fwriction

It’s Flash Fiction Week here at fwriction, a celebration of the impact that comes with brevity in writing.

First up this Monday is David Foster Wallace’s “Incarnations of Burned Children,” from his collection Oblivion. This story, complete with DFW’s poignant and careful language, showcases the elements of craft which helped garner his work such high marks. I adore this story (one of my classes is reading and discussing the piece this week), and I hope you do, too. And, as always: miss you, DFW.

He could move fast, and the back porch gave onto the kitchen, and before the screen door had banged shut behind him the Daddy had taken the scene in whole, the overturned pot on the floortile before the stove and the burner’s blue jet and the floor’s pool of water still steaming as its many arms extended, the toddler in his baggy diaper standing rigid with steam coming off his hair and his chest and shoulders scarlet and his eyes rolled up and mouth open very wide and seeming somehow separate from the sounds that issued, the Mommy down on one knee with the dishrag dabbing pointlessly at him and matching the screams with cries of her own, hysterical so she was almost frozen.