The Fish

A while back I mentioned Opium Magazine's Shya Scanlon Seven-Line Prose Award. Well, I wrote three seven-line stories, and I thought one of them was pretty decent, so I paid my seven-dollar entry fee and submitted it. Not too long after that, though, I came across this story by Lydia Davis. It's called "The Fish," and once you're done reading it, you can listen to the author herself reading it here.

At any rate, Ms. Davis managed to make my little seven-line story seem pretty terrible. I think it's from her book Break it Down, which was a favorite of mine about seven years ago. I haven't read it since then as a collection, but I've read a number of individual stories in anthologies, and I've even taught a few of them. I've been trying to figure out what book I want to read next, and based on how much I dug my re-reading of "The Fish," maybe it's time I get Break it Down down off the shelf.