Pamela Painter's "The New Year" is quite possibly my favorite work of flash fiction.  With its fast pace, distinctive characters, double meanings, and careful balance between humor and seriousness, "The New Year" is a brilliant example of the condensing and compressing required for flash fiction to work.

The story was included in 1996's Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Really Short Stories, edited by Jerome Stern, as well as in Painter's 2010 collection, Wouldn't You Like to Know.


An audio version of the story, titled "The Ham," is available from WGBH in Boston.

What We Know and How We Know It

Painter's opening sentence is a mere 32 words long, but it's packed with information:

"It's late Christmas Eve at Spinelli's when Dominic presents us, the waitstaff, with his dumb idea of a bonus—Italian hams in casings so tight they shimmer like Gilda's gold lamé stockings."

With that opening sentence, we know where and when the story takes place, what the narrator does for a living, and how he feels about his boss. We know that a woman named Gilda looms large in the narrator's mind, and we know that Gilda's fashion sense leans toward gold lamé stockings.

In the remainder of the story (only about 240 more words), Gilda kicks the narrator out of the apartment they share, and he takes an impromptu cross-country road trip, visiting St. Louis, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and the Pacific Ocean, all while trying to get Gilda to take him back.

What is important here is the way Painter reveals information.

Gilda evicts the narrator because "she's heard about Fiona." Instantly, we can guess that the narrator has had an affair with Fiona, even though we have no idea who Fiona is. Later, Painter writes, "Fiona belongs to Dominic, and we are a short sad story of one night's restaurant despair." With this sentence, she confirms our suspicions about the affair, but she also lets us know that the narrator is in trouble not just with Gilda, but also with his boss. We can tell by the phrase "one night's restaurant despair" that the narrator loves neither Fiona nor his job.

Painter is skillfully leaning on certain clichés here, like the bad job and the one night stand, so that readers can fill in the backstory. I think that's one of the strengths of flash fiction: there aren't enough words available for authors to start over-explaining things, so they have to trust readers to figure things out. But what isn't cliché is the way the narrator understands his own transgression -- "a short sad story of one night's restaurant despair" -- and that's what Painter chooses to give us.

More than Plot

Of course, even though "The New Year" covers a lot of ground, the story is about much more than plot.

Painter employs multiple meanings of words like "ham" and "missing" to give the story resonance. The ham becomes a symbol for the narrator, for his relationship with Gilda, and even for the child he and Gilda might have had if he had taken better care of their relationship.  

The narrator is kind of a goofball -- a ham -- for bringing the ham on his trip and photographing it everywhere. But consider how much more attentive he is to the ham than he was to his relationship, not least when he secures it with a seatbelt. In some ways, it seems to be his pathetic attempt at a second chance.

The word "missing," too, carries multiple meanings. The narrator misses Gilda, and he has most likely also missed his chance at finding happiness with her. He also seems to "miss" a lot in the sense of being oblivious, and he is "missing" as in lost -- he can't really figure out where he's supposed to be or what he's supposed to be doing.  

Revising Toward Perfection

All authors revise, and for many authors, the revisions can be painstaking. So I don't mean to suggest that revision is the provenance only of flash fiction writers. Nevertheless, there are numerous versions of "The New Year" in circulation, and the small differences among them can provide a window into the exacting process of perfecting flash fiction.

Right now, I'm looking at three versions: one from a 1994 issue of Sun Dog: The Southeast Review, another from a 2004 edition of What If?, a textbook co-edited by Painter and Anne Bernays, and a third version from Painter's 2010 collection mentioned above.  

In 1994, Gilda's robe has "white satin sleeves." In 2004, it merely has "satin sleeves." Then, in the 2010 version, the robe is once again white.

In 1994, the narrator merely "packs" his bags, but by 2004, he's "slinging" them into the trunk -- and worse for him, he's now doing it "[u]nder Gilda's unforgiving eye."

In 1994, the narrator tells readers, "I even give it [the ham] a seatbelt." By 2004, he says, "I strap it into a seat belt."

By 2010, we learn that when the narrator stops to phone Gilda, his idea of an apology is to sing Bing Crosby's "White Christmas." No wonder she keeps hanging up on him.

With these revisions, you can see Painter strengthening her verbs, excising unnecessary words and then reinstating them when they turn out to be necessary after all, and judiciously adding details that develop the characters and the situation.

The result is a work of flash fiction so tight it shimmers "like Gilda's gold lamé stockings."