Alan Gullette

Short Shrift Alan Gullette

A person bumps his head and discovers his interrelatedness with everything... A man dies while working on a new invention... An up-close encounter with nature has unexpected results... A group of boys playing in the words discover ancient ruins... A group of friends seeking cultural enrichment get lost in a glass house... A man tows a floating village by a rope... A painting found in the trash becomes a life-changing obsession... A visit the beach leads to the discovery of worlds unknown... A place where carnies go to retire becomes its own sideshow... A girl plays a game involving a King, a Count, and the Mona Lisa... In this collection of stories, the author combines elements of weird fantasy, surrealism and the absurd to create a unique universe of odd characters in unusual circumstances. The 44 extraordinary pieces are written in the "short" formats and arrange by length: from minimalist short short stories such as the 60-word "In Fields Themselves," through 1,000-word short stories including "The Picture" and "Icelandic Shadow-Trap" and the 4,000-word "The Kingdom at Land's End" and "Wilfred's Hollow," to the 10,000-word short short novel The Six-Button Game (itself composed of six intertwining storylines). The very concept of story is deconstructed and reconstructed according to the author's whim, aiming to achieve an apotheosis of the ordinary spectacle.