"I see," said Spartacus. "You're all me. That's handy.."
It was indeed handy for some. What it wasn't was interesting.
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By way of explanation, I think the above was written when I gave up trying to write my opinion on whatever I was trying to blog about and made an attempt at (extremely) short fiction. Mainly a demonstration on how my brain doesn't work after I pass a certain level of sleepiness.
2 comments:
As soon as I understood you'd written a flash fiction piece I remembered a famous one supposedly penned by Hemingway, although some say it may be older: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. It's certainly a touchingly complete story in its brevity.
Somerset Maugham wrote a somewhat longer but still brilliant very short story called "The Appointment in Samarra".
The speaker is Death
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
I've always been very fond of Somerset Maugham.
I'm sure you'll do better when you're fully conscious.
Hemingway liked to be brief, at least in terms of sentence length. Which I think is actually a good way to go, more often than not. That little vignette of his could be a case of him showing off, but it's also effective.
I've read that Somerset Maugham story as well. It's a great example of a story of very short length which packs a big punch.
Mm, yeah, usually it's better if I still have all my wits about me. Although I can sometimes find something to revise after I write sleepy and incoherent. It depends.
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