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Longtime readers will remember how excited I was to read Augusto Monterroso's short story "The Dinosaur"* -- today I discover that Monterroso had an august predecessor in Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's story "Baby Shoes" is only six words long, and has inspired a whole genre of six-word micro-stories. Perpetual Folly reprints a BlackBook feature in which 25 major writers -- skewing older-white-male-mid-century -- contributed their six-worders; I'm partial to Brian Bouldrey's contribution, but there is a lot to be said for Norman Mailer's, too. Wired Magazine ran a feature with 92 six-word stories from science-fiction or science-fictiony authors including Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Bruce Sterling, and more. And Pete Berg maintains a blog at sixwordstories.net dedicated to publishing readers' six-word stories.

* (Follow the link! Nick Boalch is attempting to translate "The Dinosaur" into a comic -- what a great idea.)

posted evening of Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
➳ More posts about Augusto Monterroso
➳ More posts about Readings

Mother’s Day came, doubling Oedipus’ pleasure.

This is a Jack Handy-ish form, and this one pulls it off the best.

posted evening of June 8th, 2010 by John Emerson

Disagree -- that one is a clever joke;

“Cyanide? Bitter almonds.” He knew. How?

is a story, a quick psychological portrait.

posted evening of June 9th, 2010 by Jeremy

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