Two Minimalist Short Stories

English Literature - Introduction

Minimalism -- John Barth's Description

Minimalism certainly means using fewer words to express thoughts, plots, ideas, quotes and action, but there is more to it than that, according to John Barth. By using Henry James' mantra of "show, don't tell," Barth covers the subject very well. Barth also quotes Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote that "…undue length is…to be avoided." The short story itself is an example of minimalism, simply because it condenses the components of a novel into a much shorter space. There are writers who specialize in what Barth calls "luxuriant abundance" and in "extended analysis," which clearly is the opposite of minimalism; he mentions Guy de Maupassant and Anton Chekov as "masters of terseness" (Barth, 1986).

And because Barth uses examples of well-known writers, he certainly couldn't omit Ernest Hemingway, whose short stories were very tight and yet very expressive with fewer, well-chosen words and phrases. "You could omit anything…and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood" (Barth). Creating minimalist fiction means using "stripped-down vocabulary… [And] a stripped down rhetoric" that reduces figurative language, Barth writes. He extols the virtues of "super-short stories" -- such as one of the stories selected for this assignment, "The Cranes."

Thesis: Learning to write effectively without an overload of descriptive phrases or adjectives, and learning to say more with less by showing, not telling, is the crux of the matter when it comes to minimalism.

The Cranes

In Peter Meinke's short story, the author lets the reader know (through minimal narrative) that the two people watching whooping cranes are not well-to-do and that they are old. The "shower curtain spread over the front seat" is a very short but clear indication that the seat is likely tattered or torn, or otherwise not suitable for sitting on without a cover. But since there are seat covers available in auto supply stories -- and they're probably not cheap -- a reader can assume this was a cost-cutting move on the couple's part. Minimalism, Barth explained,

Readers know that the couple has been in an accident and that they are stuck in some kind of health rut, which probably includes psychological problems. "I could use a few clowns" is a tell-tale admission that the man is depressed or otherwise struggling (Meinke, 1987). He can't get up stairs and is restricted in what he can eat or drink -- and smoking is off-limits; so how serious is his health, a reader naturally wonders? Less of an explanation (minimalism) allows the reader's mind to expand the knowledge of what he is reading.

The woman stands by him and likes to hear his voice, yet there is a strong sense of sadness. The personification of the cranes (their feathers are falling out and their kids never write) leads the reader to believe that the couple's own kids are estranged from their parents. Birds' offspring certainly don't write to their parents and readers can infer that the man is losing his hair -- either from cancer treatments or very old age. "Never got tired of listening to you…" suggests things are at an end (Meinke). She is summing up the past, and instead of saying "never get tired…" Meinke uses "got" as a substitute because it is past tense and this couple seems to be past tense. Show, don't tell, Barth insists, and that's what this dialogue is doing.

Readers know the couple had good intimacy when they were younger. He says she was "terrific in ways I couldn't tell the kids about," and this adds to the melancholy of the situation (Meinke). All these little statements add up to the reader understanding they are very old and are simply being sentimental, using the cranes as a way to deflect their thoughts from their own failure. He wears a hearing aid but he didn't bring it; he says he can "…hardly hear anything anyway" but he did hear smaller birds squabbling, so we understand exaggeration is part of getting old (Meinke). The juxtaposition in the last two sentences (the cranes life off towards the sun but the car is "sinister") is a way for Meinke to add drama and misery without using a lot of words. The car may be an old VW ("beetle-like") but its paint has been burned off by the sun because it is seen in "metallic isolation." The story has the quality Barth described in his essay as a "stripped-down vocabulary" because simple, short phrases like when he kissed her "barely touching her lips" are used. Very old people, tired people, may hit and miss with kisses (Meinke)

55 Miles to the Gas Pump

This story is a bit shorter than "The Cranes" but it also utilizes minimalism to create a complete picture of everything that is going on and has been going on. Annie Proulx manages to cover a lot of ground in her narrative by describing Rancher Croom's life and times -- and his demise -- in one long descriptive first paragraph. Readers know what he looks like; they know that he has an intimate relationship with alcohol, and that he is committing suicide during one of his drunks as he jumps off a cliff into the canyon below. In the second paragraph we know that his wife is discovering the likely reason that Rancher Croom is taking his own life: he has made a pastime of killing women and doing unconscionably hideous things to their bodies.

Author Proulx doesn't have to tell readers that this couple has been living very separate and very different lives; she doesn't have to because she shows the reader when she writes about the wife finding out that her husband has been killing women and doing unthinkably cruel things to them.

All of these words and phrases in the first two paragraphs are without emotion. Proulx has left the adjectives out so the reader can fill those in as he or she wishes to do. There is no narrator, which is typical of minimalism, and readers know that the same paint Rancher Croom used to brighten up the shutters on the house was used on Croom's boots as he stomped on his prey.

Anyone that has seen or played a violin knows there are the ends of the cat-gut strings that curl; readers know that Rancher Croom's hair sticking out of his "filthy hat" looks like those ends of the strings on a violin. So Proulx is using what Barth calls "stripped-down syntax" because readers know dirty hair, maybe sweaty as well, curls up on the end. She doesn't need to tell us everything because the brief allusion to violin strings does that quite well.

When she writes that Rancher Croom's home-made beer was "bursting out in garlands of foam" and that he was "galloping drunk over the dark plain" she is using dark and light as imagery, rather than long descriptive sentences (Proulx, 1999). A garland is something that a reader would expect to see on a Roman emperor; it is literally a wreath made of flowers. So within the tight writing of a minimalist short story, the author cleverly uses irony and dramatic imagery to paint a picture of the man and the action.