SmokeLong Quarterly

The following is part of the SmokeLong Quarterly Five from the Archive series. This series is meant to be a resource mainly for creative writing instructors in search of flash narratives on a certain topic or dealing with a particular narrative device. Check out the entire series HERE. 

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by Christopher Allen

The very brief narrative has existed since stories made their migration from oral to written. This means the very brief narrative vastly predates the novel and the short story, but also the sonnet and the villanelle. Each literary episteme—and every culture for that matter—has had its own variation of the very brief narrative. We have, in the past thirty years, only begun to adjust the nomenclature. Since the advent of the internet—and I would argue because of it—we are now more likely to write the metamodern flash narrative. Before I offer a few examples of this latest incarnation of the flash form, let’s first explore what is meant by metamodernism.

While metamodernism, our current literary episteme, is still evolving, there are many generally accepted characteristics that make a work of art metamodern.

Oscillation between the earnestness of modernism and the irony of postmodernism, which most theorists see as the most prevalent aspect of metamodernism, is elemental in the metamodern literary flash narrative. By layering/braiding irony with honesty (coined ironesty by Greg Dember), the flash narrative manages to be emotionally affecting without being sentimental.

Metamodernism, as Greg Dember points out in the article “After Postmodernism: Eleven Metamodern Methods in the Arts,” “inherits self-reflexivity from postmodernism, but repurposes it in a manner that, generally speaking, serves to affirm felt experience.” Dember calls this form of self-reflexivity empathic reflexivity—undeniably an aspect of the contemporary literary flash narrative.

Dember goes on to describe other aspects of the metamodern work of art: the double frame, quirk, The Tiny, The Epic, The Constructed Pastiche, “Ironesty” (itself a form of oscillation), normcore, overprojection (anthropomorphism), and the meta-cute—all of which strike consonant chords in the current incarnation of the flash narrative. Instead of simply repeating much of what Dember explains, please have a look at the article if you’re interested in further study (it’s a good place to start if you’re into rabbit holes). The article sadly doesn’t include the flash narrative in its analysis of metamodern works of art, probably because Dember is not yet aware we’re here. But we are here.

Here are five examples of the metamodern literary flash narrative from the SmokeLong archives. It must be said, however, that most of what SmokeLong has published over the last 23 years could be considered metamodern. The internet—essentially the motor of metamodernism with the democratization/proliferation of literature—has spawned an ever-expanding archive of metamodern flash artifacts.

“Stock Photography” by David Yourdon. In this story, an actor relates his day of shooting stock photography with a constructed family. This narrative fulfills so many of the precepts of metamodernism. It’s a quirky story that oscillates between irony and profound moments of self-realization.

Prompt: Draft a story in which a narrator seeks family in a quirky, self-reflective way. Don’t shy away from the feels.

“The First Invention” by Tyler Sones is narrated by a teenager. Delightfully voicy, it toggles between snide yet sharp observations and an undercurrent of honest, existential yearning. This narrative is a good example of empathic reflexivity, the meta-cute, and quirk; and of course, in its expansion into the foundations of human existence, this tiny narrative feels grandly epic.

Prompt: Draft a narrative in which a child and parent share an eccentricity, flaw, weakness, or even a common criminal mind. Write the story from the child’s perspective. Remember to walk the tightrope between irony and earnestness.

“Vengeance” by K-Ming Chang. This narrative, which won Best of the Net, is the best example of the metamodern flash narrative I’ve seen. First of all, it must be said that writers young enough to have grown up as digital natives are much more likely to be drafting metamodern narratives than those of us who needed to immigrate. “Vengeance,” a wall-of-words flash narrative written from the point of view of a group of girls, oscillates between the voicy sarcasm and cruelty of prepubescent children to profound and surprising observations. Chang uses the tools of postmodernism but with the purpose of elucidating the character’s felt experience—that’s metamodern.

Prompt: Draft a story in the collective voice of a group of children. Feel free to explore the quirkiness of this situation, but you’ll get plus points for emotional resonance. Are you up for the maximalist flash writer’s wall-of-words narrative? To master this feat, you must surprise and delight the reader on every line.

“From Your Jerry” by Kevin Sterne. What a delightfully sad read. What makes this a metamodern flash narrative? Sterne employs a quirky, sparse narrative style that chokes me up every single time I read it—and I’ve read the story a hundred times. The humor—that most of the dialogue is delivered at a helium-induced high pitch—is genius and of course metamodern because it facilitates the oscillation between irony and earnestness. The story, in the end, is a devastating apology.

Prompt: Draft an apology to a loved one who’s no longer with us. If you can find the humor in this apology and swing the pendulum from irony to earnestness, you’ve done something metamodern.

“Mortality Event” by Hadiyyah Kuma. This one is told from the perspective of a pigeon—a dead one. This quirky story relates how the dead pigeon enjoys life once it takes over the body of the “you” in the piece. Being possessed by a dead pigeon is of course the outer frame which the reader must accept before enjoying the inner frame of everything the character enjoys in its new human body. The self-consciousness—or the pigeon’s conscious decisions to experience what it means to be human in a play-by-play account relating the pigeon’s enthusiastic consumption of pop culture—is a good example of empathic reflexivity. And it goes without saying that this narrative is an example of anthropomorphism, seen by Greg Dember as an element of the metamodern—though we’ve enjoyed talking animals for at least 2500 years. Hashtag Aesop’s Fables. Hashtag Flash has been around for centuries.

Prompt: Draft a flash narrative from the perspective of an animal. Plus points if this animal’s voice is not your usual suspect. More plus points if your narrative sets up an outer frame which the reader must first buy into before enjoying the story within.

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Christopher Allen is the editor-in-chief and publisher of SmokeLong Quarterly. He is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins and the episodic satire Conversations with S. Teri O’Type. Allen has judged the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Bridport Prize and other flash competitions. His work has appeared in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), twice in Best Small Fictions, SmokeLong Quarterly: the Best of the First Ten Years, and in over a hundred literary journals. Having lived in Germany most of his adult life, Allen and his husband are now semi-nomads.