How High? ― That High

by Diane Williams

Williams delivers visionary insights into what it means to be human in stories as short as one or two pages. Her startling sentences often function like wake-up trumpet blasts, and her latest collection of ultra-short masterworks is a container for the elliptical, the magisterial, the voluptuous, and the profane. Set in cafés and houses, taxicabs and gardens, the stories of Diane Williams, “the godmother of flash fiction" (The Paris Review), deliver moments of extraordinary beauty and wisdom.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Poetry, Collections

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 12, 2021

About the author

Diane Williams is an American author, primarily of short stories. She lives in New York City and is the founder and editor of the literary annual NOON (est. 2000). She has published 8 books and taught at Bard College, Syracuse University and The Center for Fiction in New York City.

Her books have been reviewed in many publications, including the New York Times Book Review ("An operation worthy of a master spy, a double agent in the house of fiction") and The Los Angeles Times ("One of America's most exciting violators of habit is [Diane] Williams…the extremity that Williams depicts and the extremity of the depiction evoke something akin to the pity and fear that the great writers of antiquity considered central to literature. Her stories, by removing you from ordinary literary experience, place you more deeply in ordinary life. 'Isn't ordinary life strange?' they ask, and in so asking, they revivify and console”).

Jonathan Franzen describes her as "one of the true living heroes of the American avant-garde. Her fiction makes very familiar things very, very weird." Ben Marcus suggested that her "outrageous and ferociously strange stories test the limits of behavior, of manners, of language, and mark Diane Williams as a startlingly original writer worthy of our closest attention."

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too inscrutable for me.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I so wish I liked understood this kind of flash fiction.

I chose this Advance Uncopyedited Edition via a giveaway. Before I started it, someone who’d put the author’s name out as a potential Nobel Prize winner (among many, many names) advised that if I was bewildered to just keep reading. He said he’s read and reread four of her collections and loves them all for the language. I kept his advice in mind, but none of the language reached that level for me.

I got along better with the last several stories. Were they different than the earlier ones or had I become used to her style? I can’t be bothered to reread them to figure that out and I think I’ll put Diane Williams in the same category I put Lydia Davis: Not for me.

[Kaleigh Basso · Rating 1 out of 5]

Imagine, for a moment, that a Sim character learned how to write in English. The Sim is still a Sim, with all its disjointed thoughts and feelings, but now the words are in a language we can understand rather than Simlish.

That was how I felt reading this book.

I don’t understand a single thing I just read and the reading experience was so wildly unpleasant that I had to reread quite a few passages just to be sure that I had as bad a time as I thought I did. This collection gaslit me.

Hated every second ❤️

[R.C. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was initially excited to secure a copy of this title off of my library’s ARC table, but after about 30 pages I closed it with no intention of continuing. All of the flash fictions I did read either concerned people experiencing relationship issues, or situations so obliquely described that I couldn’t grasp stories in them at all. None of the works moved me, and I found the tone of Williams’ writing to be at once chaotic and dispassionate. Which, I must say, is confusing, as a blurb from the London Review of Books praises one of her works with, “Readers who love the arresting phrase, the surprising word, will gravitate to her.” I do indeed love those things—but only when combined with sense. Here, sadly, the author’s words did not arrest, grasp, or even interest me. Clearly she has a base of readers, and I hope they enjoy this latest work where I was unable to.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

These flash fiction shorts are simultaneously engaging and disquieting. They are the briefest of glimpses into situations that are somehow familiar and uncomfortable. While I am not sure that I “enjoyed” this, I kept turning the pages and am glad that I did.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

After Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine and The Collected Stories of Diane Williams, it was time to stop. But who can resist another box of candy even when you know you’ve had enough? Even the box is irresistible.

These stories – well, they’re not quite stories, they’re flash fictions as in hot flash – all tumble together, indistinguishable in their antic observations. They have the explosive energy of improvisations. Start with a title or an opening phrase, a fragment or embattled impression, then let rip for two minutes. Some make almost no sense but the syntax never fails. Sentences snap and twist and pop and die tiny humiliating deaths. Impossible to feel anything for any of the characters – well, they’re not quite characters either, just scabrous names – but a kind of horrified hilarity in what’s happening, and then it’s over.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

How High?—That High is a thoroughly beguiling collection. Not since Greg Mulcahy’s Out Of Work: Stories have I been so simultaneously baffled by and in love with a story collection. I know Diane Williams’ stories aren’t for everybody (what is, really?), but they are certainly for me. These strange, beautiful little pearls will be rattling around in my head for a very long time, and no doubt I’ll return to them often.

Best read aloud for maximum appreciation, as the prose is musical and poetic above all else.

If you’re looking for stories with a clear narrative arc, plots that resolve satisfyingly, deep characterization… look elsewhere.

But for the prose-obsessives who love to wonder, this gets my highest recommendation.

My favorites from this collection:

Upper Loop
Thanks, Dot
I Sure I Love And I Really
With This New Greasiness
Finished Being
Secretly Try
How High?—That High
Tale Of Human Adventure
It’s So Effortful
Making Splendid
Outcome
Popping
Stick
One Muggy Spring
Master Of The Blast

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

tl;dr williams' signature abstract slices-of-life are spikier and funnier in how high? -- that high, its title evocative of the many odd demands each delightfully named character must meet

Once I was there I wanted out of there, although they served us a plum torte and coffee and it was delicious, with whipped cream and that helped.

We were talking about what was going to happen. (29, "Prayer of the Primogenitor")

It's accepted that first line to any tale, short stories especially, is crucial to hooking you in. Williams does this, to an extent: she imbues sentences with interest by crafting a gleamingly odd turn of phrase, a jerky rhythm with odd punctuation, an image so zoomed in that you're not even sure what you're looking at. The domestic turns surreal in Williams' hands, and in this collection, either the stories are more comprehensibly crafted, or I've successfully attuned to Williams' singular looking-glass rendering of the everyday.

And to be frank, it's not just the first lines of these that're surprising or off-guard-catching. Nothing progresses the way you think it will in a Williams story. What you thought was a third person narrator suddenly becomes first person, the narrator announcing the ownership of the strange tale that you're approaching the conclusion of. New information, scene changes, timeskips, all of these are fair game even as the story closes in on its final sentence. Whereas flash fiction fellow Lydia Davis turns a single scene like a stone in her palm, Williams takes that same stone, puts it down picks up another, throws it counts the skips, and wonders if we were even talking about "stones" in the first place, did you mean "rocks"?

This living space shows off a nervous temperament that could persist. (77, "Secretly Try")

Vote now on your phone: is this sentence taken from the beginning, middle, or end of the end of the story? I think that the assembly of Williams' stories is fascinating in that it's hard to tell where you are in any given moment of a story, the beginning end or middle, if that's even of concern to Williams at any given moment. Stories don't progress, exactly, nor do they unfold, no; they sort of accumulate, details adding weight to the whole until we're left with, at the very least, an odd impression, an open question, or in some cases, a downright punchline (most notably "Prayer of the Primogenitor").

The inside flap of this collection calls this a "excellent introduction" to Williams' brand of fiction, and I'm inclined to agree. But again, I don't know if it's because this is my second collection and have attuned, at least slightly more, to her quirks, or if it's because the stories really are quote-unquote better; but this collection overall left a stronger impression on me. I felt as lost as the characters did, negotiating the demands of the everyday: the rituals of domesticity, of public behavior, of fucking, devoid of context and presented in a vacuum, like a mirror maze of Americana.

[Miki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love short stories and flash/micro fiction, so I requested Diane Williams' flash fiction collection from NetGalley (many, many moons ago) but was declined. No worries though: I found it on Scribd. I have been anticipating this collection and FINALLY blocked some time to sit and enjoy this. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it. I was disappointed by it.

Williams is renown for her flash fiction, so I did approach it with some expectations. But this collection of 34 flash fiction entries was a fail for me. Many of these entries aren't even flash fiction stories but rather vignettes. What bothers me most about flash fiction and short stories is that many writers don't actually present readers with a complete story (with a beginning, middle, and end). While I can appreciate that some writers write outside/challenge the genre, these flash fiction "stories" weren't trying to challenge the genre, and I felt confused as to why Williams wrote what she did. This is essentially a (slightly disjointed) group of vignettes, and I'm sorry to say that I'm not impressed and not a fan.

What I can rave about is the writing. Williams' writing is fantastic! But I'd prefer to read something from her that is either actual flash fiction (with a beginning, middle, and end) or something that is a longer work of fiction that includes a complete story (with a beginning, middle, and end).

Lastly, I loved the narrator...But not enough to make this collection more than a 2-star read for me.

[Audiobook, Scribd]

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diane Williams is as capable as always of producing astonishing sentence pairings and shifting ordinary interactions into odd spaces of insight, but after returning to her a few times, I'm getting a bit of a diminishing returns feeling with this approach. It may be a flash fiction problem, as it's a form I'm never very drawn to, but conversely the equally short pieces in Joy Williams' latest are having much more impact. Perhaps its the sense of thematic cohesion across instances; my favorite Diane Williams remains her novella-in-fragments The Stupefaction. These however just blink into being, hover a moment refracting tiny moments, then disappear.

[Juliana · Rating 1 out of 5]

maybe this is what a stroke feels like

[Loring Wirbel · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I have this 750-page monster anthology of Diane Williams from 2018, which I swear I will review in Goodreads if I ever finish it. For the past three years, I've been dipping into the ultra-short stories and flash fiction as though they were koans or fables, expecting guides for life while receiving imponderable shockers. Now comes a shorter and easier to digest 117-page work of Williams' most recent stories. I can treat micro-miniature stories like "Finished Being" and "Upper Loop" as though they were small, fast-acting hallucinogens, perhaps meant to teach me something larger about life, or perhaps signifying nothing at all. My daughter picked this up and read a few stories in utter bewilderment and wonder. Williams wants to serve as a pointer to things often left unseen or unsaid, but what is she pointing to? There are times that she wants to manipulate the humans she describes as if they were pieces of furniture, but that may be less of a ruthless inconsideration, and more of an observation that understanding and empathy may not be all we think it is. This short book left me with a hearty "WTF?!," and a desire to one day finish that large and confusing Collected Stories.

[kalyx · Rating 4 out of 5]

were i hackish i'd here jot something like 'lydia davis filtered through david markson' but i'm (i hope) no hack. williams halts herself before davis would, leaps between paragraphs thrice as far as markson; she sweeps her partners' feet from the dancefloor and keeps superhuman tempo. ha! she cries, swooping into her bow, the music not yet at its coda: i finished miles ahead of you lot.

[Alia Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

In the words of another review - this book is like if a Sim gained consciousness and wrote a novel. I have no idea what was said in any of these stories. Like at all. I know nothing. What happened in any of these short stories? I could not tell you a single thing. Maybe I’m a little too stupid for flash fiction like this? The one blessing Diane gifted to readers is the book’s brevity. Thanks shawty. I had to reread every single sentence. I feel like this book gaslit me.

[Bena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would more give this 2.5 stars, not really my thing maybe because I’m not ‘smart’ enough. When I’m reading for pleasure I like to read things I understand immediately and that’s why I often reject poetry and these short stories read a lot like poetry. That said there Is good stuff in here that I enjoyed!!

[Stephen Mortland · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is the temptation to say a Diane Williams story is a Diane Williams story is a Diane Williams story—that you could take a story from an early collection and set it next to one of these later stories and have two more or less analogous stories. This reputation is a direct result of Williams’ style being so singular and distinct right out of the gate. Still though, I think these late stories depart from early approaches in interesting ways.
They are even more pared down, even as they open wider. If the early stories were often linguistically claustrophobic, the stories in How High That High seem more at peace with their confinement, the loosening of a particular psychological fixation so that the world at large is more curiously engaged.
The route into the world is still through language. With Williams it is always more than mere syntactic control, her unique voice marries the rhythm of speech and of internal monologue, while also rejecting these rhythms in favor of something more concrete. She languages as if her character’s psychologies reside in their throats. The slightly off-kilter quality of the prose is not mere fetishizing of style, but tips of the psychological hand, gestures towards the intentions, desires, and shames the narrators keep hidden from themselves.
I could go on about new approaches this collection takes toward figurative language (moments that directly symbolic, even as they swerve away from the subject of the symbolism), or about the many turns of phrase which stopped me cold. All in all though, another stunner from Diane Williams.

[Baz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roxane Gay read this collection and has one sentence on it on Goodreads: ‘A bit too inscrutable for me.’

Fair enough!

Williams is highly idiosyncratic, and these stories are enigmatic little puzzle boxes that take sharp turns from one sentence to the next. She won’t be for most readers.

Williams is tricky, the stories “thumb their nose at conventional sense, or even unconventional sense.” However I don’t feel that Williams is cold or that her work is closed-off. On the contrary, I feel like she’s inviting me to play. There is always clearly something specific going on, and we the readers are thrust into a character’s predicament or state of mind, and it’s up to us to interpret the possibilities.

She’s jaunty, sly, witty and charming. The prose is brisk and clean, her touch light. This makes the stories easy to gulp down, which is dangerous because you exit them with much having flown over your head. But I personally don’t mind that. I enjoy reading these stories mostly for their aesthetic properties, and I read them quickly – though some of them I did read several times.

[Tan Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flash fiction is a specific sub-genre of the short story, taking the genre limitations to the extreme, in coming up with narrative and characters who leave a momentary yet deep imprint on the reader, much like an arresting photograph. Some of the pieces here do manage to pull it off brillantly (that "Usually birds appear to know what they are doing" in "Flowers, birds and garden", was able to pull narrative perfection in speaking volumes just within a final concluding line), other stories not so riveting, as with the usual problem with any short story collection. I suppose there are some limitation we cannot transcend no matter what.

[Lucy Bruemmer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This may be the worst book I have ever read. I didn’t understand the style at all, but even if I did, I think I would have to reread every chapter three or four times to even know what happened in it. It was as if every single sentence was a standalone sentence and nothing strung together. It felt like reading a puzzle that was not yet put together into a story. I was utterly confused the whole time and found myself completely distracted. The only time I was focused at all was when sex was mentioned and it was done in super weird ways. Even with not understanding this book, the vibes were off. All of the characters seems depressed and miserable with their lives. Who likes to read this?

[Benjy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another banger from our gal, Diane. As usual, the stories are about a page or two and use some freaky version of English that makes knotty twists at the least likely moments. More often than not, the stories are funny. They always read like prose poetry, with that same kind of deliberate density associated with much of the genre but with a bigger payoff, I think. A little less light than her earlier work but a great place to start with Diane Williams if you don't have the daring to take on the Collected volume.

[Jules1921 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am intrigued by the idea of very short fiction. This collection of stories Is a good representation with each story being just a few pages, with many under five pages. The challenge of it of course is how to make it matter. What is the significance of a three page story? The task of communicating directly with the reader and letting the reader in on the subjectivity of the author is a difficult one. I did not feel the day and Williams achieved that for this reader.

[jonah · Rating 3 out of 5]

“To enjoy the situation will be an effort of a lifetime.”

“The hands of the market vendors were much more expressive than our hands—the hands we have at home. For example, when taking up a piece of merchandise, those vendors’ hands could feel and hold at the same time.”

“She is a clerk—but why does she so easily give in when people prove her wrong? She pays bills, does filing and cannot recognize that she is capable of making beautiful mistakes.”

[BookBrowse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Diane Williams' How High? -- That High is like when you're walking in the mall or down an aisle in the supermarket and you overhear an argument or a strange conversation. It's not polite to linger, yet you can't help but wonder what else was said and how it ended.
-Rory L. Aronsky

Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...

[Sequoia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some artful sentences, but as a whole the short stories felt purposely opaque and intentionally written to make me feel obtuse. The author tried to braid 3-5 emotional experiences into 3 pages, with jarring transitions, when 1-2 is all my brain can really handle. I did all I could to maintain the thread, including reading out loud, which helped, but by midway through each story, I usually frustratingly lost the plot and didn't care to decipher the text.

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Godmother of Flash Fiction. Such a nice surprise to find this book following publication of her collected stories. But like all talented writers, Williams just keeps creating—and I'm grateful. These stories are so tight and concise. Williams is one of those writers I read and re-read, always discovering new levels. There's really no one like her.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the evenings, I'm also rereading Future Shock, Fox knows why. Williams's oracular short stories are a tasty, weird complement to Tofler's grand pronouncements.

[Mike Ehlers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found this browsing my library's shelves. I enjoy flash fiction I've found online so thought I'd give this a try. I actually think I would have enjoyed it more if the stories were even shorter. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed several of the stories. But too many others felt incomplete or had too many shifting points of view.

[Gurldoggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of very odd and very short stories, some only a paragraph and none longer than 3 pages. Most deal with love, sex and disappointment in terse, jarring, unexpected language. Some of the stories I read 5 times without quite wrapping my head around, others hit so hard they left me gasping. Worth reading more.

[Jeremy Vetock · Rating 2 out of 5]

The reviews about the author were fabulous, promising a treasure trove, but all I found inside the book was artsy and dramatically enigmatic.it felt like it was written by a lit. professor who ‘wanted to work a blue collar job’ for the true experience, but quit after lunch and then wrote about it anyway. Not so deep.

[Idalis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this collection and there were maybe a total of two of the stories that I really enjoyed but I felt like it just wasn’t clear enough for me. I understand flash fiction short stories, they don’t wanna just say the point straight up, but This might be a little too obscure for me to understand. I just wish I knew what she was talking about.