘alph ‘ugoff, Ho eopathi “t ategies , At the Threshold of the Visible: Miniscule and Small-Scale Art, 1964–1996, ed. Ralph Rugoff (New York: Independent Curators Incorporated, pp. 11–71 (pp. 55–6); Susan “te a t, At the Th eshold of the Visi le , i id., pp. –85 (pp. 73– ; ‘o e t Kell i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 241. 14 “ee B a de Matthe s, The Philosoph of the “ho t “to , The New Short Story Theories, ed. Charles E. May (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994), 73-5 (73- ; No a F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “tory “ho t? , Modern Fiction Studies, 4.2 (1958): 104 (103- ; Cha les Ba te , I t odu tio , Sudden Fiction International: 60 Short-Short Stories, ed. Robert Shapard and James Thomas (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989), 17-9 (17-25). 15 Ma Louise P att, The “ho t “to : The Lo g a d the “ho t of It , The New Short Story Theories, ed. Charles E. May (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994), 99 (91-113). 16 P att, The “ho t “to , . 17 P att, The “ho t “to , . 18 Ba te , I t odu tio , . e ai s a astl u de ated a t, 19 and enters the twentieth century as a genre largely ancillary to the expansive aesthetic sensibility of modernity.20 1.4 Modernist microfiction Microfiction demonstrates well the depth of the rift between high and low cultural forms in ode ist aestheti s. Despite, o pe haps o a ou t of, a ota le oo i the sho t sho t sto fo agazi es f o the s th ough the s ,21 very short narrative forms receive scant critical attention. Yet, at the margins of a marginalised genre, excepted from the norms of modern narrative, microfictions possess a disruptive force which frequently places them at the experimental cusp of the avant-garde. Iconic modernist microfictions emerge at significant nodes of narrative innovation: the tense patterns of incremental repetition and a gula dis o ti uit i the i iatu e sket hes of “tei s Th ee Po t aits of Pai te s open paths of verbal patterning explored by experimentalists as different as Samuel Beckett a d Cha les Be stei ; the u ado ed, de la ati e p ose of Kafka s pa a le, Befo e the La (1915), reveals a conceptual sophistication which influences writers from Jorge Luis Borges to J. M. Coetzee; the imbrication of sense, affect and imagination in the diminutive but dense e al i o s of Vi gi ia Woolf s post-i p essio isti Blue a d G ee 22 resonate in the tableaux of stylists as varied as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jeanette Winterson; and the ro ust, plai speaki g of E est He i g a s A Ve “ho t “to i fo s a a ge of o k f o ‘a o d Ca e s i i alis to Tao Li s ult a-hip realism. 1.5 Recent resurgence Despite its credibility as an ancient folk form and its modernist experimental currency, microfiction only takes root in the public literary imagination as an independent genre in the wake of the experimentalism of the 1950s and 1960s. Amongst the numerous, magisterial, and strikingly diverse very sort works from this period, pulsati g ith the spi it of e pe i e t a d o dpla , 23 e ight ou t Bo ges etafi tio al aste pie es i Ficciones (1956), Be kett s Te ts fo Nothi g –1952) which constitute an important minimalist turn in his oeuvre, the phenomenological exemplars of Robbe-G illet s Snapshots (1962), the ludic i te te tualit of ‘o e t Coo e s “e e E e pla Fi tio s , a d J. G. Balla d s virtuosic arrangement of fragments in The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). The upsurge of microfictional forms is arguably symptomatic of a more fundamental cultural shift which the philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard famously refers to in terms of the disintegration of the historically legitimated grand narrative of human progress into multiple, 19 F ied a , What Makes , . 20 ‘ugoff, Ho eopathi “t ategies , . 21 Nelles, Mi ofi tio , . 22 See Lorraine Sim, Virginia Woolf: The Patterns of Ordinary Experience (Farnham; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 74– ; “ue ‘oe, The I pa t of Post-I p essio is , The Ca idge Co pa io to Vi gi ia Woolf, st ed., eds. Sue Roe and Susan Sellers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 164–90 (pp. 170–3). 23 ‘o e t “hapa d, I t odu tio , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, pp. xiii–xvi (p. xiv). local, contingent and competing accounts of the world as it is experienced in practical terms.24 Transposing this insight to the literary sphere, the proliferation of new forms is indicative of the diversification of narrative strategies required to come to grips with what McHale terms a shift in dominant from the modernist to postmodernist aesthetic.25 The emergence into an increasingly diverse narrative field of autonomous, microfictional forms is thus indicative of a sustained challenge to the progressive logic of Bildung – the formation of the autonomous subject, which finds its exemplary vehicle in the Bildungsroman.26 A g o i g u e of p o i e t pu li atio s p o ote e sho t fo s: a Mi ute “to ies spe ial issue of TriQuarterly edited by Coover constitutes the first successful attempt to gather together narrative miniatures;27 while The New Yorker championed emerging minimalist writers including Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Mary Robison, Ann Beattie and Tobias Wolff.28 This resurgent interest in short narrative forms in the 1970s and 1980s was by no means limited to the United States. Alongside the continued influence of short works by British and Irish writers such as Beckett, Ballard and Muriel Spark emerged an exciting younger generation which included such figures as Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Angela Carter; the last, in particular, penning numerous and strikingly original miniatures. Indeed, significant works reflecting a spectrum of approaches to the short narrative form are published across the A glopho e o ld , a o gst a othe s, Ca ada s Ali e Mu o, Ne )eala d s C. K. “tead, “outh Af i a s Nadi e Go di e , a d Aust alia s Da id Malouf. The sustained attention devoted to minimalist and microfictional forms by writers, critics, educationalists, and publishers in the United States places it consistently at the vanguard of the evolution of this enigmatic and protean genre. Significant anthologies of very short stories – stories included or excluded by the purely quantitative measure of their word count – begin to appear in the 1980s.29 I i g a d Ila a Wie e Ho e s Short Shorts (1982) set its limit at two thousand five hundred words and gathered an admirable historical and international selection of canonical microfiction, and Robert “hapa d s a d Ja es Tho as s Sudden Fiction (1986), Sudden Fiction International (1989), and New Sudden Fiction (2007), all with limits of one thousand five hundred words, quickly became standard works in literature and creative writing courses. Flash Fiction (1992), Flash Fiction Forward (2005) and Flash Fiction International (2015) – edited in various combinations by Robert Shapard, James and Denise Thomas, Tom Hazuka and Christopher Merrill – set their upper limit at seven hundred and fifty words, while Je o e “te s Micro Fiction (1996) included only works of three hundred 24 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984), pp. 33–6. 25 Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 6–11. 26 Walte Be ja i , The “to telle , Illuminations, trans. Harry Zorn, pp. 87–88 (83-107). 27 “ee “hapa d, I t odu tio , p. i , a d Go do Lish i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 255. 28 Kim A. He zi ge , I t odu tio : O the Ne Fi tio , Mississippi Review, 40/41 (1985), 7–22 (7); see also Mi hael Ma to , “elli g “ho t “to ies , Mississippi Review, 40/41 (1985), 58–61. 29 See Nelles, Mi ofi tio , –90. words or less, and both works remain prominent points of access to contemporary microfiction. Pressing short narrative forms towards their minimal extreme remains an abiding concern for many writers, and the rapidly evolving media of literature present both challenges and opportunities in this respect. Digital technology in particular effects a radical shift both in the structures of communication and in the speed at which literary miniatures are created, published, accessed and processed. The ongoing shift from page to screen, with its concomitant incorporation of linear and non-linear processes of reading, occasions a radical reconsideration of the ways in which verbal material is organized into literary form. Websites and blogs continue to provide fertile ground for the composition and archiving of miniature works, albeit often of extremely variable quality, as do various mobile communication technologies. Nicholas Royle draws attention to the first mobile app developed to host [ ]ui k fi tio s hi h ai to take us to the e ui k of thi gs i o de to dis o e the iti g of ou ti e. It should not be forgotten, however, that the serialised mobile phone 30 novel – consisting of chapters limited by a fixed number of characters to which readers can subscribe and which are distributed principally by text messaging – had already aimed at achieving a similar sense of immediacy and accessibility. Another recent development in this format uses social media platforms and micro-blogging tools such as twitter to explore both serialised forms – Je ife Ega s Bla k Bo a d Da id Mit hell s The ‘ight “o t (2014) are the most prominent examples – and single tweets limited to a miniscule one hundred and forty characters. That the miniature is increasingly seen as a professional genre – taught widely as part of creative and professional writing courses, as well as a category in an increasing number of writing competitions – has also resulted in a rapid increase in both the number of very short stories written and published (often online), and in the didactic material addressing the writing of various types of flash-, quick- a d i ofi tio . “te s Micro Fictions was the first anthology compiled entirely from competition pieces, with more recent anthologies emerging f o Calu Ke s a d Vale ie O ‘io da s UK National Flash-Fiction Day, which has to date culminated in the publication of Jawbreakers (2012), Scraps (2013) and Eating My Words (2014). Although its present commercial success is likely to wane over time, microfiction has proved itself a resilient and adaptable genre, and one likely to find expressive routes in the future. 2. THE AESTHETICS OF SHORTNESS 2.1 The idea of shortness 30 Ni holas ‘o le, Qui k Fi tio : “o e ‘e a ks o W iti g Toda , Mosaic, 47.1 (2014), 23–39 (27). A o di g to Ho e, [t]he o e thi g e a e su e of is that the sho t sho t [sto ] is sho te tha the sho t sto . 31 Yet, on closer inspection, even this truism proves problematic: how might we distinguish the exact point at which merely short becomes very short? The question of e it has ee take up i t o su sta tial iti al pie es, No a F ied a s epo hal What Makes a “ho t “to “ho t? a d Willia Nelles s o e e e t Mi ofi tio : What Makes a Ve “ho t “to Ve “ho t? . Both are principally concerned with the techniques through which brevity is achieved, rather than with the conceptual problem of shortness itself, although Friedman does offer some speculation in this regard. Thus, it is not entirely surprising that although writers, critics, publishers and readers, disagree widely on what distinguishes short from very short, the tendency in anthologising very short work has been to emphasise the purely quantitative measure of word count. Along with regularly renaming and redefining the genre, editors have prescribed progressively lo e o d li its fo i lusio , f o the , o ds of Ho e s sho t-shorts in 1982, to the o ds of Ke s a d O ‘io da s i ofi tio s i .32 In the shadows of the totalising economic logic of late capitalism, the qualities of these stories are all too often reduced to fixed quantitative measures – word count, the amount of space a text occupies, or the time it takes to be read – hi h fo us atte tio o hat F ied a o te ds a e the symptoms athe tha the auses 33 of brevity. While Friedman recognises that certain narrative conditions are hospitable to shortness – p i ipall the ep ese tatio of i t i si all s all e e ts, o la ge e e ts edu ed i le gth a ious te h i ues of reduction34 – shortness itself proves curiously resistant to direct description. To Friedman, what is most significant about shortness is that it involves a principle of parsimony, and hence an economy which cannot be quantified in absolute terms: a sho t sto should ot e eed[…] the eeds of [its] effe t, 35 but rather contain only those elements required for the story to communicate its singularity.36 2.2 The question of scale In short fiction, and even more so in very short fiction, quantity becomes the essential quality of the work in question, and yet one which cannot be expressed in terms of a fixed, quantitative measure. The concept of scale provides the most convincing means of grasping quantity as part of an ongoing process of quantification, reinvesting dynamism in narrative 31 I i g Ho e, I t odu tio , Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories, eds. Irving Howe and Ilana Wiener (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), pp. ix–xv (p. x). 32 Nelles Mi ofi tio , offe s a detailed list of these p es iptio s, hi h is issi g o l the ost e e t ite atio of Ke s a d O ‘io da s th ee a thologies hi h disti guish lo ge flash fi tio s f o i ofi tio , the former being restricted to five hundred words a d the latte to o e hu d ed I t odu tio , Jawbreakers (National Flash Fiction Day, 2012), Kindle ed., location 212–229). 33 No a F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “to “ho t? , Modern Fiction Studies, 4.2 (1958), 103–117 (104). 34 F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “to “ho t? , . 35 F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “to “ho t? , . 36 F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “to “ho t? , –107; 110–111. situations which are all too easily mistaken as static.37 Scale is a relative measure of both spatial and temporal quantity, a relation of size and duration which applies equally to the literary work itself and to the contexts of its production and reception. As in the case of the visual arts, it is helpful to distinguish between internal and external scale. Internal scale describes the relation of parts to other parts, and of parts to the whole or the form of the work in question and deals with proportion of parts to one another.38 The question of proportion applies to literature at both a formal and representational level: characters, action, and plot must be proportioned so as to constitute a narrative which is either believable o app op iate to a o k s aestheti ai s.39 External scale describes the relation of the work in question to other works and forms, to readers and the contexts of reading, and to genre, medium and other markers of literature as a world system.40 In microfiction, the internal scale of the work accounts for the manner in which many very sho t o ks appea to e like ost o di a sho t sto ies, only more so ,41 i Ho e s esti atio ; diffe i g i deg ee ut ot i ki d, 42 according to Friedman. Heming a s M . a d M s. Elliot a d G ee e s “pe ial Duties oth offe highl o de sed a ou ts of strained marital relationships, yet retain the narrative structures and proportions which make them comparable to longer forms. It is likewise the internal scale, established by the relation of their parts, which must remain relatively stable as these stories diminish in length in order for them to maintain the coherence of their storyworlds – the odels of ho did hat to and with whom, when, where, why and i hat fashio .43 When such internal scale is dis upted, i ofi tio eases to o fo to o e tio al a ati e ules: it egi [s] to e hi it ualitati e diffe e es 44 which do not derive solely from crossing a quantitative threshold, as Nelles appears to suggest,45 but arise because the crossing of this threshold evidences a shift from questions of internal to those of external scale. At this threshold – between shorter and shortest – microfiction becomes overwhelmingly concerned with conveying a sense of immediacy. Much as with minimalist visual art, which 37 “ee Ni a a Ta oukhi, The “ ale of Wo ld Lite atu e , New Literary History, 39.3 (2008), 599–617 (604). 38 See Frances Colpitt, Minimal Art: The Critical Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), pp. 74– ; F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “to “ho t? , ; “usa “te a t, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 47; F a çois Ca oi i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, pp. 256–57. 39 F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “to “ho t? , –117. 40 See Colpitt, Minimal Art, pp. 75–8. For important discussions of scale in relation to literary genre and the world lite atu e pa adig , see Ta oukhi, The “ ale of Wo ld Lite atu e , –606; 612– ; Wai Chee Di o k, Ge es as Fields of K o ledge , PMLA, 122.5 (2007), 1377–1388 (1382–1383) and Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (London; New York: Verso, 2013), pp. 39–43; 328–29. 41 Ho e, I t odu tio , p. . 42 F ied a , What Makes A “ho t “to “ho t? , . 43 Da id He a , “to o ld , Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, eds. David Herman, Manfred Jahn and Marie-Laure Ryan (London; New York, Routledge, 2005), pp. 569–70 (p. 570). 44 Nelles, Mi ofi tio , . 45 See Nelles, Mi ofi tio , ; . i te ogates the i t i ate elatio ship et ee p ese e a d s ale, 46 the most minimal microfiction achieves its sense of immediacy through a symmetrical manipulation of physical and temporal s ale, so that the du atio of the sto e e t des i ed losel o espo ds to the le gth of ti e e ui ed to p o ess the dis ou ses i hi h those e e ts a e p ese ted .47 ‘i “i pso s I ked takes app o i atel thi t se o ds to ead, fo e a ple – a realistic temporal scale for the brief, nervous pause it depicts in its one hundred and fifty words, as a tattooist is about to tattoo her first customer. Pressed further, the shortest microfiction presents itself in terms of singularities which evade easy classification, and which by their extremity come to constitute events in their own right, often evoking an aesthetics of the sublime. 2.3 The minimal sublime The su li e efe s to a spe ifi t pe of egati e pleasu e 48 which arises when we encounter phenomena of extreme scale. Initially experiencing a sort of terror in the face of apparently imminent threat,49 the capacity of the mind to conceptualise the idea of the infinite, and to assert it above even the most overwhelming sensory experiences, reasserts human agency a d auto o . Pleasu e is de i ed f o the su li e ot e ause [it] a ouses fea , ut e ause it alls fo th ou st e gth .50 The aesthetics of the sublime provide an imperfect means of presenting that which cannot be represented – the absolute.51 In this sense, the extremities of scale associated with the aesthetics of the sublime are ciphers for the absolute. Pi otal to the p ese t a gu e t is “usa “te a t s asse tio that [s] all thi gs a e sublime as readily as the grand material phe o e a of atu e a d hu a aki g .52 The minimal sublime – the most radical pole of smallness, shortness and brevity evoked in contemplating disappearance, absence, nothingness, and the void – informs an aesthetic movement towards the infinitesimal. Its literary manifestations are numerous and diverse: at one extreme the material experiments of micrographia explore the sublime extreme of minimal scale through tiny writing, principally inscribed or printed in miniature books which press the threshold between the visible and the invisible;53 at the other extreme, we find i ofi tio s su h as Be kett s Fizzle hi h e a i es the li i al poi t at hi h o ept, experience, language and knowledge threaten to collapse into one another, exemplifying the co ditio s u de hi h i ofi tio p o es its aptitude to the su li e task of p ese ti g the 46 Colpitt, Minimal Art, p. 73. 47 Nelles, Mi ofi tio , . 48 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis; Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1987), p. 98. 49 See Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 129; Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), p. 39. 50 Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 121. 51 See Jean-F a ois L ota d, The “u li e a d the A a t-Ga de , The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), pp. 98–9 (89–107). 52 Stewart, On Longing, p. 75. 53 See Stewart, On Longing, pp. 37–9; 41–3. u p ese ta le, 54 to recall Lyotard. The elliptical fragments and aphorisms of Schlegel, Nietzsche and Chekhov often grapple with the minimal sublime, both at the level of form and content. Equally evocative in this respect are self-reflexive and recursive miniatures such as Joh Ba th s ele ated F a e-Tale hi h, if ead o e tl , e dlessl loops its si gle ph ase, ONCE UPON A TIME THE‘E WA“ A “TO‘Y THAT BEGAN , Bo ges s The Li a of Ba el, hi h de o st ates the pa ado i al apa it of i iatu e o ks effe ti el to ep ese t i fi it alo gside the i fi itesi al; a d Da e Egge s s The e A e “o e Thi gs He “hould Keep To Hi self, the fou la k pages of hich communicate both the sublime threat of absolute absence – death – and the sublime promise of the infinite and infinite possibility. The minimal scale of much microfiction is able to intensify the immanence of the work, constituting a type of sublime access to a reality which transcends the work even as it points to the very heart of its aesthetic. In successful microfiction scale and intensity operate in tandem: as the scale of the work decreases, so its intensity increases, reflecting the aesthetic logic of the maxim, multum in parvo, or more in less, according to which the singularity of the i i al o k esides p e isel i its apa it fo t a s e di g a li ited o te t of o igi and at the sa e ti e eatl o tai i g a u i e se of pote tial sig ifi a e.55 3. TOWARDS A CONTEMPORARY THEORY AND TYPOLOGY OF MICROFICTION 3.1 A paradigm of relation The question of how readers relate to microfiction, and how microfictional stories relate to one another, is central to understanding its ongoing development. Microfiction is a sociable genre. It is comparatively rare to find a very short story published in isolation. Reasons vary, a gi g f o Joh so s athe i al ut p a ti al assess e t, that [e]dito s like [ i ofi tio ] […] e ause it ea s e a pu lish se e al titles i a si gle issue, the e eati g the illusio of di e sit o the o te ts page ,56 to Ba te s idealis hi h, i ega di g i ofi tio as a fi tion-of-p o i it , is a le to lai that its sto ies e eal so ethi g a out the s ale of ou li es, ot so u h that di i ish e t has o u ed ut that i ti a a d o u it ha e i eased .57 What is crucial in both cases is a sense that at the heart of the microfictional enterprise is the question of relation: of works to one another, of works to readers, and finally of readers to one another, as these works collectively address a eadi g pu li hi h, as Wa e e alls, is defi itio a i defi ite audience rather than a so ial o stitue that ould e u e ed o a ed, 58 and hence marked by diverse and divergent views on the nature, limits, merits and effects of the genre. 54 Jean-F a ois L ota d, P ese ti g the U p ese ta le: The “u li e , t a s. Lisa Lie a , Artforum, 20.8 (1982), pp. 64–9 (p. 64). 55 Stewart, On Longing, 5355 Stewart, On Longing, 53 56 Joh so i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 232. 57 Ba te , I t odu tio , p. . 58 Michael Warner, Publics and Counter-publics (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 55–6. The rapid proliferation of microfiction as a professional genre – one taught in many creative writing courses, codified in numerous textbooks, published in lucrative literary journals and agazi es, the su je t of i te atio al iti g o petitio s a d festi als su h as the UK s National Flash Fiction Day, and imbedded within an ever-proliferating number of online platforms – has meant that a great number of its best works have been written with a specific set of relations – a system – in mind. As with every genre, the microfictional system takes the mutable shape of an emergent set of relations between writers, works and readers.59 Such elatio s ofte i ol e e isiti g histo i al fo s, as e e plified i Bo ges s a d Ca te s use of folklore and fable. Equally prominent are the intertextual relations commonly used by writers of mi ofi tio to i ease the fu tio o i te p eti e ea h of a sto . 60 Consider, fo e a ple, Teju Cole s t itte fi tio s, Seven Short Stories About Drones,61 a series of short tweets, each of which begins with the opening line of a celebrated novel, followed by an incisive phrase carefully conceived to convey the brutal futility of drone warfare. Particularly significant are the increasingly numerous longer cycles from leading authors which are able to demonstrate both continuity and diversity. Jim Cra e s The Devil’s Larder is one of several compelling microfictional cycles – othe s i lude “tei s Tender Buttons, Bo ges Book of Imaginary Beasts, Ca te s The Bloody Chamber, G a s Mean Tales, Butle s Severance, a d Ke p s Twentysix – which weave together distinct miniature narratives by sha ed th eads of otif, the e, st le o fo al o st ai t. I deed, Ke p s is a old a d inventive cycle – unapologetically philosophical, self-consciously writerly, yet also visceral and explicit in its narration of twenty-six homosexual encounters, each of which confronts the capacities and limits of language as it attempts to mediate the overwhelming intensity of the body and erotic experience. These stories exemplify many of the most compelling qualities of contemporary microfiction. 3.2 Microfiction and the event I Ke p s L, fo i sta e, the eade e ou te s a si gle e e t egi i g in media res,62 as a t a sge de p ostitute, ‘u , hu o ousl a ates o al se ith he latest t ade to a attentive audience cruising for sex in a public park.63 Yet this single event is carefully situated in a generic field, allowing minimal verbal patterns to imply a great deal of detail. Rapidly oscillating between quite distinct narrative techniques and styles allows Kemp to incorporate several typical tropes of the miniature. The aphoristic philosophical reveries with which the piece begins and ends – I ust ha e a od e ause so e o s u e o je t li es i e ,a d [i]t is thus ot a uestio of la guage o the od , ut language and the od – contrast 59 See Frow, Genre 124–8; Dimock, Ge es as Fields of K o ledge , –81. 60 Nelles, Mi ofi tio , . 61 Teju Cole, “e e “ho t “to ies A out D o es , The New Inquiry, 14 January 2013, http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/dtake/seven-short-stories-about-drones/. 62 “ee Nelles, Mi ofi tio , – ; L dia Da is i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 230. 63 Jo atha Ke p, L , Twentysix (Brighton; London: Myriad, 2011), p. 57 sha pl ith ‘u s o ologue hi h takes the fo of a joke, eplete ith the pu hli e, the asta d ould t e e s allo , de o st ati g the p o li it i u h i ofi tio fo 64 twists, surprises and inversions. Yet the force of this work emerges from a third narrative register. Through minimal but suggestive detail, Kemp carefully balances the sense of contemporaneity and the present, so central to microfiction,65 with the historical details of ‘u s fo e life as ‘ud , a life spe t ith his Chelsea hooliga ates a d a plified its s oli all ha ged s a s he e the B itish Bulldog a d U io Ja k tattoos ha e ee e o ed .66 This tension allows the narrator to polarise feminine and masculine, emphasising the o e ts he ‘ud akes a appea a e, a d ‘u s fe i i e de ea ou disappea s i a apou of iole e , all i o de to a k the epipha i e e t – the o e t he ho she a ts to e a d ho she appea s to e oi ide […] glo iousl .67 Such events are sources of radical novelty and change. They erupt within an existing order in a fundamentally unpredictable manner,68 powerful as they are fleeting, and, in their singularity, call to be witnessed, to be represented, even as they remain essentially inassimilable to any system or order. Literature harbours events precisely to the extent that it is hospitable to the emergence of singularities – te ts a ked thei esista e to ei g des i ed i ge e al atego ies o o epts 69 – since, as Attridge e og ises, si gula it is ot a p ope t ut a e e t hi h takes pla e ot o l i the ge e atio of the o k ut i its reception.70 Microfiction grapples with the singularity of events in several ways, with many of its best works taking up the sublime challenge of presenting the unpresentable. Centred on the motif of an empty white room – the tabula rasa upon which potential events erupt, and upon which consequences of these events are traced, elliptically and uncertainly – Jea ette Wi te so s The White ‘oo ea es togethe sho t editatio s o the interpenetration of temporality, affect, memory and phenomenological experience in order to ep ese t the aught o e t ope i g i to a lifeti e. 71 Exemplary of numerous of the most significant aestheti su tleties of i ofi tio , The White ‘oo e poses the e e t as a threshold upon which the distinction between poetry and prose, contraction and expansion, determinism and chance, fragility and resilience, and nostalgia and avant-gardism are rendered problematic.72 64 Ke p, L , pp. ; . “ee also Nelles, Mi ofi tio , . 65 “ee ‘o le, Qui k Fi tio , –9. 66 Ke p, L , p. . 67 Ke p, L , p. . 68 Alai Badiou, The E e t as T a s-Bei g , Theoretical Writings, trans. Ray Brassier and Alberto Toscano (London; New York: Continuum, 2006), pp. 99–104 (pp. 100–101). 69 Timothy Clark, The Poetics of Singularity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 2. 70 Derek Attridge, The Singularity of Literature (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 64. 71 Jea ette Wi te so , The White ‘oo , Guardian, 17 July 2004. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/17/originalwriting.fiction1 [Accessed 2 June 2015]. 72 “ee “tua t D ek i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 241; Kelly, ibid., pp. 239–40; Fred Chappell, Ibid., p. 227; Davis, i id., p. ; Nelles, Mi ofi tio , ; Ba te , I t odu tio , –21; 23. Events are equally important to microfiction in thematic terms, and numerous works, such as Ke p s L a o e, add ess a si gle e eptio al e e t o epipha i o e t. Balla d s T a k si ila l takes shape a ou d a si gle e e t – a murder – which arrives suddenly in a tense atmosphere of barely suppressed hostility. Sheringham – a p ofesso of io he ist at the u i e sit – entertains long-time Maxted – a u -do athlete ith a ad deg ee 73 – who is having an affair with the fo e s ife – by playing him a series of microsonic recordings he has made. Through this miniature sonic universe, emblematic of the principle of multum in parvo in its amplification of parts of the world ordinarily unheard or concealed, the reader encounters suggestions of the event to come: Maxted is poisoned by Sheringham, and as he dies, is enfolded by the uncanny sound of a recorded and amplified kiss he had shared with “he i gha s ife. The representation of liminal events – and particularly of death – is often linked to a pursuit of te h i al i tuosit . A o di g to F a is, [ ] ite s ha e al a s halle ged the sel es to a solute edu tio , skeleto s. The te pt death .74 Indeed, for Royle, the accelerations of the contemporary miniature – the works he theorises as quick fiction – constitute a curious species of life-writing.75 In the headlong race to the impossible experience of death, this writing witnesses the paradoxical appearance of life – the life-gi i g d op […] that ill sp ead an intensit o the page 76 – in the disappearance of the longue durée of traditional narrative time as it approaches zero. This peculiar phenomenon of appearance in disappearance is clearly evident in the virtuosic microfiction of Lydia Davis, while the work of Blanchot and Beckett consistently address the sublime intensity of the space between life and death – the e e t hi h i its u ep ese ta ilit al a s alls to e ep ese ted; the i tuitio of e little…al ost othi g 77 in the uneasy utterance of last words, such as those of Patrick White s late i iatu e, The “ ea i g Potato . He e i ofi tio affi s its si gula it , retrieving the force of novelty from events past by giving oblique representation to the inarticulable intensity of the event to come. 3.3 Miniaturization and literary miniatures If, as “te a t suggests, the i iatu e is the otatio of the o e t a d the o e t s o se ue es, 78 its aesthetic fate would seem closely tied to that of the event. However, where the event constitutes a point of intensified dynamism, the miniature seeks stasis – a o ld of a ested ti e […] to eate a te sio o diale ti et ee i side a d outside, et ee p i ate a d pu li […] [a d] et ee the spa e of the su je t a d the spa e of the 73 J. G. Balla d, T a k , The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard (New York; London: Norton, 2009), pp. 68–71 (p. 69). 74 H. E. F a is i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 231. 75 ‘o le, Qui k Fi tio , . 76 Jo Willia s i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 257. 77 Simon Critchley, Very Little…Al ost Nothi g: Death, Philosophy, Literature (London; New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 180. 78 Stewart, On Longing, p. 46. so ial .79 By abstracting the essential and subtracting the inessential, the miniature intensifies the representational capacity of literature through its diminution of scale, measuring the distance between its contracted form and the expanded narrative vision from which it is drawn. The miniature remains perhaps the most pervasive microfictional type. Its techniques are closely tied to the emergence and development of the art tale in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as distinct from its folk predecessors,80 and also to a transhistorical range of experiments with micrographic forms of tiny writing. Miniatures which involve a diminution in their external scale tend to take a concrete form, exhibited most overtly in the production of physically tiny micrographia – miniature books and tiny writing – hi h a e e le ati of aft a d dis ipli e ,81 and to this extent invested with a symbolic force and ritual significance which recalls the ancient religious association of inscription and power.82 This power transforms the micrographic work into a microcosm – a world in miniature – i hi h the i fi ite ti e […] of the o ld [is] ollapsed ithi a i i u of ph si al spa e. 83 The intensity of the microcosmic miniature is intimately connected to the medium through which it is gi e its shape. The li its of odil skill i iti g 84 are significantly extended by the increased precision of technologies of printing, itself radicalised by the rise of digital technology. Here the material distinction of short and long texts is minimal, and both are habitually transposed into the virtual world of cyberspace which blurs any clear distinction between macrocosm and microcosm, infinite and i fi itesi al. Yet, i og aphi e pe i e tatio th i es i this ediu . Ch isti e Wilks s Underbelly (2010), for example, is a self-contained multimedia anthology of microfictional fragments which explore the untold history of women in mining, dragging the reader interactively through the subterranean microcosm of a nineteenth-century Yorkshire coal mine. Miniatures which involve a diminution in their internal scale resemble longer narrative forms with respect to their parts and proportions, relying on careful omissions, contractions and condensations to convey a great deal of implicit information. They demo st ate that [ ]hat is i i al […] is the means, ot the e d. 85 Drawing on notable precursors such as Chekhov and Hemingway, the miniature finds its most consistent exponents in the minimalist and postminimalist writers – Raymond Carver, Mary Robison, Amy Hempel, Ann Beattie, Donald Barthelme, Tobias Wolff, Richard Ford, Bobbie Ann Mason, Lydia Davis, Jayne Anne Philips, 79 Stewart, On Longing, pp. 67–8. 80 See Paul March-Russell, The Short Story: An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 9–11. 81 Stewart, On Longing, p. 38. 82 See Berjouhi Bowler, The word as image (London: Studio Vista, 1970), pp. 7–9; Marc Botha, The Persistence of Minimalism, Doctoral Thesis, Durham University (2011), pp. 267–71. 83 Stewart, On Longing, 39. 84 Stewart, On Longing, p. 37. 85 Joh Pe eault, Mi i al A st a ts , Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: Dutton, 1968), pp. 256–62 (p. 260). Bret Easton Ellis and Dave Eggers, amongst many others – who construct remarkable o tai e s of o p essed ea i g. 86 While longer narrative forms rely on establishing o ple a d detailed patte s to o e thei se se, the i iatu e deplo s a field of fa ilia sig s 87 – generic characters and situations, historically and culturally specific events or objects – which act as ciphers for large amounts of implicit information which has been carefully condensed.88 Ma of the sto ies i C a e s The Devil’s Larder draw on a nostalgic attachment to familiar images and practical wisdom, revivifying familiar patterns of the folktale, parable and anecdote. The cycle interrogates food in all its material manifestations, together with its associated spheres of hunger, craving, satiety and excess, a spectrum of culinary customs, habits, and rituals, and their role as bearers of individual, social and cultural memory. In a athe austi a ou t of o te po a health fads, C a e s e ou ts the eati g ha its of a egi e ted, ell-o ga ized, elia le a ho e t es his diet a ou d a a iet of foods to see off death , a itual satu ated ith irony inasmuch as he follows this diet ithout a eak, u til the da he die[s] .89 The small scale of microfiction is thus adept atrepresenting both the everyday and the epiphanic, and both are capable of functioning as e le [s] of the u i e sal 90 and to this e te t de o st ati g that hat ight e see as a i o os i te de is a o os i as ell. 91 Miniature stories do not dispense with detail, but rather displace it, and the reality they depict exists at an equal or greater intensity to those of lo ge fo s, o li uel eite ati g F ied a s poi t that it is the suffi ie of the brevity of a miniature story to its effect which defines its excellence. De o ah Le s ‘o a p o ides a si ila l pote t ehi le th ough hi h to e a i e the contemporary miniature. The story opens with the first of a series of dreams set in Rome in hi h a a eless p otago ist o f o ts [h]e hus a d ho is goi g to et a he . 92 The microcosm of the dream is nested within the microcosm of the story, which traces the very o di a e e ts of a ouple s ief holida a d thei etu to a s o UK fo Ch ist as. Both microcosms are rendered in taut, evocatively stark prose, the uneasy angularity of which amplifies the tension between these two miniature worlds – the dynamic continuum of the everyday punctuated and rendered problematic by the static, self-contained tableau of the dream.93 It is unclear, finally, whether the dream represents a realm of desire or of fear, and 86 Cynthia Whitney Hallett, Minimalism and the Short Story – Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999), p. 11. 87 Stewart, On Longing, p. 44. 88 “ee Ba te , I t odu tio , p. ; Nelles, Mi ofi tio , ; C thia Whit e Hallett, Minimalism and the Short Story – Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999), p. 4; Howe, I t odu tio , p. . 89 Ji C a e, , The Devil’s Larder (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 112. 90 Ho e, I t odu tio , p. i. 91 Stewart, On Longing, 63. 92 De o ah Le , ‘o a, Black Vodka (High Wycombe: And Other Stories, 2013), p. 109. 93 See Stewart, On Longing, p. 54. it is this measured ambiguity which characterises the miniature worlds of tales, tableaux, ig ettes a d sket hes, e a li g the to esta lish the dista e et ee the o te t at ha d a d the a ated o te t 94 through which it becomes possible to begin mapping the correspondences between narrative structure and the real. 3.4 Writing in fragments The fragment proves particularly apposite to the task of addressing the essential contingency of reality. Fragments offer a radical and compelling alternative to the encompassing logic of systems. Reaching across history, the fragment as literary form occupies a position both terminal and foundational, its words at once the scattered remnants of fractured wholes, and points of inception for new configurations of thought.95 The fragment disrupts any straightforward distinction between philosophy and literature, and although always of a li ited s ale, it is o etheless ha a te ised a esse tial i o pletio 96 which indicates that it should fo e e e e o i g a d e e e pe fe ted .97 In this sense, it is a genre al a s te di g – one way towards the finite, the other towards the infinite.98 I this espe t e ight ou te pose the f ag e ta less ess of Be kett s late o ella, Worstward Ho (1983), arrived at through an immense deconstructive labour, to the f ag e ta pa ata is of ‘o iso s Why Did I Ever? (2001), a novel wrought from extensive e o st u ti e la ou as its autho attled a de ade of ite s lo k. I deed, the e is g eat a iet i f ag e ta iti g: “tei s Blood On The Dining Room Floor (1933/1982) is a u de ste , Balla d s The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) a cycle of fragments, while Richard B autiga s I Watched The World Glide Effortlessly By , Joh Cage s Empty Words , a d “te e M Caffe s Panopticon (1984) defy easy generic description altogether. Yet, it is the deta hed f ag e t, hi h, like a i iatu e o k of a t, has to e e ti el isolated f o the su ou di g o ld a d e o plete i itself ,99 which best captures the transhistorical eclecticism of microfiction. Indeed, March-Russell holds that the short story generally conforms to a logic of f ag e tatio , a eaki g o sepa ati g off f o a i posed li it .100 What very short forms reveal is that this fragmentation is not merely a relation of part to whole, but also of part as whole. This was certainly the aim of the Jena Romantics, whose self-reflexive fragments aim to expose the capacity for singular works to instantiate a universal logic. The varied 94 Stewart, On Longing, p. 48. 95 “ee Heathe M Hugh, B oke E glish: What We Make of F ag e ts , Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), pp. 68–86 (p. 70). 96 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe & Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, trans. Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: State U of New York P, 1988), p. 42. 97 Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragment 116, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 32. 98 Heathe M Hugh, B oke E glish , p. . 99 Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragment 206, Philosophical Fragments, p. 45. 100 March-Russell, The Short Story, p. 167. fragmentary and aphoristic works of, amongst others, Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, Anton Chekhov, August Strindberg, Oscar Wilde, Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot and Fernando Pessoa expose a wider conception of fragment,101 capable of grounding parables and proverbs, epigrams and epigraphs, digressions and allegories, anecdotes and jokes. Chekho f e ue tl e plo ed f ag e ts, a gi g f o ief dialogues su h as A U su essful Visit , th ough the apho isti i iatu es of Heights , to the ti y pai s of Questio s a d A s e s , ut fai l o siste t i thei to e: al a s a usi g – sometimes benignly, but at others through an acerbic sarcasm; often didactic – he dispenses a great deal of advice, and here his writing is self-conscious in its contemporaneity. The remarkably diverse work of Lydia Davis explores a range of fragmentary forms, including the question-and-a s e fo at of Ju Dut , the e le ti se ue e, Ma ie Cu ie, “o Ho ou a le Wo a a d the ittil self-refle i e Ho ou i g the “u ju ti e hi h eads, It i a ia l p e edes, e e if it do ot altogethe supe sede, the dete i atio of hat is a solutel desi a l a d just. 102 Alasdair Gray concludes his Lean Tales with a witty and progressively contracting series of fragments which terminate in the autopoietic gem, Ha i g eguiled ith fi tio u til I had o e left I eso ted to fa ts hi h also a out. 103 Don Patterson has published three volumes of aphorisms, which include timely provocations – You e ade a blog…Cle e o ! Ne t: flushi g 104 – alongside tiny but meaningful meditations on freedom and autonomy – Fate s ook, ut itali s. 105 In its insistence upon the capacity of singular works to convey universal truths, the fragment instantiates a threshold upon which clear distinctions of part and whole, closure and openness, and microcosm and macrocosm are undermined.106 Indeed, as the Jena Romantics ell u de stood, the f ag e t e e ges at a poi t […] o ti uousl flu tuati g et ee self- creation and self-dest u tio .107 The sublime point intuits the radical contingency at the heart of every literary event; its eminent reinterpretability, which recognises the social and ethi al di e sio of the f ag e t: that hat is i po ta t is to i t odu e into writing, th ough the f ag e t, the plu alit that i ea h of us is i tual, i all of us eal. 108 101 “ee Gitte Mose, Da ish “ho t Shorts in the 1990s and the Jena-‘o a ti F ag e ts , The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis, eds. Pet Winther, Jakob Lothe, and Hans H. Skei (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 81–95 (p. 87). 102 Lydia Da is, Ho o i g the “u ju ti e , The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (London and New York: Penguin, 2009), p. 377. 103 James Kelman, Agnes Owens and Alasdair Gray, Lean Tales (London, Vintage, 1995), p. 282. 104 Don Patterson, The Blind Eye: A Book of Late Advice (London: Faber, 2007), p. 35. 105 Patterson, The Blind Eye, p. 59. 106 “ee Mau i e Bla hot, The Athe aeu , The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 351–359 (p. 356). 107 Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragment 51, Philosophical Fragments, p. 24. 108 Bla hot, The Athe aeu , p. . 3.5 Microfiction and shifts in medium Literature is tied to the world, whether by its representational vocation or the effects it produces. Yet literature is also intimately connected to the medium through which it is expressed – to language and writing, of course, but moreover to the means by which language and writing are patterned, preserved, rendered communicable, or, in short, mediated. Yet, it would be an error to regard the literary medium either as separate to, or superimposed upon, work or world, or, indeed as separate to our involvement in both. As McLuhan famously e og ises, e e ediu is esse tiall a e te sio of ou sel es, 109 reflecting not only the desire but the means of becoming more immediately present in the world. Every innovation with respect to medium introduces a shift in the scale and intensity by which we are entangled with both work and world.110 It is this shared emphasis on scale and intensity which makes tracing a parallel logic through the evolution of microfiction to changes in the media of literary expression a fruitful exercise. Inextricable from technological transformation, the development of the literary medium has been for the most part progressive, emphasising greater durability, accessibility and portability. It begins with inscription on stone and clay, continues through the paper and vellum of scrolls and manuscripts, is revolutionised by the genesis of printing and the rise of the age of the book, and radically compressed and accelerated by the dawn of digital technology. Microfictional forms have tended to embrace experimental forms and media in order to gain an increasingly immediate access to the world, and to expose an irremissible sense of presence at the heart of the work. This is exemplified in the clear, but largely unremarked, parallel progression of microfictional forms and the technological advancement of literary media. Perhaps because visual perception offers our most immediate access to the world, these forms have tended to take their cue from visual techniques – from sketch, to snapshot, to flash fiction. The balance of impression and expression achieved in the sketches of visual artists aiming to capture the dynamism of experience, sometimes for its own sake and at others in preparation for more elaborate work, is matched by the immediacy of verbal sketches by such masters as Charles Dickens, Hemingway and Woolf. The latte s Blue a d G ee – written in 1921 and discussed above – aims for an immediate access to the complexities of sensory experience, creating a liminal region in which word and world bleed into one another in recollecting and projecting into language an impressionist melange of sensation and affect. Another fine, al eit e diffe e t t pe of sket h, is Ia Ha ilto Fi la s B eak fo Tea hi h although brief and descriptive – it describes two fishermen drinking tea around a small fire as 109 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London and New York: Routledge, 1964), 7. 110 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 8–9. mist gathers and rain begins to fall – is also highly evocative of a mood which allows Finlay to interrogate the nuanced relationship between location and the local, to measure customary behaviour against the singularity of the moment sketched. A great deal has been written of the disruptive effect of photography on the traditional e o o ies of i esis: o its apa it to o e the te se o-p ese e 111 of the externality of the social and public, and the intimacy of the private and personal, famously given shape i Ba thes s disti tio et ee studium and punctum;112 on its paradoxical ability to communicate the dynamic immediacy of existence while simultaneously abstracting this to a stati poi t, i di ati e of the i age as a iphe of a histo itte i fo ms and as an obtuse ealit 113 which somehow resists perception. Yet, as Merleau-Ponty maintains, access to the world always arrives through a dynamic process of perception,114 and it is precisely this perceptual dynamism with which Robbe-Grillet grapples in his early short fiction, Snapshots . The th ee i te o e ted i ofi tio s of I the Co ido s of the U de g ou d significantly extend the logic of the sketch by focusing attention on specific objects or events of perception – a giant advertisement on a wall and an escalator journey, for instance – in order to draw attention the capacity of the literary medium to grasp stasis and movement simultaneously and immediately, which is the precise capacity of the snapshot. The intensity of these small-scale o ks efle ts a lite a d i e to a ds a ealit [ hi h] ould o lo ge be permanently situated elsewhere, but here and now, 115 and the immanence of the snapshot is important to the work of a range of writers including Gabriel Josipovici, Beckett, Patrick White, John Barth, Charles Bukowski and Raymond Carver. A flash is a moment of immediate insight and of immanent access – a point of appearance, but also of disappearance. Not merely a question of intensified access, however, flash fiction is also a genre of transition. In the genealogy of mediatised microfictional forms, flash fiction follows the sketch and snapshot, taking shape in the wake of the digital revolution that begins i the s a d e t es o the t a slatio of all e isti g edia i to u e i al data a essi le th ough o pute s. 116 Although many flash fictions have neither a thematic nor a material connection to digital technology, they nonetheless reflect the epochal shift marked by the rise of digital culture, and exhibit an intuitive connection to new media thinking: the o e ge e of t o sepa ate histo i al t aje to ies: o puti g a d edia te h ologies , 111 See Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), p. 42. 112 Barthes, Camera Lucida, 26–7, 42–3. 113 Jacques Rancière, The Future of the Image, trans. Gregory Elliott (London and New York: Verso, 2007), 11-2. 114 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London and New York: 2002), pp. 77–83. 115 Alain Robbe-G illet, O “o e Outdated Notio s , Snapshots and Towards a Novel, trans. Barbara Wright (London: Calder and Boyars, 1965), pp. 351–59 (p. 68). 116 Lev Manovich, The Languages of New Media (Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 2001), p. 20. gi es ise to g aphi s, o i g i ages, sou ds, shapes, spa es, a d te ts that ha e e o e o puta le .117 If the advent of new media technologies offers unprecedented opportunities for the democratisation of knowledge, and indeed of the literary system in general, it also precipitates a predictable yet significant cultural anxiety regarding the future of literature and its institutional forms. These are most emblematically captured in debates around attention: Carr holds that we are witnessing an erosion of the deep reading through which the communicative function of writing becomes tied to increased attention and even complex understanding; Hayles is more cautious, so that while she acknowledges that digital and hypermedia alter aspects of reading and information retention, she argues persuasively that such alteration should not simplistically be conflated with degradation.118 Similar anxieties manifest with respect to the transformation of the literary field – not only by the ubiquity of digital technology and the rise of electronic literature, but particularly by the effects of digital communication technologies such as cellular phones, tablets, and laptops, along with the modes of communication associated with social media platforms and tools such as text messaging, twitter, facebook, and blogging. Flash fiction – both in printed and digital form – proves particularly adept at responding to the need for simultaneous intensification and acceleration marked by new media. As Bellamy suggests, hile eade s possess sho te atte tio s spa s tha p e iousl , the a e also ell- e uipped to p o ess i fo atio ui kl ,119 and arguably the media of microfiction are perfectly adapted to the task of evoking a sublime intensity where our access to the work and to the world is identical. This task is by no means straightforward since, as Royle recognises, [i]f e li e i the age of the sho t atte tio spa , e a e the sa e toke aught up i a history o histo ies of speed. 120 The vocation of microfiction resides not merely in matching the speed of the e e da , ut i hat H l e Ci ous […] alls fi d[i g] the slo ess i side the speed . Although microfiction is in some sense an opportunistic genre increasingly 121 framed by commercial and utilitarian concerns, this vocation remains at its heart inasmuch as its best works reflect a deep commitment to responding proactively to the pace of the contemporary condition. The effectiveness of this response hinges in large part on discovering a scale of expression appropriate to our contemporary sense of life, and it is to this scale that i ofi tio e ai s o ie ted. Fi all , the fu da e tal ualit [of i ofi tio ] […] is life itself,122 and in exploring the minimal scale but maximal intensity of these works we discover 117 Manovich, Languages of New Media, p. 20. 118 See Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2010), pp. 63–5; 90–1; N. Katherine Hayles, How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogensis (Chicago; London: Chicago University Press, 2012), pp. 62–8 119 Joe Da id Bella i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 238. 120 ‘o le, Qui k Fi tio , . 121 ‘o le, Qui k Fi tio , . 122 “hapa d, I t odu tio , Sudden Fiction, eds. “hapa d a d Tho as, p. i; see also ‘o le, Qui k Fi tio , . a ea s to see fast [ ut] d ell lo g .123 It is precisely in this sense, to return to the opening fo ulatio of this hapte , that i ofi tio fits ou age .124 123 Kell i Afte o ds , Sudden Fiction, eds. Shapard and Thomas, p. 241. 124 ‘o e ts, I t odu tio , p. ii.