Against Flash Fiction

In several of my classes, I’ve shared with students the story “Subtotals” by Gregory Burnham. Published in Harper’s in 1989, the story is a tally of experiences, mishaps, and misdeeds coming in at under 500 words. It wouldn’t work in longer form. Part of the beauty of it is the way it lends itself to speculation about its narrator, what he sees in reviewing how he’s lived. His disclosures are presented as statements of fact, but suggest someone deeply complex, a person capable of viciousness and tenderness (“Number of times I’ve kicked the dog: 6… Number of babies held in arms: 9… Number of compliments, given: 4,051; accepted: 2,249... Number of times flown in dreams: 28…”)—that is, a person. He counts his infidelities, breakdowns, hunches played, cigarettes smoked; he counts what he doesn’t have: Purple Hearts, miracles witnessed, times born again (0, 0, 0). He is exactingly specific, brutally honest. We wonder why he looks back on his life in this particular way. The story invites us to consider our own subtotals, to consider what makes a story a story. Does this one “count”? There’s no plot in the usual sense. There’s a character, of sorts, but he emerges in the absence of scenes, dialogue, description. I could go on. I’ve taught this story to teenagers, adults, and prison inmates, and I haven’t exhausted it yet. All that from a piece that barely fills a page.