And This Gives Life to Baby Shoes: Textual and Other Reasons for Canonicity

In this article, I first relate briefly to several important characteristics of the six-word story "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," erroneously attributed to Hemingway and the best known and canonical example of flash fiction. I then suggest that the canonicity of this story stems from these characterics and from certain oppositions within and between them that contributed to the important aesthetic value of complexity, unity, and intensity. Finally, I argue that these textual characteristics and their aesthetic values, which have indeed contributed to the story's canonicity, should be considered as necessary--but not in themselves sufficient--conditions for such canonicity. For the story to become canonical, it had to also meet a hospitable cultural environment and inspire other writers to relate to it as a model, producing many and varied echoes and dialogues.