Answers to Imaginary Questions
by the author of Hope and Wild Panic
By Sean Ennis, author of Hope and Wild Panic (Malarkey, August 2024)
In the spirit of the book, here are some micro answers to imagined, cliched questions on its release:
When I was first introduced to the concept of Flash Fiction in grad school, I remember thinking that it was silly. I imagined that its writers didn’t have the discipline or imagination to tell a more “traditional” story. Obviously, my opinions have changed, and I find myself writing shorter and shorter pieces, so much so, that I’ll soon be writing nothing at all. My main interest these days is on the sentence as the primary location of action. How much information and meaning can be crammed into this familiar construction? How much surprise?
The title, “Hope and Wild Panic,” came to me, like many sentences in this book, as misunderstood song lyrics. This anecdote would be improved if I could remember the song, but alas. Still, I do like the sentiment and the odd adjective-noun pairing. This is not a turn of phrase I would have come up with had I not been mistaken. How interesting!
We thought briefly about reimagining the back cover of the book, and I wrote something new for that as a way of accounting for the narrator’s odd vocabulary. I’ll reprint it here:
A Note on the Language of Hope and Wild Panic
I’m going to be using more words. I’ve been subscribed somehow. Everyday I’m sent a new word, exotic but defined and exemplified. Grace thought I was showing off until I told her she was my roborant. Words change reality—she cupped my cheek—I learned that in college. You could say character flaw or disease. There are other similar cases. This is also how you turn love into a story. I’m going to ask her to marry me. If she says, I do, words change reality. Besides the daily emails, there is of course my, soon to be our, Ouija board, conjuring language out of thin air. There is so much more to say.
There was some question as to what this book is: a story collection, a novel, memoir? I don’t think I’m doing anything all that formally interesting. The way I understand the project is mainly like the sitcom tv serieses I grew up watching—episodic events with repeating characters and a relatively circular plot. These sorts of shows were the predominant way I was introduced to storytelling.
Three quarters of this book were written on my phone, mainly standing around in the kitchen. This is simply true—I’m not recommending or bemoaning this fact. The technique had some advantages that might be specific to this form. I like this fact, however, because it reminds me of when I bought a Palm Pilot, plus the additional word processing program, so I could write during my commute on the train. Many people now living will be unfamiliar with this device, but it was a sort of proto-IPhone that, in retrospect, could do almost nothing. The Palm Pilot was just a status symbol for administrators, which, theoretically, I was training to be. Point being, I quit that job to pursue writing, and in my head this story was an interesting response to the inevitable, awful question at readings, “Do you type or write by hand?”
It was my hope that the book would be as emotionally complicated as looking at a photo of a chimpanzee smoking a cigarette.
I don’t have grand opinions about the state of fiction, except to say that I’d like to laugh more as a reader. So, I hope a few of the gags from Hope and Wild Panic land for readers.
I’ll miss writing this book. I never resented it or mistook it for dead. I was happy. I felt myself improving. It made my life away from writing more interesting. I surprised myself.
Sean Ennis is the author of Cunning, Baffling, Powerful (Thirty West) and Chase Us: Stories (Little A), and his fiction has recently appeared in Diagram, Pithead Chapel, Wigleaf, and New World Writing, among others. He lives in Water Valley, MS, with his family, where he directs a nonprofit school training high school graduates to be software developers. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net.
Hope and Wild Panic is available from Amazon, Asterism, B&N, and Bookshop, as well as your local bookstore or library. You can also order directly at malarkeybooks.com.
An ebook is also available on Amazon, B&N, and other ebook platforms, and Malarkey sells the ebook for $3.
Praise for Hope and Wild Panic
“One of the best kept secrets in American literature, Sean Ennis has long been a master of the short form. Hope and Wild Panic is more than just a collection of bangers, though. It satisfies readers who crave both the whiplash of flash and the arc of a novel. In one electric sentence after another, Ennis's voice is simultaneously hilarious and deeply depressed, constantly flummoxed by the ecstatic mundane. Fans of Diane Williams, Jenny Offill and Stuart Dybek will feel those same fond synapses firing here. Read it once for the ride, twice for the craft, and celebrate. This is what fiction, stripped to the bone and holding a heart in its hand, can do.”
—M.O. Walsh, New York Times bestselling author of My Sunshine Away and The Big Door Prize
“Every page of Sean Ennis’s Hope and Wild Panic is an event—of sound and language, of humor and honesty. These are beautifully cut gems, and the surprises found in each will keep you in suspense. You’ll find as many punchlines as you’ll find truths. What powerful spells these are.”
—Olivia Clare Friedman, author of Here Lies
“Is it a collection of short stories? A cloudburst of bite-sized autofictions? Creative non-fiction? Is it . . . could it be . . . a novel? Yes. No. All of the above. Hope and Wild Panic is as scattered as the inside of my very own brain, and probably yours too, yet somehow focused on what matters. I read it in a couple of sittings, unable to tear myself away, like I was peering into a funhouse mirror.”
—Joey Poole, author of I Have Always Been Here Before