Life Is Short ? Art Is Shorter: In Praise of Brevity

by David Shields, Elizabeth Cooperman

Overview

Life Is Short—Art Is Shorter is not just the first anthology to gather both mini-essays and short-short stories; readers, writers, and teachers will get will get an anthology; a course’s worth of writing exercises; a rally for compression, concision, and velocity in an increasingly digital, post-religious age; and a meditation on the brevity of human existence.

1. We are mortal beings.
2. There is no god.
3. We live in a digital culture.
4. Art is related to the body and to the culture.
5. Art should reflect these things.
6. Brevity rules.

The book’s 40 contributors include Donald Barthelme, Kate Chopin, Lydia Davis, Annie Dillard, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Wayne Koestenbaum, Anne Lamott, Daphne Merkin, Rick Moody, Dinty W. Moore, George Orwell, Jayne Anne Phillips, George Saunders, Lauren Slater, James Tate, and Paul Theroux.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990437048
Publisher:	Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

David Shields is the author of fifteen books, including Salinger; How Literature Saved My Life, published by Knopf; Reality Hunger, named one of the best books of the year by more than thirty publications; The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead, a New York Times bestseller; Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Remote, winner of the PEN/Revson Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and two NEA fellowships, Shields has published essays and stories in dozens of publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and The Believer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington.

Elizabeth Cooperman’s work has appeared in the Writer’s Chronicle, Seattle Review, and 1913: A Journal of Forms. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Washington in 2010, lives in Seattle, and works for Poetry Northwest and a ninety-year-old blind man.

Editorial Reviews

02/09/2015
Rather than simply collecting stories and essays of exceptional quality and short length, this strange anthology also attempts to add the organizing conceit of human aging—and then tries to be a classroom text, including writing prompts in between chapters. Achieving all three of these goals is too much for the short pieces, although some of the essays are not all that short, up to 10 pages long. Many of the selections do glimmer, showcasing their ability to transmit depth and insight in few words. Standouts include Wayne Koestenbaum’s “My 1980s,” Rick Moody’s “Primary Sources,” and Annie Dillard’s response to 9/11, “This Is the Life.” Most of the stories and essays seem out of place in the “stage of life” chapters in which they are placed. For example, the section themed “You Are a Toddler” is also (confusingly) titled “Prose Poem” and includes one essay about a poet’s husband and another about being a stripper. The introductions, to each chapter and to the book itself, are tedious and bizarre, cryptically describing the short pieces in order to justify their inclusion. The collection aims to praise brevity, but lacks the clarity to explain its own necessity. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Worthy collection of examples of the flash essay and prose poems.
NICHOLE L. REBER, Ploughshares

In his short story, “Adultery,” Tim Parks writes, “One lives such a short time, yet wishes to do everything, and then to recapture everything.” Read this collection for the stories, and then read them again and again, taking great care to capture everything.
SANTI ELIJAH HOLLEY, The Portland Mercury

Half meditation on the nature of the form, half textbook for the instruction of the same, the anthology mostly succeeds on both fronts, remaining highly readable and full of erudite commentary.
ALEX MCCOWN, The AV Club

From the Publisher