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In "Compressionism: The Pittsburgh Stories", Guy Hogan presents a series of short stories, and a novella, in a fresh, new, style of writing.
Compressionism, a style developed by Hogan himself, presents a story as a series of images, which can best be compared to a silent film. The stories are set in either the Vietnam War, or against the Pittsburgh college scene.
The very first story in the book, aptly named Genesis, presents Scott Delaney, a character who turns up again in later stories. He is an American Soldier, his helicopter under fire from the Viet Cong. As in all the stories, there is no exposition, the brief scene is told in a series of staccato sentences, which present the events and leave the reader to interpret them.
"Scott looked out the porthole behind him. Now he could see the landing zone. There were only trees everywhere. Suddenly they were in the trees. He was flung against the port hull. Everyone shouting. He was flung back against the starboard hull, except now it was the deck. Others fell on top of him, everyone shouting."
This creates a fast paced, vivid story, which takes shape in front of the reader's eyes, and which is all the more memorable for the absence of exposition.
Hogan suggests that 1,000 words is a good length for a compressionist short story. There are certainly many examples of stories of this length and less in the book.
In just two pages, the Big 5-0 is the story of Nate Johnson on his 50th birthday. The story opens with a photograph of Nate as a young man - a soldier in South Vietnam - and than presents a series of images of him with his family. The skillful combination of these images with totally believable dialogue, gives the reader a compelling snapshot of the Nate and his wife and children. The characters come to life in a way that is often not achieved in stories of much greater length.
Although many of the stories are very short, they seem much longer because much of the story is in the sub-text. These are stories that reward readers who like to think for themselves.
-- Jan Harris
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