For some time now the term “minimalist” has been used to describe a group of authors who seem intent on proving the proposition that less is, indeed, less. The label, borrowed from the art world, hasn’t really stuck, which is too bad, because this movement—and it is cohesive enough to be thought of as a movement—shares a lot with minimalism in painting and sculpture; it may even be that the language of contemporary art criticism is more applicable to these writers (“. . . an almost virtuosic purity in the very absence of technique”; the pile of bricks “. . . set off-center, accentuates the feeling of empty space in the surrounding area”) than conventional literary concepts such as character, plot, language, and style.
Anyone who reads The New Yorker will be familiar with minimalist fiction: those little stories which seem to grow even smaller as you read. By the end (you know it is the end because you’ve come to the last page) the story has dwindled down to almost nothing, a mere wisp of melancholic vapor scattered by the first breeze.
These stories are always sad, in a resigned sort of way. If they are written by women, the stories are sad and resentful—of lovers, husbands, children, parents, and friends, all the shadowy figures that pass through their pages. Or they’re resentful about work, or the lack of work. Often it’s difficult to know what they’re resentful about. If the stories are written by men,
