You Have Time for This: Contemporary American Short-Short StoriesEdited by Mark Budman & Tom Hazuka
This tome of word power isn’t tome-like at all. Rather, You Have Time for This, edited by Mark Budman and Tom Hazuka, is a convenient little book that fits snugly in your hands as the cover practically opens itself, drawing you into short-short stories packed with love, hatred, and objects with lives of their own.
Each story takes place in five hundred words or fewer, and each author amazingly builds a world, characters, a life, a story in the limited space. As editor Mark Budman related in an interview,* “A good flash, replete with a cohesive plot, rich language and enticing imagery, is perhaps the hardest type of fiction to write.” Its evocative language borders on poetry, and its depth guarantees to capture the mind, while its foundation in fiction appeals to the largest population of readers. And its most defining attribute—its length, or lack thereof—caters to the modern reader, whose ample reading time has been winnowed away by errands, chores, commute times, meetings, and appointments.
For all this, short-short fiction often draws the highest level of respect among word lovers. And the authors of You Have Time for This deserve that respect. Contributors come with an impressive list of previous publications—or sometimes a more impressive proclamation of first publication. No matter their curriculum vitae, though, each writer’s vivid words engulf readers, constructing a world of fiction around them for just a moment…and then allowing the constructs of the world to fade away while the ghost lingers for a long while.
We busy readers—clambering onto the subway, lulling in line at the post office, shivering in the dentist’s waiting room—are invited to share in these poetic glimpses into one hallway of You Have Time for This’s authors’ minds. We can peer in, even experience the stench of the janitor’s bleach, for just a moment, and then return to our own corridors when life beckons us back. Indeed, you have time for this.
Review by Ali McCart, Indigo Editing, LLC
*View interview
ISBN: 978-1-932010-17-6
Publisher: Ooligan Press
Pub Date: November 2007
Paperback: $11.95
