Tuesday Flash Focus: The Postmodern (Short) Short & “The Mother”

The short short stands against the requirements of certainty. In his discussion of the Danish short short, Gitte Mose argues about the postmodern sense of the short short form. Such a piece, he argues, resists closure and gives "birth to a new perception of the unfinished, of the literary work as essentially open." As the piece builds "toward a desired unity/totality, "the Absolute," its power exists in its movement, in that wholeness it never reaches, the story it never completes. "The Absolute may manifest itself in an epiphanic moment, as in the fragment--the sudden synthesis, creating a moment's unity in infinity" (87-88).

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In short, the short short engages in its own tragic battle against the restrictions of form--of the requirements that demand closure, of the reader's need for certainty and meaning. In the modernist world of Freud, one probed beneath the surface certain to find some submerged, deeper meaning; in the postmodern world, such a journey leads one to the realization that the world no longer has the power to provide such certainty and answers--and all we can do is figure out the right questions to ask.

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Lydia Davis's "The Mother," from her collection break it down has that postmodern sense of a world unable to be fully grasped, a world beyond our ability to complete.

The girl wrote a story, "But how much better it would be if you wrote a novel," said her mother. The girl built a dollhouse. "But how much better if it were a real house," her mother said. The girl made a small pillow for her father. "But wouldn't a quilt be more practical," said her mother. The girl dug a small hole in the garden. "But how much better if you dug a large hole," said her mother. The girl dug a large hole and went to sleep in it. "But how much better if you slept forever," said her mother.

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As McCaffrey states in discussing the work of Lydia Davis, Davis does not "provide any hint of self-awareness or understanding. What we are given instead is only a single, mysterious, powerfully resonant image that somehow seems to imply or contain--but does not refer or depict (in the sense of exposition)--an entire lifetime of failure, loneliness, and mistakes" (62). The lack of specificity--of names, features, details--not only gives the characters an archetypal power but also gives the scene an uncertainty and mythic unrealism. The image of the girl sleeping in the large hole she dug for her mother in some way resists an attempt to impose realistic motivations upon it. It hints at something dark. It asks a question of mothers that the story itself cannot answer. The reader who asks "But why?" will be forever left unsatisfied. The darkness of the world can no longer be expressed directly.

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Writing Prompt: In your short short resist the idea to provide closure. Try a minimalistic approach in which the sparseness of the scene creates a sense of the imaginary. The richness of the piece will originate in central images that should never be fully explained. It must be highly original, as far from everyday as possible, but be sure to write about it as if were normal. Avoid explanations, especially of behavior. Let this world stand on its own. The narrative derives its urgency from the attempt to make "meaning" arise in such a world, but the world no longer has such a power. It ends with McCaffrey's "single, mysterious, powerfully resonant image."

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For Further Reading:

Davis, Lydia. "The Mother." break it down . New York: High Risk Books, 1986. 119.

Mose, Gitte. "Danish Short Shorts in the 1990s and the Jena-Romantic Fragments." The Art of Brevity: Excursions in Short Fiction Theory and Analysis . Per Winter et al eds. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 2004. 81-95.

McCaffery, Larry. Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1996.