Stuart Dybek Talks Flash Fiction And Flashbacks
By Jaclyn Bauer in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 12, 2014 3:00PM
Photo by Carolyn Kassnoff of City Lit Books
Dybek was more than simply animated during the reading: he saturated the space with an ardent and vivacious energy as his accent, tonal quality and mannerisms danced magically with each character that he momentarily embodied. Maybe it was the piece of literature, ‘Cordoba’, from one of his most recently published collections of fiction entitled Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories which lent itself most readily to such effusion of emotion.
‘Cordoba’ follows the journey of a 20-year-old Chicagoan as he attempts to make his way home from Buena Park to Rogers Park in the midst of a cataclysmic snow storm. Drinking with the team members of the Chicago Bears at Buena Chimes, a hitch from a maniacal, apparently heavily accented man drunk on Jäger, and true to Dybek’s thematic trajectory—deep seated questions regarding the nature of love and existential sentiments—the story’s nearly insane plot could only be the strangeness of fiction, right? Upon concluding the reading, Dybek admitted that though he hates the question and “not that it really matters,” but the story of ‘Cordoba’ is a piece of non-fiction taken from his own past.
Ecstatic Cahoots is a collection of mostly flash fiction, or extremely short pieces of fiction, usually less than 1,000 words. Dybek, a known devotee of the form, took the time to trace the lineage of flash fiction as he understands it. He unequivocally traces flash fiction back to the prose poetry. This connection, he claims, was forged because flash fiction, at its inception, was primarily published by editors of poetry magazines. Such publication took place during what Dybek referred to as the “second wave of modernism” brought on by the profusion of fragmentation in literature. What began as the prose poem then morphed into flash fiction as it became more readily adopted by prose writers and editors.
The very agility of fictional prose is what Dybek claims is the mark of his affinity for the artistic medium. When asked about his tendency to shift his perspective through time, he addressed the popular belief that within literature, the flashback is equivalent to the word “f***” in Hollywood. Dybek emphasized that you can’t really get away with using either f-word unless you’re an already established artist in your field. Though he recognized that flashbacks do in fact have a tendency to disrupt the natural flow of time in a narrative, he argued that fiction, because of its abstract nature, allows for greater freedom to “hurdle back and forth through time.”
Check out Dybek’s undulations through time in his newest releases Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern: Love Stories. Both collections are available at City Lit Books as well as bookstores nationwide. Pick one up at your local Chicago bookstore this Saturday on Independent Bookstore Day!