Cutting to the chase : microfictions, empathy and the new sincerity

Vol.44,No.1(2018)

Wojciech Drąg

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2018-1-6

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/138670

PDF
Abstract
It has become a critical consensus that microfictions (or flash fictions) are particularly suited to the age of social media. In his attempt to theorise the genre, William Nelles (2012) allows for a wide range of narrative and thematic possibilities but maintains that, because of their radical brevity, flash fictions need to renounce characterisation, reader empathy and identification. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the generic limitations specified by Nelles can be transcended. By examining a selection of microfictions by David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers, the article argues that flash fictions can evoke projective empathy and become a successful vehicle for a "two-way conversation" between the author and the reader – in line with Adam Kelly's notion of the postironic new sincerity. Textual analysis of the stories is supplemented by the results of a reader-response survey conducted among the students and staff of the University of Wrocław.

Keywords:
microfiction; flash fiction; narrative; David Foster Wallace; Dave Eggers; postirony

Pages:
103–118
References

Botha, Marc (2016) Microfiction. In: Einhaus, Anne-Marie (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the English Short Story. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 201–217.

Den Dulk, Allard (2015) Existentialist Engagement in Wallace, Eggers and Foer: A Philosophical Analysis of Contemporary American Literature. New York: Bloomsbury.

Eggers, Dave (2005a) Accident. The Guardian, Guardian Media, 15 April. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/16/shortshortstories.fiction. [Accessed 20 May 2017].

Eggers, Dave (2005b) How We Are Hungry. London: Penguin.

Eggers, Dave (2005c) A no on Debussy. The Guardian, 11 February. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/12/shortshortstories.fiction. [Accessed 20 May 2017].

Eggers, Dave (2005d) Short Short Stories. London: Penguin.

Galow, Timothy W. (2014) Understanding Dave Eggers. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Hempel, Amy (1996) Housewife. In: Stern, Jerome (ed.) Micro-Fiction: An Anthology of Really Short Stories. New York: Norton, 101.

Hoffmann, Lukas (2016) Postirony: The Nonfictional Literature of David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers. Bielefeld, Transcript.

Hogan, Patrick Colm (2011) What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Howitt-Dring, Holly (2011) Making micro meanings: Reading and writing microfiction. Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 1(1), 47–58. | DOI 10.1386/fict.1.1.47_1

Keen, Suzanne (2007) Empathy and the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kelly, Adam (2010) David Foster Wallace and the new sincerity in American fiction. In: Hering, David (ed.) Consider David Foster Wallace. Los Angeles: Sideshow, 131–146.

Konstantinou, Lee (2009) Wipe that smirk off your face: Postironic literature and the politics of character. Doctoral thesis submitted at Stanford University. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/8492448. [Accessed 20 May 2017].

Konstantinou, Lee (2012) No bull: David Foster Wallace and postironic belief. In: Cohen, Samuel and Lee Konstantinou (eds.) The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 83–112.

Nelles, William (2012) Microfiction: What makes a very short story very short?. Narrative 20(1), 87–104. | DOI 10.1353/nar.2012.0002

Pettersson Peeker, Aili (2015) Consider the invitation: Empathy in David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. MA thesis, Lund University. https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/7448358. [Accessed 20 May 2017].

Phelan, James (1996) Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Pickrel, Paul (1988) Flat and round characters reconsidered. Journal of Narrative Technique 18(3), 181–198.

Rovner, Adam (2015) The shape of time in microfiction: Alex Epstein and the search for lost time. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 33(4), 111–133.

Royle, Nicholas (2014) Quick fiction: Some remarks on writing today. Mosaic 47(1), 23–39. | DOI 10.1353/mos.2014.0002

Shields, David and Elizabeth Cooperman (2014) Life Is Short – Art Is Shorter. Portland: Hawthorne Books.

Stern, Jerome (1996) Introduction, Micro-Fiction: An Anthology of Really Short Stories. In: Stern, Jerome (ed.) New York: Norton, 15–19.

Timmer, Nicoline (2010) Do you feel it too? The post-postmodern syndrome in American fiction at the turn of the millennium. Doctoral thesis submitted at Utrecht University. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Wallace, David Foster (1993a) E unibus pluram: television and U.S. fiction. Review of Contemporary Fiction 13(2), 151–194.

Wallace, David Foster (1993b) Interview by Larry McCaffery. The Review of Contemporary Fiction 13(2), 127–150.

Wallace, David Foster (2007) Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. New York: Back Bay.

Whitmore, Jeffrey (1995) Bedtime Story. In: Moss, Steve (ed.) The World's Shortest Stories. Philadelphia: Running Press, 13.

Ziegler, Alan (2014) Introduction. In: Ziegler, Alan (ed.) An International Anthology of Five Centuries of Short-Short Stories, Prose, Poems Brief Essays, and Other Short Prose Forms. New York: Persea, xxv–xxxiv.

Metrics

1

Crossref logo

2

5

Views

0

PDF views

PDF