Social media sites are often blithely derided as vehicles for narcissism, allowing people to broadcast insignificant, quotidian events - what people had for breakfast seems to be the go-to example - as if they were big news. Lou Beach, an illustrator whose collage-style work has appeared in The New Yorker and on the cover of a Blink-182 album, wanted to use his Facebook status updates for something more. What he decided to do was to write tiny tales, compact little worlds that his friends and followers could enjoy. As for the length of his stories, Beach had no choice. Facebook limited these posts to 420 characters, a constraint that he embraced and took as the title of his collection of 169 very short stories.
Despite the social-media novelty of “420 Characters,’’ this style of micro, or flash, fiction is nothing new. Franz Kafka’s “The Trees’’ is only 230 characters, while the six-word “Baby Shoes,’’ apocryphally attributed to Ernest Hemingway, achieves sublime devastation in only 33. The only difference between traditional flash fiction and “420 Characters’’ is that the length was decided by Mark Zuckerberg and not the author.
Many of Beach’s untitled stories are lyrical and poetic, managing to create a feeling of resolution despite their brevity, with dashes of warm sentiment and humor. In one, a skydiver shares a tender moment with a pigeon entangled in his gear as they plummet to the ground together, hearts racing in unison. “Shot by a monkey,’’ begins another, irresistibly. Dogs appear frequently, perhaps because when your stories are restricted to 420 characters, a three-letter protagonist is a major asset. Drawing on his background as a visual artist, Beach dreams up brilliant textures and surreal imagery. “I live in the pocket of a bright paisley shirt,’’ he writes, “and when the light is just so, I’m in my own private cathedral.’’
