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A swimmingly excellent novel. I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying is a new novel in flash fiction by Matthew Salesses. In 115 chapters, all shorter than a page and some as short as five lines of text, Salesses details a man’s life that is simultaneously falling apart and coming together. A boy who is apparently his moves in with him after the mother passes away. Yet the man continues to juggle two affairs on the side while maintaining a passable relationship with “the wifely woman.” Meanwhile, his career advances, with no discernible effort on his part. Possibly medicated (prescribed and otherwise) into ambivalence, the narrator puts in appearances where and when necessary most of the time, trying to stave off the genuine pain that comes from true engagement. And yet, by taking his poison a thimbleful at a time, the bite eventually seeps in and both the narrator and the reader come to an understanding about his place in the world. Salesses is a husband and a father. His writing has been published widely. Recently, he took the time to share some thoughts about I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying with GR. 1) Is it harder or easier to write against type? I can tell you’re a nice guy and a good dad, so what is it like to write about a man who is ambivalent about relationships and fatherhood? I’m not sure whether it’s harder or easier, in general. It’s harder for me to make up someone than to use myself as a character. One thing I like about nonfiction is that I don’t have to worry about how to create fully rounded characters; I only have to worry about how to represent people/myself as fully rounded. The reason to choose fiction over nonfiction is to get at a truth that can’t be gotten at, or can’t be presented, as convincingly in an essay. Which means that in fiction I’m often writing against type, because I want to tell a story, and I don’t generally make a lot of interesting things happen in real life. In this book, that choice meant using the voice of someone more directly conflicted than I am. I could have written nonfiction about my own fear of commitment, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting or convincing (coming from a married man with a daughter) as the story of this narrator, who is deeply afraid and makes choices out of that fear. I guess to answer the question, it would have been harder to write this particular story if the narrator was nicer and a better dad. I’ve never actually seen an Easy-Bake Oven, but I love the myth of it. 2) Flash fiction. Here to stay as a viable format, or something that, in the future, will date all work to 201X? Here since at least Kafka, or maybe oral myths, and here to stay. Also, I remember teachers telling me in undergrad to write fiction that is timeless and would last...
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