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How Fish Came To Be Wrapped In Newspaper
by Brian G. Smith

I once wrapped a fish in a road map, and the next morning it was gone.

(taken from Monkeybicycle)

It must’ve been almost four years ago that I’ve read this wonderful one-sentence story. Just imagine a fish on a road trip. Did he take the map with him, or did he memorize the map and leave it? Or did he not go on an actual road trip at all but rather vanish into the map itself and can now be seen skipping and flapping across it, leaving a trail of dots or an intermittent line, as it is so famously done in Hollywood’s road movies to visualize the protagonist(s)’s journey across the country? Of course the title, which is almost as long as the story itself, puts another twist on the whole issue. What do fish do now that they are wrapped in newspaper? I would love to know.

Over the years, this ultra short story popped back into my head every once in a while and this time I finally remembered to post it here. The entire genre of “micro fiction,” or “flash fiction,” as it is apparently called, fascinates the hell out of me. Famously, Ernest Hemingway wrote an early example,

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Whoa! It is mind-boggling how six words (only seven syllables) can have such a strong effect. All of the stories from this genre have one thing in common: that which is not said is more important. That’s where the real story lies; in the questions which the presence of the few words evoke. The beauty of it is that every reader has different questions, i.e. each story is infinitely manifold. It is also striking how important the punctuation is. For a text of such brevity, the right usage can be very effective and convey even more meaning; or raise more questions.

The online and print literary journal Monkeybicycle has a nice collection of such one-sentence stories as the one about the fish and the map. Some are relatively long, some very short. All of them, I think, are by unknown writers, for most of whom this was probably the first publication. Have at it…

Batch One
Batch Two
Batch Three
Batch Four
Batch Five
Batch Six
Batch January 2009
Batch February 2009

Back in early 2007, The Guardian asked a number of well-established writers to pull off a Hemingway stunt to write equally short stories of their own. Read them here. One of my favorites is Jeffrey Eugenides’s (who is an overall great writer, by the way): “Defenestrated baby, methamphetamine, prison, rehab, relapse.” Simon Armitage also did the “baby” thing: “Megan’s baby: John’s surname, Jim’s eyes.”

Wired also asked contemporary writers for their own micro stories a few months earlier. See here.

There’s even a blog dedicated to the six-word story, aptly titled Six Word Stories. Most likely, it’s not the only one.

You don’t need to be an internet whiz to find a bulk of examples.

Have fun with this stuff and feel free to report back with some interesting findings.

Here is another essay I wrote for an English class very early on Friday morning. [I slightly revised it but the early-morning writing still shows, so be gentle.] This one is on Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Cask of Amontillado." You might want to read the story first. It is not very long. After all, it is a short story.

Gravely Fooling a Jester

Shortly before Montresor tricks Fortunato into taking “a draught of Médoc” to make him drunker and more obedient than he already is Poe lets the bells on Fortunato’s cap jingle: “He raised it [the wine] to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.” They jingle to signal Montresor’s triumph over his foolish friend.

Poe clearly sets the roles for his two characters in “The Cask of Amontillado”: the smart avenger and the ignorant victim. To emphasize these roles he makes use of the jingling of the bells upon Fortunato’s cap. Whenever he is about to be tricked by Montresor, they emit their typical sound. It is a very subtle indicator for Montresor’s cleverness and a sign that Fortunato gets closer and closer to his death. The bell tolls for him, so to speak.

For the first time the “bells upon his cap jingle” shortly after Montresor leads Fortunato into the catacombs of his “palazzo,” thus they indicate the success of the first trick. They can be heard again right before the second lure, when Fortunato is about to drink the Médoc, and right after Montresor tells his victim what the motto on his family’s coat of arms is: “Nemo me impune lacessit,” which functions as a justification for Montresor’s actions. Poe lets them sound only one more time at the very end of the story: “No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells.” The last “jingling” is a sign that it is finally over. Fortunato gave up and does not fight the chains anymore. His death is imminent.

The “tolling bells” are also a feature of the execution that is taking place, Montresor’s “mask of black silk” (an executioner’s mask) being another. Their recurring sound is Poe’s way of announcing Fortunato’s death. The bells are his and he jingles them himself. These are additional indicators of Poe’s morbid irony. Church bells were and still are tolled before funerals and “The Cask of Amontillado” is nothing but a funeral, albeit a very strange one. Another similarity with the tolling of bells for announcing a funeral is the number of occurrences: four times. Churches knell every fifteen minutes during the hour preceding a burial, so four times*. Fortunato’s bells can be heard four times as well—last of all shortly before Montresor “forces the last stone into its position.”

Poe uses the bells on the cap in such a way that they can be considered a subtle precursor of Fortunato’s death, among all the obvious ones. Apart from this, they are also a sign for the success of every stage of Montresor’s deadly plot and for Fortunato’s foolish character. After all, he is wearing motley. But he does not live up to his costume. As a jester, he is being fooled himself.

* As I found out after writing the essay, this is a very local thing.

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Daily Cartoon

A couple of days ago I read Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." [← PDF] Actually, it is more of a parable than a story.

In the fictional town of Omelas everything is perfect. There are no crimes, no one is ever hungry, and happiness is perpetual. This sounds like a perfect society. But, as we all know, there is no such thing as a perfect society. So, where is the catch?

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door and no window. [...] The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect.

What is more, everyone in the town knows about this child. "Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there." All the people’s happiness, everything that is so great about Omelas, depends on the child’s "abonimable misery." The majority of the people can live with this knowledge but some just "walk away from Omelas."

This is the core of the story. There are no characters, no dialogue, and no plot. It is a simple description of a society, a very intriguing one. But there is one flaw in the story (or maybe in the society). Eventually, the child in the locked room will either die—no one could live forever under these circumstances—or commit suicide. (It is unlikely that it will escape because it is too weak.)

Then the people have to "replace" the dead child with a "new" one. But where do they get it from? Who in this town would voluntarily give up their own child when they know what is going to happen to it? It probably needs to be "replaced" every ten to fifteen years. That is not even one generation. Surely, people will not mind as much if it is not their own child. But when it comes to sacrifing one’s own flesh and blood for the good of the whole town—one life for several thousand—would they still take it upon themselves or would they also "walk away from Omelas?"

It is crucial for the understanding of this society to know how they would handle the death of that child. But not even Ursula Le Guin, who invented it, knows. It is not her fault, though, the flaw is in the society and not in the story she wrote. She is only trying to show that a utopian town cannot exist, hence the name (ou – no; topos – place).

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Daily Cartoon for the weekend (January 13 & 14)