Diminishing Returns

The Initial Shock

For the past month we have been focusing on flash fiction. We not only solicited the form heavily, but we also looked to select shorter pieces from our regular submissions. We’re not sure who invented flash fiction. Some believe that you can trace its roots back to oral and religious traditions, sighting Aesop’s fables, the parables of Jesus and even prayer as possible points of origination. The first time we truly became aware of the capabilities of the short-short form was when we read Ernest Hemingway’s vignettes in In Our Time .

Recently the form has exploded. Most assume this trend is due to a shrinking attention span and literature’s ever-increasing enemies in the field of the entertainments. However, when recently thumbing through a Thomas Keller cookbook we came across a culinary theory that might also explain recent flash fiction fanaticism.

Chef Tomas Keller is best known for his restaurant The French Laundry located in Napa Valley. He has others — one Bouchon in Napa, one Bouchon in Las Vegas, and Per Se in New York. It is at Per Se and The French Laundry where Keller utilizes a technique of staged meals — a series of small, well-focused dishes. And here we specifically focus on an essay that appears in Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook that explains the approach.

Keller is known for a stringent aesthetic. He’s supposed to be a total control freak. We’ve heard tales that he showers three times a day. We hear he has an immaculate sock drawer. The kitchen in The French Laundry is carpted. We hear he fires cooks if they have visible tattoos.

But much of that information in unsubstantiated.

What we know for sure is that at The French Laundry Keller has made a name for himself by serving immaculately organized food.

Most chefs try to satisfy a customer’s hunger in a short time with one or two dishes. They begin with something great. The initial bite is fabulous. The second bite is great. But by the third bite–with many more to come–the flavors begin to deaden, and the diner loses interest.

The Chef

Keller goes on to liken this deadening of the palette’s delight to the acclimation of one’s comfort level to a hot bath or a cold pool, and he discusses some chef’s ill-fated attempts to remedy a diner’s unsustained interest.

Many chefs try to counter the deadening effect by putting a lot of different flavors on the plate to keep interest alive. But then the diner can’t focus on anything because it’s confusing.

Now, the goal of this analysis is not to discuss food. However, there are some clear parallels to reading and eating here. Literature is sustenance for the soul, and the reader’s objective is some form of satiation. So let’s draw an analogy. Perhaps we could think of these large and multi-flavored feasts as something like a Victorian era novel. It is large, dense and full of varying points of interest.

Then, perhaps, we could envision flash fiction as a form that seeks to function like Keller’s cuisine.

What I want is that initial shock, that jolt, that surprise to be the only thing you experience. So I serve five to ten small courses, each meant to satisfy your appetite and pique your curiosity. I want you to say, “God, I wish I had just one more bite of that.” And then the next plate comes and the same thing happens, but it’s a different experience, a whole new flavor and feel.

In effect this is the aim of the writer of flash fiction. They want to create enough of a progression to satify the reader, yet they want reader to be curious enough about the work to either repeatedly read the piece, or to seek out other pieces by the same writer.

Open Wide!

Writers of the longer forms — novels and longer short stories — are more targeted at dazzling the reader with a sustained story that develops through the reading. They seek to use different ‘flavors’ to entice the mind.

Flash fiction is a stripping bare to the elements, which, standing near-naked must be polished and precise. Here is how Keller describes success in his art form.

The way to keep the experience fresh is not by adding more flavors, but rather by focusing more on specific flavors, either by making them more intense than the foods from which they come, or by varying the preperation techniques.

We feel this philosophy holds true to flash fiction. It’s a different medium, but it’s a similar take on aesthetics. — Brian Allen Carr

Video: The French Laundry