Your note about Ben Lerner's “Café Loup” as part of a sub-genre of fiction that "expands the instant in which the speaker dies or nearly dies, is a natural fit for the short story, which is always concerned with its own impending end, and in the tricks words can play with time," reminded me of the 1964 Academy Award and Palme d'Or winning movie "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" based on an Ambrose Bierce short story.
Your note about Ben Lerner's “Café Loup” as part of a sub-genre of fiction that "expands the instant in which the speaker dies or nearly dies, is a natural fit for the short story, which is always concerned with its own impending end, and in the tricks words can play with time," reminded me of the 1964 Academy Award and Palme d'Or winning movie "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" based on an Ambrose Bierce short story.