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Author Galef, David, author

Title Brevity : a flash fiction handbook / David Galef
Published New York : Columbia University Press, [2016]

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 143 pages)
Contents Short introduction -- Vignettes. Readings: Colette: Tthe other wife"; Isaac Babel: "An incident on the Nevsky Prospekt" -- Character sketches. Readings: L.E. Leone: "The argument for a shotgun"; Josefina Estrada: "The extravagant behavior of the naked woman" -- Letters. Readings: Yasunari Kawabata: "Canaries"; Phil Karasik: "Mickey the dog phones home" -- Diary entries. Readings: Will Stanton: "Barney"; Mark Budman: "The diary of a salaryman" -- Lists. Readings: Sei Shonagon: "Annoying things"; Steve Martin: "Disgruntled former lexicographer" -- Fables. Readings: Anonymous: Untitled; Raphael Dagold: "The two rats and the BB gun" -- Anecdotes. Reading: The peasant and the genie -- Prose poems. Readings: Yusef Komunyakaa: "Nude interrogation"; Len Kuntz: "Story problems" -- Soliloquies, rants, riffs, and themes. Readings: Christine Byl: "Hey, Jess McCafferty"; John Edgar Wideman: "Witness" -- Perfect miniatures. Readings: John Collier: "The chaser"; Jeffrey Whitmore: "A bedtime story" -- Intermission: cutting down. Bruce Taylor: "Exercise" -- Surrealism. Readings: Richard Brautigan: "A need for gardens"; Donald Barthelme: "The baby" -- What if? Readings: Wayland Hilton-Young: "The choice"; Dicky Murphy: "The magician's umbrella" -- Genre. Readings: Roxane Gay: "The mistress of baby breath"; Tara Orchard: "My love" -- Setting. Readings: Bharati Mukherjee: "Courtly vision"; Alice Walker: "The flowers" -- Twists. Readings: Luisa Valenzuela: "Vision out of the corner of one eye"; Saki: "The open window" -- Viewpoints. Readings: Robert Schipits: "Dialogue between two teenagers, one interested in cars and one not"; Ryan Ridge: "Shaky hands & all" -- Mass compression. Readings: Bruce Holland Rogers: "Dinosaur"; Susan O'Neill: "Memento mori" -- Metafiction. Readings: Ptim Callan: "Story"; Jorge Luis Borges: "Borges and I" -- Vanishing point. Readings: Merilee Faber: "We came around the corner"; Dean Clayton Edwards: "It was pretending"; Davian Aw: "She raised the glass"; Augusto Monterroso: "The dinosaur" -- The future -- Conclusion
Summary "Over the past ten years or so, "Short-shorts" or "Flash Fiction" has emerged as an increasingly popular and visible genre within fiction. David Galef's Brevity offers a guide to the genre for creative writing students by combining discussions of the various approaches and methods within the genre, examples of the form, and prompts for students to develop their own writing. Galef includes examples of the short-short genre from such writers as Collette, Donald Barthelme, and Borges. He examines the ways in which these authors drew on the form and how compression and other techniques are able to produce works of power, humor, or insight. Galef argues that developing one's skills in the short-short form can also carry over to other forms of writing. Galef, a writer and longtime creative-writing instructor, guides the reader through these stories and techniques and also provides exercises based on the content or technique employed in the stories"-- Provided by publishers
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on October 26, 2016)
Subject Flash fiction -- Authorship
Flash fiction -- Technique
LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES -- Composition & Creative Writing.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2016032149
ISBN 9780231543132
0231543131