Summing It Up (in Six Words)

Summing It Up (in Six Words) – City Room – Metro – New York Times Blog

This looks like a fun book.

The New York-based, online Smith magazine is releasing a collection of six-word memoirs called “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure” (Harper Collins, 2008). The project was inspired, in part, by the legend of Ernest Hemingway responding to a challenge of a six-word story with “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Some of the highlights:

• Canada freezing. Gotham beckons. Hello, Si! — Graydon Carter
• Secret to life: marry an Italian. — Nora Ephron
• Brought it to a boil, often. — Mario Batali
• Nobody cared, then they did. Why? — Chuck Klosterman
• Eight thousand orgasms. Only one baby. — Neal Pollack
• I asked. They answered. I wrote. — Sebastian Junger
• Dad died, mom crazy, me, too. — Moby
• Fifteen years since last professional haircut. — Dave Eggers
• Born bald. Grew hair. Bald again. — A. J. Jacobs
• Well, I thought it was funny. — Stephen Colbert
• Relatively famous parents, very low self-esteem. — Molly Jong-Fast
• Fearlessness is the mother of reinvention. — Arianna Huffington
• Eat drink man man man man. — Michael Musto
• Gave commencement address, became sex columnist. — Amy Sohn
• I write because I can’t sleep. — Ben Mezrich
• Started small, grew, peaked, shrunk, vanished. — George Saunders
• Liars, hysterectomy didn’t improve sex life! — Joan Rivers

Lots of folk are adding their personal six word summaries to the NYTimes site.

So I did as well – comment #353: “I am my own hero, finally.”

Blogged with Flock

Tags: biography, brievity, book, six-word story, memoire

Advertisement