ShareThisHOUSTON - After co-hosting the Academy Awards this year, actor Alec Baldwin said, "The movies, at their best, make audiences feel things about themselves and life that other media don't bring into focus as completely or effectively. Only books, I would argue, do a better job."
But times are changing for creative writing in books.
Television has let audiences expect the punch line fast, contrasting sharply with the relaxed art of reading.
Speed, ease and volume are driving behavior. The Economist, a newsweekly, recently argued that digital data, and information, is so vast and increasing so rapidly, researchers in 2008 already estimated it was 34 gigabytes per person per day. It's led reading activity, which had previously declined because of television, to triple since 1980.
However, reading more doesn't mean we understand more. In response, some companies now have a CIO, chief information officer, who serves as part software programmer, statistician and storyteller to keep the information and the narrative going in the same direction. Getting more information means getting the story straight.
That's where a recently published anthology, "Sudden Fiction Latino" (Robert Shapard, James Thomas and Ray Gonzalez, editors) comes in. Its vignettes and short-short stories may be a forerunner of what Dostoyevsky-length novels did in the past to help interpret the complex human condition.
This amazing collection, coming at a time when our attention spans are like a contracting universe, deserves to be on everyone's Read-Next list.
The stories have depth. There's something to get from each one. And the mastery is in the brevity.
The stories come out of the flash story-telling tradition. "(N)owhere in the world are they more brilliant or popular than in Latin America," say the editors. A micro story might run less than 100 words or several pages, but it's never long. U.S. Latino writers have been early adapters to the growing worldwide trend.
Among the 60 contributing authors are Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Roberto Bolano and Eduardo Galeano. U.S. writers Junot Diaz (2008 Pulitzer Prize), Dagalberto Gilb, and Daniel Alarcon make contributions.
Marisella Viega, a frequent contributor to Hispanic Link News Service, provides "Fresh Fruit," like a mood-setting sociological study in a Caribbean setting, in three pages. One not to miss is Socorro Venegas' about drug rehab titled, "Johnny Depp."
The mix of writers is all American -- South, Central and North.
Audiences that have not kept up with the writing traditions of the Americas get a crash course just by going from one story to the next. The 60 pieces and voices are hardly enough. All of the major American regions appear to be represented except for Canada. That's a shame because it was Canadian journalist Josef Braun who said, "Sometimes, it seems, it takes a work of fiction to deliver the news."
"Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote," by doctoral student Juan Martínez is one that stood out for me because it is cognizant of language and accents in our transnational lives where being of one country isn't definition anymore. "We feign bad foreign accent to make feel better," says the narrator, describing the karaoke where tipsy customers sing to Don Quixote and other book classics like those by Melville and Tolstoy, but not poetry. "Poetry karaoke is like haiku sonatina -- no good, no one sing." The karaoke is so successful it's opening a franchise in La Mancha, the setting of Don Quixote. But waiters there will sport heavy American accents and talk loud and slow. That's how Spaniards want to hear their literature sung.
The way Vick's opens up the nasal passages during a cold, literary stories let the mind breathe by transporting us away from complacency to imagined possibilities. They deliberately sabotage us from becoming too literal, appallingly mechanical, or snobbish.
Stories in books are messengers, as Scarlett Johansson's character says in the movie "A Love Song for Bobby": "Everyone knows that books are better than life. That's why they're books. "
Jose de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail him at joseisla3(at)yahoo.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
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