Six-Word Memoirs: The Valentine's Day Edition
Share Your Own Stories Of Love And Heartbreak
Can you sum up your love life in exactly six words? Hundreds of famous and not-so-famous authors rose to the challenge for Smith magazine's Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak.
The results are sometimes romantic: "He sees the me I don't" ... sometimes devastating: "For the children, I remain his." ... and often hilarious: "Found Jewish princess. Good-bye succulent pork."
Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak is Smith magazine's second collection of very, very brief life stories. In 2008, the magazine curated Not Quite What I Was Planning, a collection of six-word memoirs inspired by novelist Ernest Hemingway, who, when asked to write a full story in six words, responded: "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn."
Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, editors of the Smith memoir collections, talk with host Neal Conan about the process of distilling stories of falling in — and out of — love into just a few words.
Fershleiser's six-word memoir? "I finally threw away his toothbrush." And Smith's: "Our prison visitations were surprisingly romantic."
Smith and Fershleiser offer the following six-word suggestion for what to do with their collection of stories of happiness and heartbreak: Share them with someone you love.
Have your own story of love and heartbreak? Share it with us.
Excerpt: 'Six-Word Memoirs On Love & Heartbreak'
Red-eye. Him window. Me aisle. Love.
- Joanne Flynn Black
If I get Chlamydia, blame MySpace.
- Hanorah Slocum
Will government ever let us marry?
- Viki Marsh
Silently suffered his facial hair experiments.
- Elizabeth Minkel
Three marriages. Two divorces. BA .333.
- Ron Carmean
What do you want for dinner?
- Drew Magary
If only he wasn't a Republican.
- Holly Fitzpatrick
Tried men. Tried women. Like cats.
- Dona Bumgarner
Leap of faith. Shit, no parachute.
- Katherine Yunker
Inevitably, his obituary didn't mention me.
- R. Sue Dodea
We "I do" -ed. Then he didn't.
- Lisa Parrack
Palindromantically: Eros saw I was sore.
- Aaron Fagan
Two marriages. The wrong one died.
- Anne Hamilton
Best family ever. Thank you, Match.com!
- Alexa Young
Marriage, children, empty nest: Now what?
- Oliver House
Excerpted from Six-Word Memoirs On Love And Heartbreak from Smith magazine, edited by Rachel Fershleiser and Larry Smith. Copyright 2009. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Harper Perennial.