Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories [Paperback]

Robert Shapard (Editor), James Thomas (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1983

"We who love prose fiction love these miniature tales both to read and to write because they are so finite; so highly compressed and highly charged." Joyce Carol Oates
"People who like to skip can't skip in a three-page story." Grace Paley
"The short-short story is an exercise in virtuosity that tightens the circle of mystery surrounding what we know." John L'Heureux
"It can do in a page what a novel does in two hundred. It covers years in less time, time in almost no time. It wants to deliver us to where we were before we began. Its aim is restorative, to keep us young." Mark Strand
"There are, in truth, more kinds of short-short stories than I ever knew of or imagined. Wonderful! I rejoice in the richness and variety of all these voices." George Garrett
"This collection represents the richness and variety of American writers. The 70 pieces themselves--highly compressed, often tantalizing--display a multiplicity of modes and derive them a variety of traditions." Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The short fiction (each piece is one to five pages long) in this collection represents the richness and variety of American writers. A few are no longer contemporary (Hemingway, Malamud, Cheever), many are well established (Paley, Oates, Updike, Donald Barthelme, Ray Bradbury, Peter Taylor, Raymond Carver) and many are newer presences on the fiction scene. With a tiny "frontisstory" by Robert Coover, a lighthearted introduction by Shapard and afterwords about the short-short-story form by 40 outstanding American writers, the definition of what lies between as "sudden fiction" is well attended to. The 70 pieces themselveshighly compressed, often tantalizingdisplay a multiplicity of modes and derive from a variety of traditions. The collection presents a group of writers whose miniature stories do, indeed, as the editors suggest, "confer form on small corners of chaos."
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This anthology contains 70 stories, all under five pages. There are a few standards by Hemingway and Cheever, but most are contemporary pieces by such writers as Paley, Oates, and Carver and some unknowns. At its bestas exemplified by the offerings of John Upike, Arturo Vivante, Bel Kaufman, and Charles Johnsonthis "sudden fiction" form is devastating, at its worst, mere anecdote, but overall this is an unusual and well-conceived collection. In an afterword, 40 writers/editors discuss the genre's limitationsdoes it exist? what to call it?succinctly enough that the book may serve as a text for creative writing students as well as an interesting departure for the general reader. Recommended.Peter Bricklebank, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith (December 31, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879052651
• ISBN-13: 978-0879052652
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Contains Some Amazing Stories, July 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories (Paperback)

I disagree with the previous reviewer's rather disparaging comments: This isn't simply a "bathroom read." For writers, it's a great lesson in economy and brevity. The short-short stories contained within will help any writer realize the benefits of using language with precision.

It's also a wonderful read (you don't have to be a writer to enjoy it!) Some of my favorite stories of all time, including Amy Robison's devastating "Yours", and good ones from Grace Paley and Raymond Carver, are here. As with all short-story collections, there's some unevenness in terms of quality--not every story is great. But for the most part, the selections are very well chosen and the contemporaneous pieces (the book was originally published in the mid-1980s) hold up very well in this new millenium.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bottled Lightning, November 22, 2003

By 

Ralph-Michael (Seoul, South Korea) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories (Paperback)

~It's a great book to have. You can read it on the subway and chew on a few stories in one transit, or just scan the beginnings and look for what catches your eye, or you can curl up on a rainy day and devour the whole book. It's a great way to meet many writers you've heard of but haven't yet read. The only problem is the editor had this in mind so some writers, I presume, were selected because of who they were not what they wrote. Some pieces are vignettes more than "Sudden Fiction." Conversely, some stories are just marvelous: have no wasted words, tightly woven plots, and compelling characters. These stories are a marvel to see and a must for anyone interested in fiction. It's incredible how much depth is possible in such a short space. If you've ever tried to write this book will impress you with how much the right word is essential. Mark Twain once said "the difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Here is lightning-or is it the bug?-bottled up.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pioneer collection of short-short stories, July 4, 2009

By 

Flávio (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories (Paperback)

Perhaps the first collection of American short-shorts ever published. At the time short-shorts were called a sub-genre, not a genre yet. The great forum in the Afterwords of the book on a name for the emerging genre and on the genre itself is the crowning of the oeuvre. It's precious because it has short-shorts from the primordium times such as Bernard Malamud's, Ernest Hemmingway's and Tennessee Williams's when the genre was not called even a sub-genre; it did not exist. I recommend it to anyone who is curious about emerging hybrid postmodernist autopoietic literary genres.