From: chess@watson.ibm.com
Newsgroups: alt.books.reviews
Subject: Review of Shapard & Thomas (eds) "Sudden Fiction International"
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 95 17:06:01 est

Do you find yourself thinking "would have made a good short story"
after most novels you read these days?  Do you get to the end of
most short stories while the author still has three or six pages
left?  Then you may enjoy this collection; sixty stories in
260 or so pages.  This is fiction for the Web generation; many
(most, all) of these small gems would fit comfortably on one
or possibly two pages of html.

Which isn't to say that it's all for webheads, or postmodern, or
that even fans of Proust and Tolstoy might not find this a very
worthwhile collection.  Some of them (including the opening story,
Dino Buzzati's lovely "The Falling Girl") are indeed odd and
surreal, but others (Kawabata's equally lovely but vastly
different "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket", for instance)
are warm and soulful.  Donald Barthelme's "The School" may lead
you off to read his own "Sixty Stories" (one of my favorite
collections) and discover the joys of, well, whatever it is that
Barthelme does.  On the other hand, if you like Narayan's
offering, "House Opposite", you'll want to check out one
of his collections (I recommend "Malgudi Days", which is a
warm and involving trip to an India of whose authenticity I
have no idea, but it certainly feels real) of again vastly
different stories.

Which is to say that these are well-picked stories that cover a
very broad range (no science fiction but Calvino, but I don't
expect miracles).  And even if you really dislike one, it'll
be over before you realize it!  There is also a forty-page section
of Afternotes, about and sometimes by the authors.  These also
vary, from tiny precis for authors that didn't respond, to
thoughtful comments or even essays about the short-short form
(Joyce Carol Oates' contribution to the Endnotes is, I think,
longer than her story),  There are too many stories to go into
detail about all of them, so I won't about any.  But there are
Big Names (Barthelme, Borges, Oates, Dinesen, Marquez, Calvino,
Theroux), as well more obscure ones (i.e. I hadn't heard of them).
There is humor and tragedy, lightness and depth, and all like that.
The collection is strongly recommended.  In fact, I'd go out on
a limb and recommend the earlier "Sudden Fiction" (no "International",
and hence presumably USA), which I've never seen, but certainly
intend to.

%E Robert Shapard
%E James Thomas
%B Sudden Fiction International
%I W. W. Norton & Company
%C New York
%D 1989
%G ISBN 0-393-30613-5
%P 342 pp.
%O trade paperback, US$11.95
%T The Falling Girl
%A Dino Buzzati
%T The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket
%A Yasunari Kawabata
%T House Opposite
%A R. K. Narayan
%T August 25, 1983
%A Jorge Luis Borges
%T One of these Days
%A Gabriel Garcia Marquez
%T The Boy
%A Joyce Carol Oates
%T The Blue Jar
%A Isak Dinesen
%T All at One Point
%A Italo Calvino
%T The School
%A Donald Barthelme
%T Acknowledgements
%A Paul Theroux
%O etc etc etc

- -- -
David M. Chess                |   "La raison a ses coeurs que le coeur
High Integrity Computing Lab  |     ne connait point."
IBM Watson Research           |                           -- Caspal