I Hear You're Rich
Diane Williams, “godmother of flash fiction” (The Paris Review), returns with 33 short, brilliant stories.

In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.
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I Hear You're Rich
Diane Williams, “godmother of flash fiction” (The Paris Review), returns with 33 short, brilliant stories.

In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.
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I Hear You're Rich

I Hear You're Rich

by Diane Williams
I Hear You're Rich

I Hear You're Rich

by Diane Williams

Overview

Diane Williams, “godmother of flash fiction” (The Paris Review), returns with 33 short, brilliant stories.

In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences, with a sly and occasionally wild wit, Williams shows us how any moment of any day can open onto disappointment, pleasure, and possibility.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781641294782
Publisher: Soho Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 08/08/2023
Pages: 128
Sales rank: 700,467
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Diane Williams is the founder and editor of the distinguished literary annual NOON, the archive of which, as well as Williams' personal literary archive, was acquired in 2014 by the Lilly Library. She is the author of eleven volumes of short fiction. She lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

Oriel?

We were in the room where there is often a deep stream of daylight.
     And my husband’s mother had made sunshine cake for us, but since she did not like to walk—it hurt her legs—I was the one who carried the platter with the sumptuous cake to the table.
     But where best to look as I went forward? At the cake? Or at their faces? This task takes common sense and balance as do all my others.
     What to name our baby?—a sobriquet that means rich? Why not helper of humankind?—ardent or dawn? Deirdre, I like, but the name means sorrow—or Oriel?
     So we ate cake and claimed happiness for the birth event that will come soon enough and the name I prefer for our daughter is Clara—which means shining and bright. And on our walk home I noted leaves much darker than others toward the center of a tree that I focused on.
     The shape of the shadows? A scrap of a shadow maintained its roundness and then that shadow started to move and next I felt a sharp tapping on my back, caused by a stiff prod—by a wand of some sort, but when I turned to look, I saw no pointed object, and no one.
     My husband, Stephen, said, “Jean, what’s wrong?” He said, “Which is it?”
     A girlish figure with her children and with their full voices in tow, casually passed us by, while spreading loving-kindness and grace, which I think may have become fashionable.
 

The Tune


Several birds had worms in their mouths, but one did not, and he whistled.
     I whistled.
     The whistling bird flew a bit beyond me and then settled again on the fence and I pursued him with the only tune I could manage until he answered back while he jumped to the ground at my feet.
     He was my creature briefly. We didn’t even vary the volume.
     What I like best is taking my pleasure alongside somebody I barely know in such spasms.
 
 
Start Here


I got to the building that was a church that had a high ceiling and a long stair going down and a woman was coming after me, an elderly woman, but I didn’t know her name. She was in a hurry. She said, “Tell the pastor that I saw you.” I said okay, but I didn’t remember who the pastor was or the woman’s name. Why didn’t I just tell the woman that? I just said okay to please her and it was dishonest.
     And even though I was indoors, I thought, Let’s see if I can fly, and I was floating around. People were looking at me and I said, “Don’t try to do this! This takes a lot of practice.”
     I was happy and I was chubby. I had on some kind of woolen clothing.
     I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t flown?
 

A Slew of Attractions

I was Diane Williams leaving town and I had left my family behind too, as well as a situation that had overwhelmed me.
     My seatmate slept and we had an undemanding climb into the air, as the Airbus carried us above a slew of attractions.
     And then we endured the severe stress of turbulence that lasted for too long, but the steward said he was not concerned and that the wings of the plane can bend quite easily to accommodate such trouble—and to show me how, he stretched his arms up high above his head.
     The cabin was dim and then light entered at a low angle and further illumined the pages of my book.
     My seatmate inquired about the book that tells a story much like my own. It is necessarily controlled and the personalities are abstracted. The novel is Murder in Estoril by Edith Templeton.
     My seatmate said, “Life! This is the way to look at it!”
     It was a cloud she pointed to that had flanking branches, fancy curly touches, and a generous nature that had to be the creation of a god who had forgotten how angry she is.
     We heard for the trip’s remainder the shifting of some invisible plane parts that made a low-grade cracking sound that I had to worry over.
     On land, as in the air, I check the timepiece I wear often. Its second hand seems to tremble when it advances and its dial presents such a modern face.
     My own face is old style. I have seen my face in a seventeenth-century painting, A Girl and Her Duenna.
     The duenna is extremely amused and her eyes are my eyes, as is the tint of her skin and her forehead’s contour.
     She presses a kerchief against her mouth and chin and she will guffaw for ages—has done.
     And do you know where I am this minute?—do you?
     Where I am has an urban flavor and I ask myself to please make plain what my laughing matters are.

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