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My name is Seeta. I do not like it, but what may I do? I am not good at studies. I am fourteen years old, still in the fourth standard. My parents, working in our village school, always tell me to study. I go on reading, even though not one thing goes into my head. On the other hand, I like to work in the kitchen, helping my mother, and sweeps and mops our little home.
Our home is in a remote village, far from the road. To catch a bus, which plies only twice to the town, we have to walk assorted miles. Our neighbours are poor workers, who depend on each and everyday wages. There is an old abandoned house, next to our own. I am afraid to go there even in the day time. The land belonging to the house extends up to the river, where we go for our every day bath.
One day we saw on old man coming there and sitting in the veranda of the old house. I just went there, curious to know regarding this stranger. He asked me when it comes to the place and later I took him to see the river. He seemed very happy to be there, for he remained there for a long time, until I reminded him regarding the evening being very near. He gave me something very tasty to eat, which I had not seen before. When we returned, a man was waiting for him. They returned and I forgot in regards to him.
After a month or so he came back, with his household effects, very few, just sufficient for cooking, and a huge collection of books, all well bound and in English. The men who accompanied him went back and he was left all alone! I shuddered at the thought of sleeping alone in that haunted house, and when I told him when it comes to it, he laughed aloud. He occupied only the extensive room upstairs, the wall shelf stocked full of books.
The next morning when I went to see him, he was attempting to sweep the room. Seeing his clumsy action, I just took the broom and swept it in a few minutes. He said something in English. I shook my head. It became a procedure for me. Some day I gave him galore particular dish we made at home, even though he cooked his rice on a kerosine stove. Slowly we became friends, even though my parents did not like it. They did not like the old man. Why is he staying here all alone? Has he no family?
When I put such questions to him, he remained silent, a pall of gloom descending on his face. I felt sorry for him. One day a young woman, wearing pricey sari and diamond necklace, came to visit him at noon, but left before the night, saying she is frighted of the house. They say it was his own daughter. I could not believe it. How may any one abandon her father, in his old age, in such a lonely place? I could not understand.
Months passed. We all went to attend a marriage in my mother’s house, very far from our village. We had to travel for two days by train. When we,returned, after a month or so, because it was vacation time, the house was locked from inside and there was no response, when we shouted and threw stones. My parents informed the police. When the house was opened by breaking the door, the body was found in a decaying condition.
I felt sudden giddiness. Afterwards I was told, the old man had given the house and property in my name, including a bank remainder of a few lacs rupees.
Sudden Fiction American Short Short Stories
“We who love prose fiction love these miniature tales both to read and to write because they are so finite; so highly compressed and highly charged.” Joyce Carol Oates
“People who like to skip can’t skip in a three-page story.” Grace Paley
“The short-short story is an exercise in virtuosity that tightens the circle of mystery surrounding what we know.” John L’Heureux
“It may do in a page what a novel does in two hundred. It covers years in less time, time in almost no time. It wants to deliver us to where we were before we began. Its aim is restorative, to keep us young.” Mark Strand
“There are, in truth, more kinds of short-short stories than I ever knew of or imagined. Wonderful! I rejoice in the richness and assortment of all these voices.” George Garrett
“This collection represents the richness and assortment of American writers. The 70 pieces themselves–highly compressed, many times tantalizing–display a multiplicity of modes and derive them a potpourri of traditions.” Publishers Weekly
From Publishers WeeklyThe short fiction (each piece is one to five pages long) in this collection represents the richness and assortment of American writers. A few are no longer contemporary (Hemingway, Malamud, Cheever), a great deal of are well traditionalisti (Paley, Oates, Updike, Donald Barthelme, Ray Bradbury, Peter Taylor, Raymond Carver) and numerous are newer presences on the fiction scene. With a tiny “frontisstory” by Robert Coover, a lighthearted introduction by Shapard and afterwords in regards to the short-short-story form by 40 outstanding American writers, the definition of what lies amongst as “sudden fiction” is well attended to. The 70 pieces themselveshighly compressed, often times tantalizingdisplay a multiplicity of modes and derive from a potpourri of traditions. The collection presents a group of writers whose miniature stories do, indeed, as the editors suggest, “confer form on little corners of chaos.”
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library JournalThis anthology holds 70 stories, all underneath five pages. There are a few standards by Hemingway and Cheever, but most are contemporary pieces by such writers as Paley, Oates, and Carver and a lot of unknowns. At it is bestas exemplified by the offerings of John Upike, Arturo Vivante, Bel Kaufman, and Charles Johnsonthis “sudden fiction” form is devastating, at it is worst, mere anecdote, but overall this is an strange and well-conceived collection. In an afterword, 40 writers/editors talk about the genre’s limitationsdoes it exist? what to call it?succinctly sufficient that the book may serve as a text for originative writing students as well as an interesting departure for the usual reader. Recommended.Peter Bricklebank, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
ReviewThe editors of Sudden Fiction argue for thoughtfulness of the shott-short, a highly compressed narrative of beneath 2,000 words, as a in an unambiguous manner progressed sub-genre of the established short story. But while presenting the reader with an abundance of short-short fiction, neither they, nor the writers commenting in the theoretical “AfterWords” section of this anthology, are competent to arrive at mutual agreement as to the aims and characteristics of this form. This is perhaps as it will have to be, given the diverse antecedents of the short-short in such types as the fablek, folktale, and Zen koan, as well as the myriad directions the contemporary offshoot has taken, encompassing works as dissimilar from one another as Tennessee Williams’ cautiously plotted narrative, “Tent Worms,” a modernist fable like H. E. Francis’ “Sitting,” Peter Taylor’s psychological study “A Walled Garden,” and the anecdotal humor of Roy Blount Jr.’s “Five Ives.” Hemingway and a few other past pros are included to show the historical development of the short-short, but special importance and significance is on stories of the past five years. Updike, Oates, and Malamud are represented, as are writers not long back established, such as Raymond Carver and Jayne Anne Phillips. While not settling any of the theoretical difficulties involved, this is notwithstanding a lively and thoughtprovoking collection of short fiction. — From Independent Publisher
Sudden Fiction American Short Short Stories Photo
Sudden Fiction American Short Short Stories Picture
Sudden Fiction American Short Short Stories Picture
Sudden Fiction American Short Short Stories Pic
Most helpful client reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
 Contains Some Amazing Stories
By A
I disagree with the former reviewer’s rather disparaging comments: This isn’t plainly a “bathroom read.” For writers, it’s a great lesson in economy and brevity. The short-short stories contained within will aid any writer realize the gains of using language with precision.
It’s also a wondrous read (you don’t have to be a writer to get enjoyment from it!) Some of my favored stories of all time, including Amy Robison’s desolating “Yours”, and good ones from Grace Paley and Raymond Carver, are here. As with all short-story collections, there’s a great deal of unevenness in terms of quality–not each story is great. But for the most part, the selections are very well chosen and the contemporaneous pieces (the book was in the first place published in the mid-1980s) hold up very well in this new millenium.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
 Bottled Lightning
By Ralph-Michael
~It’s a great book to have. You may read it on the subway and chew on a few stories in one transit, or just scan the beginnings and look for what catches your eye, or you may curl up on a rainy day and devour the whole book. It’s a outstanding way to meet some writers you’ve heard of but haven’t yet read. The only problem is the editor had this in mind so a great deal of writers, I presume, were chosen because of who they were not what they wrote. Some pieces are vignettes more than “Sudden Fiction.” Conversely, a good deal of stories are just marvelous: have no wasted words, tightly woven plots, and compelling characters. These stories are a marvel to see and a ought to for any individual fascinated in fiction. It’s unbelievable how much depth is possible in such a short space. If you’ve ever tried to write this book will impress you with how much the right word is essential. Mark Twain once said “the divergence amid the right word and almost right word is the divergence among lightning and the lightning bug.” Here is lightning-or is it the bug?-bottled up.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A pioneer collection of short-short stories
By Flávio
Perhaps the basi collection of American short-shorts ever published. At the time short-shorts were called a sub-genre, not a genre yet. The great forum in the Afterwords of the book on a name for the emergent genre and on the genre itself is the crowning of the oeuvre. It’s cherished because it has short-shorts from the primordium times such as Bernard Malamud’s, Ernest Hemmingway’s and Tennessee Williams’s when the genre was not called even a sub-genre; it did not exist. I commend it to any person who is curious with regards to emergent hybrid postmodernist autopoietic literary genres.
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