Iridescent Insects: Flash Fiction in the United States

Abstract

Despite the great popularity flash fiction has achieved in the United States over the past three decades, few academic efforts have been made to define the specific features of the genre and to adequately study the works of its more notable practitioners. This scholarly neglect is partly a consequence of the common belief among many writers that, due to its extreme brevity, flash fiction is a minor genre and, thus, a deficient vehicle for serious fiction. In their view, to use John Edgar Wideman’s words before he discovered the virtues of the genre, flash fiction seems to “rely on gimmicks,” and so is little more than “finger exercises, practice for the longer haul.” The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, by careful consideration of available literature, it seeks to establish the boundaries and to provide a workable definition of the genre as it is practiced in the United States. On the other, it offers a survey of the more relevant flash fiction produced in the country, from Mark Twain’s 1882 Sketches New and Old to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (1911), Patricia Highsmith’s Little Tales of Misogyny (1978) and Lydia Davis’ Can’t and Won’t (2014).