I have been involved in a debate going on at flashfiction.net regarding Hemingway's famous six (not to be confused with Enid Blyton's famous five!). The six in question are words: 'For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn', and the contention is that these six words constitute a story.
I am unhappy with this as an analysis of the six words. I maintain that the reader creates the story out of the six words and that the six words may be counted as highly evocative or art or poetry, but that the stories that might be inferred from these six words can be completely contradictory: story of a baby who died without leaving the hospital; story of a baby born with outsized feet or no feet or three; story of a couple who could not conceive... etc. The limit of these stories stretches as far as the imagination of readers or writers, which is very far indeed. It also underlines my point that the story is an invention of the reader not Hemingway the writer... that of themselves there is insufficient in those six words for us to say that here we have a story in any acceptable sense of what is a story.
Then Randall Brown of flashfiction.net challenged me to add to the six words sufficient for me to accept that now we had a story. I am not a fan of brevity for brevity's sake and see this drive towards absolute minimalism as gimmicky and uninteresting. So, instead, I took Hemingway's six (and by the way, in the end they are probably not Hemingway's, which I am pleased about as I esteem his writing a lot) and in keeping with the idea of flash (short short fiction) I created two 'stories' out of Hemingway's six words. One piece is traditional and one is experimental and I hope they both are sufficient for a story to be 'seen'. Here they are:
FIVE HANDWRITTEN CARDS IN A SHOP WINDOW (Handwriting the same)
1) For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.
2) Home Sweet Home - missing all the 'sweet'. Looking to share with tenant of a kindly disposition and gentle words. Terms and conditions negotiable.
3) Genuine18 carat gold wedding band - no longer required. All offers considered.
4) Heart: used once, needs mending. Answers to the name of Ed. Barren women only may apply.
5) Baby name: never used. Rolls around the tongue, like hard candy, tastes sharp like lemons or onions, and brings tears. Will consider exchange for some other name.
And flash story number two:
ENOUGH (with a debt to Hemingway or whoever)
"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn"
He held the card at arm's length, reading over what he'd written. He wondered if it was enough, if six words told the whole story of those shoes - Emmy's shoes, small as a doll's, and he dreams sometimes, sees Emmy in the dark of dreaming and her impossible first steps, the ones she might have taken, her tiny feet, soft as snow or clouds, and slipped into those shoes. He hears the hesitant dream-click and click of her breathless step and step, moving towards his outstretched arms or moving away, his hands clutching at only dark.
"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn"
He set the card down on the kitchen table. He wrapped the shoes in pink tissue paper and laid them together, heel to toe in the box and the lid placed on top so they were in the sudden dark once more - another box-dark like the one where Emmy danced in breathless dreams or slept and did not dream, not ever.
"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn"
He wondered if those six words were enough.
1 comment:
My contribution in this debate on flashfiction.net has been removed by the site owner. Why? Because of the mess that is attached to my on-line reputation, a mess that was drawn to his attention by some mysterious in-the-dark person. Apparently I am now not allowed to be a writer - even though all those who have attacked me recognise I have talent as a writer. Because my views differ from their views, I am to be hounded and all trace of my work wiped out.
Am I being over dramatic? Wherever I put my work, behind the scenes someone undermines my credibility by writing to say I am a plagiarist. I am not; my views on ideas and inspiration are a reflection of what happens in the real world - from Shakespeare to Helen Fielding. And, what's more, I have resolved to be different in my writing methods, to have changed. But because three writers have found offence with me, my character is defamed and my writing burned from the pages of online places.
One writer has just removed several pieces from his site where I subbed under a pseudonym. He says if I had just been up front and honest with him this wouldn't have been the case. He e-mailed me to this extent but then said there was no point in e-mailing a response back to him as anything I wrote would no longer reach through the filter on his account! I posted under a pseudonym because of the persecution; I wrote under a pseudonym because it was the only way to write and be read; I wrote under a pseudonym for the protection of the writer whose site it was and for the protection of my work. I gave my work away freely to this site and there was no personal advantage accrued to me, because they did not have my name attached to them. To Benjamin Judge, therefore, and his site 'roykeanesluckyscarf', I say: there was no intention to cause you grief or to darken the project, but your response to finding out who I am only serves to prove that there was good reason for me to adopt a pseudonym.
I do want to put this behind me. Tell me how that can happen? Am I to be made to abandon writing because of what I did with only a few short stories over two years ago? Must we all be forced to conform to views that others lay down and which they cannot argue convincingly for? Given that even these writers who condemn me admit each one of them to 'borrowing' from other writers, can anyone tell me where the line of what is acceptable in borrowing can be drawn?
I have never been dishonest in my few borrowings? I admit to them openly. I have apologised for hurt caused to others. What more must I do?
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