Minifiction Blog

Cronopio, Cronopio, Wherefore are Thou Cronopio?

2012-01-28T17:00:00.019+01:00

I like reading Cortázar. He had a head start imagination and his writing feels fresh despite the 50 or 60 years since its first publication. Last week I took the opportunity to re-read his ‘Cronopios and Famas’ story cycle: 26 short texts that give the reader a glimpse into the parallel world – or parallel Buenos Aires – of the peculiar, colourful, sometimes squeaky creatures known as cronopios, famas, and esperanzas. It’s a bit like Tellytubbies, but for grown-ups.

Story

A tiny cronopio was looking for the front door key on the night table, the night table in the bedroom, the bedroom in the house, the house in the street. Here the cronopio stops; well, in order to go out to the street he needed the front door key.

So you have three different gangs, nations, races – categories, in any event. The cronopios: green, gullible, moist, sensitive and mischievous, and not too keen to put themselves out. The famas: assiduous, organised, and bureaucratic, but fundamentally patient and forgiving. And the esperanzas: well, a little harder to pin down. They all seem to live more or less harmoniously together, although the tales focus on incidents arising when their contrasting natures clash, with consequences that are often humorous.

Handkerchiefs

A fama is very rich and has a maid. This fama uses a handkerchief and then throws it in the wastepaper basket. He uses another, and throws that into the waste too. He carries on throwing all his handkerchiefs into the waste. When they’re all gone, he buys another box.

The maid collects the handkerchiefs and keeps them for herself. As she is so surprised by the famas behaviour, she can’t contain herself and asks him if the handkerchiefs should really be thrown away.

“Great fool,” says the fama, “you shouldn’t have asked. From now on you’ll wash my handkerchiefs, and I’ll save money."

At the same time, we see their customs, habits and priorities: bizarre to us but, of course, the norm in their reality. One thing I found endearing was the slightly off-centre yet somehow flawless logic of the cronopios.

Despite all the labels and stereotypes within, there is one fleeting moment in the book where Cortázar suggests that all of this is not immutable. In the story Eugenics we learn that cronopios never have children with their own kind, as “the first thing that a new-born cronopio does is rudely insult its father, in whom it sees the accumulation of misfortunes that will one day be its own.” For this reason the cronopios, it appears, turn to the famas to ‘fertilise’ their females. Nevertheless the offspring, educated in the ways of the cronopios, lose all similarity with their fama forbears within weeks. So famas aren’t doomed to be famas, cronopios aren’t doomed to be cronopios, and Cortázar, perhaps, gives eugenics a slap in the face and a little wink to behaviourism?

***

I'm not sure Cortázar would have been keen on the clocks...

Thanks, Monterroso, for Keeping it Short

2012-01-15T19:25:00.019+01:00

It's customary for those with an interest in the world of minifiction to periodically doff their hats to a piece called The Dinosaur (1959) by Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso. At a mere nine words including title, The Dinosaur has achieved a status that far outweighs its size.

Talking Dinosaurs with Martín Gardella

2011-07-31T22:01:00.035+02:00

I haven't read all of Martín Gardella's micros, because he's written many many many, but if there was one that starred a talking dinosaur I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Martín's first collection of micros, Instantáneas, which means something like 'stuff that happens in an instant', is out now via Andromeda Press and can be purchased here, here or even here, although only in Spanish at the moment I'm afraid.

Ever Wondered what Bruce Holland Rogers Gets Up To in the Shower?

2011-07-03T22:03:00.010+02:00

Multi-award winning writer Bruce Holland Rogers is one of the flash fiction world's best known and most respected proponents, and Minifiction is therefore incredibly chuffed that he agreed to patiently answer a torrent of questions from us. The full interview is right on this page, sitting just below Alan Clark's depiction of what goes on just before Bruce wakes up of a morning. As for the answer to the question above, well, you'll just have to read on.

Arreola: You Say Misogyny, I Say Completion

2011-06-13T18:22:00.024+02:00

Warning! This Blog contains spoilers!

Horror Story

The woman I loved has become a ghost. I am the place of her apparitions.

Probing the Not So Perfect: Nik Perring Talks Flash with Minifiction

2011-05-23T22:26:00.026+02:00

“Hark, kindred spirit!” yelled Minifiction, when a bout of Internet surfing brought us face-to-screen with British author Nik Perring, a new(ish) face on the block whose online flash fiction publications over recent years culminated in his 2010 collection of 22 short shorts, Not So Perfect.

Yes, the title does refer to the stories within, but no, Perring is not being coy. The title fits because it renders the only theme that all 22 stories could be said to share, each one capturing the not-so-perfect moments in the lives of Perring’s protagonists. Putting that aside, what you have here is an eclectic mix of wide angles and close ups, quasi-bizarro and groundy realism, nostalgic twists and twisted nostalgia. Not So Perfect is well worth a read, although the faint-hearted or pious should come ready for a challenge.

Why Small and Quick is Lethal: Joseph Quintela's 'Short, Fast and Deadly'

2011-05-05T22:40:00.018+02:00

Every Saturday, Minifiction starts to fidget. Our sandaled feet slap our parquet floor with impatience, our fingers stab the F5 key until it relents with unspringy fatigue, and, by nightfall, Madame Minifiction has been forced to slip something soothing into our bedtime beverage. Why? Simple: Because every Sunday, Joseph Quintela publishes the next edition of his superb eLit Mag, Short, Fast and Deadly.

Okay, we exaggerate. Only, not really, because Short, Fast and Deadly is a micro-fan's dream -- original micro-poetry and prose, fewer than 140 and 420 characters respectively, that lambasts Minifiction's earlier assertion that quality English language minifiction is a rarity. Shame on us.

The work featured here, by a growing number of international writers, is fresh, funky and forward-moving. And it is, of course, short. Fast. And Deadly: not like a grand piano tumbling from a fifth floor balcony, but more like a slayer of disbelief in the verve and scope of the ultra short.
Read more »

A Mini Intro to Macedonio Fernandez

2011-04-25T15:45:00.004+02:00

A wind beaten hermit-philosopher, some kind of dashing matinée conjurer, an aged troubadour whose spindle fingers grip his guitar close to his hollowing suit: it is difficult not to picture the life of Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952) driven by a mythological narrative.

And many who write about Macdenio nowadays believe his contemporaries willed it so.

Somewhat older than the writers of the early twentieth-century Argentine avant-garde - to which Macedonio became attached as a "permanent newcomer" - his unconventional lifestlye, his stimulating ideas and his disregard for recognition (Borges said that when changing lodgings, Macedonio simply left his piles of litererary and metaphysical writings behind) provided this keen generation of artists with a stock of anecdotes and a persona with which to endow the nascent Argentine literature with a mythical anchor.

I don't know if Macedonio ever mentioned brevity, but all of his work is fragmentary and experimental, and happily defies categorisation. For this reason, it is easy to see why Macedonio is considered a precursor to the minifiction that would come later, while giving writers of minifiction a mythological figure of their own.

***

The She-without-shadow

    An accusation of having had a moment of bad thought towards the other, the fleetingest desire for bad, or forgetting for your own convenience, will cause Her to leave. But her shadow stain remains on the floor.
    The She-without-shadow.
    He, alone.
    In the chapter “how to erase the shadow” the friends start arriving, and he asks each one of them for the best way to extinguish the shadow, which has turned out to be indelible; everyone tried to get rid of it but nobody could.
    Until the chapter “Fortune had it that my foolish attempt to erase the shadow was impossible” starts. Then he burdens himself with problems regarding his duties, conduct towards that shadow.
    Meanwhile, the problem (for others, not for Her) of her walking without a shadow. Losing it was a deliberate act, leaving it there to obsess him, to raise him to a man whose only thought is the thinking on what this shadow is lacking; and her certainty that her shadow and his love will be hers again.

***

Headline for drama

In the silkasian village of Delitum, the girl Kina was startled by a mouse approaching the frying pan, and her first reaction was to throw a twig at it that she happened to have in her hand, very difficult to aim as a projectile, but which nevertheless struck the head of the mouse, which keeled over. In the meantime, in Rome, in the time between which Kina saw the mouse and struck it, Cassius’ dagger sunk into Caesar the second time. So as you can see, great successes were not only achieved in Rome.

***

    Symbols

    Symbol for the mystic innocence of living: Mother who on the threshold of her rural cottage looking and awaiting the arrival of her children at supper time cuts thick bread while balancing it on her belly, within which she already gave them their first nourishment.
    Mother always exactly herself; mysterious destiny accepted. Why? Why?

    Symbol for hardness or incomprehension or unaffection: wounding the yerba maté pressed into a portion, cracking it with blows from a hammer and chisel that destroy its perfumed and delicate soul.

    Universal static-structural symbol for pain: The curve of the human back.

    Dynamic symbol for pain and worldly concerns: The father’s inclined bust over a bowl of soup, sucked up without a word, without lifting his head until finished; who after today’s fatigue eats the soup, that’s to say the worldly life for tomorrow, tame delicacy in the gentleness of continued living.

Cool and Collective: Heliconia

2011-04-03T21:53:00.021+02:00

About a year or so ago, Minifiction stumbled across a wonderfully clever piece of contemporary minifiction called 'Siseneg', a piece which had already won a prize in Argentina known as the ‘Oveja Negra’ (Black Sheep) for the best short short story of 2009. We translated it into English, posted it on our then nascent Facebook page, and watched as it gathered attention and stoked debate.

We contacted the piece’s author, Argentine writer Daniel Frini, and found out that he’s a founding member of an Argentine minifiction collective that goes by the name of 'Heliconia', and which, through both its innovation and its prodigious output, shows that Argentina maintains the edge when it comes to ultra short literature.

We also discovered that Frini is a great guy, as he agreed to answer our questions about Heliconia for publication on this Blog. Here’s what he had to say.

Minifiction: What is Heliconia and how did it come into being?

Frini: The Heliconia association is a group of Spanish language authors that formed as the natural successor to ‘Taller 7’ (‘Workshop 7’), an excellent literary virtual-workshop created by Argentine writer Sergio Gaut vel Hartman and coordinated by Spain’s José Vicente Ortuño. Heliconia itself was born in March 2009, also at the impulse of Gaut vel Hartman. Made doable by the possibilities for communication and interaction presented by the Internet and social networks, Heliconia can now count on some thirty writers with a variety of literary perspectives, the majority of whom are Argentine, although we also have Spanish, Mexicans and even one Peruvian – Oriana Pickman – who has settled in Norway.

Minifiction: What’s it like working with such a large group of writers?

Frini: It’s fascinating to see how the members’ experience, training and ability to compromise – a large part of which was gained during their participation in the literary workshop that existed prior to the formation of the group – has enabled a system of work that’s functional and horizontal, where each individual step is freely debated by all the members, demonstrating a synergy that boosts the end result. The ‘playful’ aspect of writing has great importance to the group – that’s to say, literary creation as a kind of game. Even the private emails sent back and forth often have something creative that has gone on to become the origin of a story co-written by two, three or more of the writers, and then published in the Blogs maintained by Heliconia.

Minifiction: You mentioned the Blogs and the possibilities the Internet has given you. In what ways has Heliconia taken advantage of the Internet as a medium?

Frini: As a ‘working area’, the Internet has allowed Heliconia to centre its production on minifiction, which has found a natural home and a way to present itself through the three Blogs that the group keeps, which are arranged more or less arbitrarily according to the number of words in the stories. ‘Breves no tan breves’ (‘Not so Brief Briefs’) has texts of between 150 and 1000 words and with more than 2400 stories to date, while ‘Químicamente Impuro’ ('Chemically Impure') texts of between 50 and 149 words, and with more than 5100 stories available.

Qiangyan Wang

Chi’s granddaughter was beautiful. They called her Small Net to Catch Glances, and they say that when she blinked she caused typhoons in the China Sea. Everybody loved her. Only one man could make her tremble. Nobody possessed her, ever. The Tellers of Stories say she did not die. They say she faded into the snow one winter that lasted too long.

(Daniel Frini, posted on Químicamente Impuro on March 30, 2011)

‘Ráfagas, parpadeos’ (‘Flashes, blinks’) has texts of 49 words or less, and there is also the sister-blog for poets, ‘Poemia, el fuego de Heliconia’.

Of course, we don’t just publish Heliconia’s material, the group’s members also act as selectors and we publish (in prose, one day on ‘breves no tan breves’, the following on ‘químicamente impuro’) material by other classic, established or new writers, material that has either been forwarded to us by the authors themselves or which has been discovered while ‘patrolling’ other Blogs, of course with the consent of the writers (making a total of more than 600 authors). Furthermore, we’ve started a Facebook group, ‘Heliconia and Blogs’, in which any writer is welcome to participate in any language – all you have to do is request to be added.

Where the ‘playful’ aspect I talked about earlier comes into it most is perhaps in the Blog ‘Ráfagas, parpadeos’. Apart from the regular updates, within the group itself we suggest different ‘instructions’ for writing, which has thrown up some really interesting results. One of those, for example, was to write microstories of an exact number of words (six, in homage to the famous Hemingway microstory, ‘For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn’) or thematic stories, based around Kafka’s Metamorphosis, say, or the Trojan War, or vampires. We also have “regressive stories” there, written by one or a number of different authors, which consist of presenting 50 stories, the first with 49 words, the second with 48, and so on, until you arrive at a story with zero words, just a title.

“Suicide Note”, by Esteban Moscarda: I am scared: Death seems beautiful

"Dream”, by Oriana Pickman: Now I turn off my eyes.

“Cup Half Full”, by Sergio Gaut vel Hartman: My legs amputated, sold my shoes.

The Blogs also serve as a display window for the authors to be considered for other publications, virtual or otherwise: many texts have been requested, translated into other languages and published in countries as diverse as Italy, France, Russia, the U.S., as well as Peru, Mexico, Spain, etc.

Minifiction: Is Heliconia active outside the web?

Frini: Yes, Heliconia also organises regular readings and literary meetings, or ‘tertulias’, where we read to an audience the texts that make up the Blogs.

Minifiction: What’s the next step for Heliconia?

Frini: Well, the next step is, of course, to bring out our work in print. To this end, Heliconia has created the ‘Tanamoshi Project’ – open to any writer who wishes to take part – to publish books, a collaborative venture where all the stages of the publication process are carried out by the project’s members. The scope has been widened here, and the books are not only collections of minfiction: there are novels, poems, short stories and more. At present there are two books on the market, a collection of minifiction called Instantaneas by Martín Gardella and a novel called Una Simple Palabra by Clauda Cortalezzi, and there are more than 30 more books currently at different stages of development.

###

Minifiction will be bringing you more of Heliconia’s writing via our Facebook page, so keep an eye out!

Minifiction on Twitter

2011-03-17T21:48:00.020+01:00

Does Twitter, with its 140 character limit, provide a platform for good writing? It will be no surprise to learn that Minifiction thinks the potential is there (Time magazine does too, by the way), but has it produced anything so far? And, if so, what does it look like and how do you find it?

The Time article cited above focuses on parodic tweets, such as those you might find in a collection like Alan Beard and Alec McNary’s Historical Tweets: the Completely Unabridged and Ridiculously Brief History of the World. While undoubtedly hilarious, this kind of work is reflexive in nature, relying on being understood as (a parody of) real Twitter to function. Minifiction was also curious to find out what kind of ‘stand alone’ writing Twitter users have come up with.

We dusted off our Twitter account and had a look around, and quickly discovered that there is plenty going on. Searching by ‘hashtags’ (user defined keywords that people include in their tweets) such as ‘#vss’ (very short story?), ‘#sixwordstory’ and ‘#microstory’ throws up a lot of original work as users post it real time. Tweetified poetry wins in terms of sheer bulk: searching under ‘#micropoetry’ and ‘#haiku’ will have someone’s latest effort plopping into your search results every few seconds. There are some gems here, some junk, all of it seems so very fleeting...

A group that has done a fine job corralling such ‘TwitterLit’ is the team at Folded Word Press. Since 2009, Folded Word have run a series of ezine projects that focus on different genres doing the rounds on Twitter: PicFic and Form.Reborn, for example, aim to “boil down the essence” of short stories and verse respectively, while unFold takes an experimental approach to poetry at its most compact. The best of all three ezines made it into their December 2010 print and e-publication On a Narrow Windowsill.

As to be expected with 43 contributors from seven different countries writing narrative and verse – as well as unclassifiable texts that seem to belong somewhere in between – On a Narrow Windowsill is an assortment with something for everyone as opposed to everything for someone. But it is nevertheless a superbly selected, edited, and as far as Minifiction can tell, so far the only, compendium of the would-be ephemeral.

The book is divided into three sections that represent the ezines mentioned above.

The stories in the PicFic section range from tightly-clipped science fiction nuggets such as @kaolinfire’s ‘In Xanadu’:

Exhausted, he nods off; neural connections create lyric beauty through the interface, chaos dreams. Gone with a power failure.

to colourful, alliterative snippets that remind of Spencer Holst, such as @spacedlawyers ‘Life is Pink’:

A gaggle of giggles as the girls pass around the love note: Who will dare deliver it to its object? Not the author obviously. Life is Pink.

There is also the poignant and observant here, such as J. Y. Saville’s fantastic ‘Letting Go’:

Gradually all bonds loosen and slip. Afraid to lose him, she cries “I release you!” and he clings all the closer as she hoped he would.

Most of the stories centre on brief moments, but they are undoubtedly stories; many of the authors take recourse to elision to keep the pieces short and within the character limit – some preferring to drop their articles, others their personal pronouns. There’s very little use of intertextuality here though, which surprised Minifiction, due to its ubiquity in other short short writing.

The Form.Reborn portion of the book offers a necessarily sifted selection of verse from the huge randomness you’ll find on Twitter. There are haiku and cinquains here, but other forms too. Rose Auslander’s four part poem ‘Secret Season’, that finds nature in the industrial with its “hidden blossoms” that “scrape the sky”, sticks out in Minifiction’s mind, and there are others here worth returning to.

The unFold portion of the book is by far the shortest. Minifiction wonders why this is, as some of the work it contains demonstrates the surprising amount of space Twitter offers to dabble in. We’ll mention two pieces here, both of which occupy the zone between poetry and narrative like so much ultra-short writing. Both are by Pushcart prize nominated authors, ‘To Yesterday’s Poem’ by Linda Leedy Schneider:

You incubated in darkness, were born in a yellow notebook; I loved you like any fantasy child.

and ‘Monoline #1’ by Changming Yuan:

There is light in every dream we have in darkness.

A very positive note at the (almost) end of the book.

Folded Press may not be the first seeking to boil their works down to the essence of the story or the poem – minfiction has been around for some time, after all, and is becoming more widespread on the web by the day – but they do appear to be the first to look at TwitterLit as a distillable form, and have proven that it is a form worth distilling.