David Shields. Life is Short—Art is Shorter. (Co-edited with Elizabeth Cooperman). Hawthorne Books. 2015.
Life Is Short—Art Is Shorter: An Anthology of Very Brief Prose, with a lengthy introduction and extensive commentary by David Shields and Elizabeth Cooperman (Hawthorne Books, April 2015), is not just the first anthology to gather both mini-essays and short-short stories; it’s also a sustained argument for the excitement and urgency of literary brevity in a hyperdigital, post-religious age. The reader-writer-teacher will get an anthology; a rally for compression, concision, and velocity; and a meditation on the brevity of existence.