Baby Shoes (A Brief Note on Flash Fiction)

Image via id-iom on flickr [1]

Flash fiction is a literary genre defined by its brevity that divides into subcategories based on word count; for example, the dribble is a work of 50 words, whilst the drabble is twice the length.

For those who, like me, love all forms of fragmented writing - including aphorisms, epigrams, haiku and micro-blogging - flash fiction possesses a unique quality of suggestion that isn't always present in longer tales where characters and stories are more fully developed.

It's not that less is more, but that less hints at so much more than the material on the page and teases with infinite possibility. In other words, flash fiction is a kind of virtual genre played upon the actual surface of language. I'm tempted to also suggest that flash fiction can be thought of in the same way that D. H. Lawrence conceives the poetry of the present:

"In the immediate present there is no perfection, no consummation, nothing finished. [...] The living plasm vibrates unspeakably, it inhales the future, it exhales the past, it is the quick of both, and yet it is neither. [...]
      There is poetry of this immediate present, instant poetry [...] whose very permanency lies in its wind-like transit." [2]

This poetry of the present is, like flash fiction, radically different (not just in form) from more carefully considered and constructed work; "there is no static perfection, none of that finality which we find so satisfying because we are so frightened" [3]. There is, rather, just the insurgent naked throb of the instant moment.

In sum: flash fiction, at its best, helps set us free and if there is something a little discordant and unsatisying about it, well, these qualities also belong to life ...

Notes

[1] Ernest Hemingway, who included 18 pieces of flash fiction in his first short-story collection, In Our Time (1925), is also believed (probably wrongly) to have written this tragic six-word tale of unworn baby shoes for sale. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Preface to New Poems', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Appendix 1, pp. 646-47. 

[3] Ibid., p. 647. 

On Courage and Cowardice (with Reference to the Case of Sir Craig Mackey)

Sir Craig Mackey with the white feather he should receive 

when stripped of his knighthood

Image: Press Association

I. Courage

Courage - be it bravery in the face of physical danger or hardship, or the determination to do the right thing even in the teeth of popular opposition - is one of those ancient virtues that still resonates today. One is even tempted to suggest it's a universal human value.

Certainly in the Western philosophical tradition, courage is right up there; Socrates and his followers may have subjected it to questioning and been unable to ever quite arrive at a satisfactory definition of what it is, but they never doubted its importance. The man who would be master of himself must be able to control his fear and endure suffering. And wisdom alone, as Cicero knew, isn't enough here; it also requires the heart's strength. 

Even Christian thinkers in the medieval period admired courage - often thought of in terms of fortitude - and listed it as one of the cardinal virtues. Indeed, it was also said to be one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. That said, Aquinas and company tend to see courage in purely reactive terms, as a form of perseverance, rather than as something active, such as bravery in battle.

Later, in the modern era, Hobbes thought of courage as a natural virtue belonging to the individual that assists in his survival. Hume also identified courage as a natural virtue and suggested that it was the one of the sources of human pride and wellbeing. For whilst excessive courage can, perhaps, result in recklessness, it brings the individual the admiration of his fellows (and of posterity) and plays a protective role within society - whereas cowardice, on the other hand, lays us open to attack.   

For the existentialists, courage is the affirmation of being in the face of the void and life's absurd cruelty; a way for man to exhibit faith in themselves and grace under pressure, as Hemingway once put it.  

II. Cowardice

Etymologically, the word coward enters into English from the Old French term coart and implies having a tail - as in an individual who turns tail and runs whenever danger threatens, or one who places his tail between his legs like a submissive dog.   

Essentially, cowardice is the opposite of courage; a condition wherein fear and/or excessive self-concern stops one from taking decisive action or speaking up and saying the right thing. It is both a failure of nerve and of character and is looked down on as universally as courage is respected. Indeed, it is often not only stigmatized, but severely punished; particularly within a military context that demands every man do his duty and be brave under fire.  

III. The Case of Sir Craig Mackey

And so to the case of Sir Craig Mackey, Deputy Commissioner of the Met ... A man now condemned and widely mocked by colleagues, journalists, and members of the public as a coward, after it was revealed that during the Westminster terror attack last March, in which PC Keith Palmer was fatally stabbed, he drove off, sharpish, having first locked the windows of his car.

To be fair, he was unarmed and had no protective equipment; he also had the safety of his passengers to consider. So maybe he was simply following police protocol. But, having said that, this story is profoundy dispiriting; one expects more from a British Bobby and a knight of the realm (or indeed any Englishman worth his salt).