Storystorm

I read a novel last week. Well, I read half of a novel. It was the first novel over two hundred pages that I’ve read in a while, my reading limited these days to short stories, students ' papers, and the occasional novella. And, while reading it, I was struck by its length, its lack of symmetry, its lack of structure, its tendency to feel like a three ring circus. That might have something to do with the book itself (there are actual acrobats that come into play), but I think it has more to do with how converted I've been by the short form: the compression, the limitations, the structure, the fact that every scene and every word matters.

The short story is on the official up and up, what with Alice winning the Nobel Prize and the rise of flash. Finally people are starting to see that the short story is not better or less than a novel. It shouldn't even be weighed against it. It's its own entity, its own form.

So, in honor of my recent reading experience, I want to celebrate brevity this week by looking at Greg Bottoms's “Memory.” The piece, in its entirety, is small enough to transcribe into this blog post. I could type the entire thing out and still have room to spare, that's how tight this story is, like a washcloth that has been wrung dry, its excesses removed. It is just the essence, a breath, a pulse beating at the heart of what we can imagine is a much larger story. No more and no less: a single memory that gets at the nature of remembering and childhood and time and the universal experience of trying to make sense of our past.

Greg Bottoms does in four paragraphs what some writers spend four hundred pages trying to do. By shifting time—“It was winter, spring, summer”—and by shifting place—“We were in the woods, at the arcade, one the playground, at the abandoned farmhouse, by the pay phones at the 7-Eleven, sticking our fingers into quarter slots”—we get a sense both of these boys' daily lives and the way that memories shape shift, that the act of remembering is enigmatic.

So, in honor of brevity and Greg Bottoms' brilliance, I'll be brief: read this story. Then think about the distinctive space that short stories occupy. Think of it as a genre unto itself, hidden beside the six hundred page tombs and the dark-spined classics in books stores everywhere. There should be a separate section for the short story, a form where each word and line matters like a poem, but where there still exists the generosity of character and plot attributed to the novel.

Damn it's an impressive thing.

"Memory" is from Greg Bottoms' Fight Scenes.