Dear Reader,
Recently, I was asked to join American Short Fiction's discussion about online publishing at their blog, along with other writers and publishers like Rick Rofihe, Rick Moody, Matt Stewart, Deltina Hay, and Owen Egerton. In that space, I focused on a more personal narrative meant to fit the question they asked—"What did online publishing mean to me?"—rather than make some overarching statement about the state of publishing. I also went in that direction because many of the ideas I have about online publishing have more to do with what it's not, rather than what it is.
For instance, one of the things I don’t think online publishing is: A panacea for a mythical shortened attention span.
The rise of the flash fiction and the short-short and the prose poem—forms that have proliferated online quicker than perhaps any other—is often framed as the obvious effect of this supposed new attention span we've all developed in response to the proliferation of media in our lives. (Note that I don't really believe this: After 250,000 years of human evolution, Twitter and Facebook and text messaging have not miraculously rewired our brains since the turn of the century.)
The only problem with this cause and effect relationship is that, as almost everyone seems to agree, it’s harder to read something online, not easier. The screen is more distracting than the page, in no small part because the book contains only the story you're reading, while the screen contains a million other things you might be doing instead. Also, reading on your computer isn't yet as easy on the eyes over a long enough timeline, nor it as comfortable as reclining on your couch with a book is, even though both of this issues are probably temporary, and are already on their way to being solved with Kindles and Nooks and iPhones and the better technologies sure to follow.
Let's forget technological innovation for a moment, and just say it is definitively harder to read online, between our supposedly stunted attention spans and our flickering screens. Even if that were true, why would that make the internet the right place for the flash fiction? In my opinion the best examples of the form are stories where the shortness of the pieces denies the straightforward plot, where the road to success often lies parallel to those of the prose poem and the micro-essay, with their heavily-laden language, their lyric structures, their emphasis not on the closing down of the epiphany but the opening up of the ending and its meaning. How could such a form be the right choice for attention-stunted readers and writers?
The simple answer—to me, anyway—is that it's not.
It may take only a minute to read a flash fiction, but to take in the whole of the best of those works is not the work of that minute. The best flashes extend far beyond the borders of their slim word counts, and should hardly be seen as some kind of stunted stories written by men and women who lack the ability to write the lengthy (and therefore supposedly more worthy) works of their forebears, as the "attention span" myth passive-aggressively suggests.
All of this is the long way of saying that I myself am a believer in the flash fiction and all the other works that fall in and around the borders of this newly popular form, and not because they serve as some band-aid for the failing attention of the contemporary reader. Both on and off the page, these forms continue to prove their worth and potential, and it's in the spirit of celebrating this that I again congratulate the winner of our 2009 Flash Fiction Contest, as judged by Kim Chinquee: “Aren't There People Who Take Care of This Kind of Thing?” by Todd Cantrell. In this issue, we're proud to also publish stories by our three finalists: Stace Budzko, Chella Courington, and Kristine Uyeda. Thanks so much to these writers and all our entrants for entering, and to Kim Chinquee for her careful judging of the contest.
To support these contest winners, we have an all-flash fiction section rounded out with new stories by Scott Garson, Jennifer Howard, Jim Ruland, and Lindsay Merbaum. Elsewhere in Issue Five, we have a novel excerpt from Anastasia Hobbet's Small Kingdoms, plus non-fiction by Dave Housley and Ryan Ridge. In poetry, you'll find new poems by Candy Shue, Ethan Joella, Robert Fanning, and Sheera Talpaz.
In this month's book review section, we've got coverage of Memoir: A History by Ben Yagoda, Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall by Ken Sparling, and The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit by Michael Zadoorian, plus a video review of All Fall Down by Mary Caponegro.
As always, thanks to all of our contributors for letting us publish their fine work. Thanks also to everyone who reads the magazine, everyone who sends us submissions, and of course everyone who takes the time to post about the issue to their blogs, Facebook, or anywhere else. We couldn't do this without you, and wouldn’t want to try.
Sincerely,
Matt Bell
Editor
The Collagist
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