Flash Nonfiction

Sportin’ Jack by Paul Strohm 28.5 Points

  1. Shattered clock of memoir flashes. Thinking Abigail Thomas, John Edgar Wideman (in Harper’s or some mag like Harper’s a while back), Baudelaire, Between Parentheses, fuck I don’t know. Calling for flash nonfiction collection authors.
  2. The cover has a guy holding tiny baby chicks, as you can surmise. The chicks look like clay or bewildered paper balls.
  3. The real angling or net fishing is memory.
  4. Can you recall 5 stories from when you were age 10, maybe 5 interactions with dogs? Neither can I. Where did they collapse?
  5. Every flash, all 100, is 100 words. That’s called a drabble in fiction. Not exactly Oulipo but it has an effect, like a painting of a vulture in a mirror. Aesthetic restraints lead to increased creativity (and technique), not decreased. Perec taught us the wanderer can own the wall.
  6. Language leads on like a forehead, and seems to fulfill at time, the writer.
  7. dance man dance
  8. I sense a cobweb fatigue with pretentiousness. You can feel a jacket being shucked and thrown crumpled to the floor.
  9. Writer asks, wonders, “Who was this Jack?”
  10. Shame, for example. A drowsing duck inside the chest cavity.
  11. My favorite line: I was wooing a Kansas City woman. Very Chinquee, in its direct way.
  12. I also enjoyed, “She died from alcohol, but nobody ever saw her take a drink.” READ MORE >
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January 28th, 2014 / 3:46 pm