"God in a Can" by Robert Scotellaro

God in a Can is a collection of flash and micro fictions that looks at life through a surreal, and often humorous lens, at various societal behaviors, perceptions at a slant, and unusual scenarios. Paradoxically, the underpinnings, at the core, can be very real in the way the stories explore how we live, struggle to live, and hope to.

In Robert Scotellaro’s new collection, God in a Can, each brilliant flash/micro story is a “metaphor of the powder fine substance of the world” (Italo Calvino): A mime with a gun breaks into the home of a couple and plays charades with them; a waitress encounters hell at one of her booths and serves it “scrams and extra crispy browns with a bucket of vice on the side”; in the title piece, with one spray of “God in the Can,” a man can restore his old cat’s youth and even make his ex-wife desire him, at least for a moment. Cloud walkers, wolves juggling beer bottles, extravagant poets who are also kidnappers—God in a Can unveils not only the absurdity, comedy and sadness of our lives but also the joy. Scotellaro writes the hell out of hell and heaven too!

—Jeff Friedman, author of The Marksman and Floating Tales

God in a Can is a sharp, unpredictable story collection full of humor, absurdity, and colorful characters who remain doggedly hopeful for better times. Here gods and humans share center stage: Hell stops in at a roadside diner, a man grows a colossal flare of peacock feathers, sumo wrestlers offer a personalized heating service, couples outwit the schadenfreude police, cope with new body parts, and keep love alive in a world that has been tilted askew. With a poet’s eye, Scotellaro hones in on vivid details and those small, sudden moments of elation.

—Frankie McMillan, author of The Father of Octopus Wrestling and My Mother and the Hungarians

God in a Can is a stroke of comic smarts; a master class in the far side of reality and one more reason why Robert Scotellaro just might be the Gary Larson of flash fiction.

The Minderbinder Review
October 5, 2022

Robert Scotellaro

Robert Scotellaro’s work has been included in W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International, Gargoyle, Matter Press, New World Writing, Best Small Fictions 2016, 2017, 2021, Best Microfiction 2020, and elsewhere. He is the author of over fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry and fiction. His latest flash fiction collection, What Are the Chances? (Press 53) was a finalist for The Big Other Book Award. He has, along with James Thomas, co-edited New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, published by W.W. Norton & Co. Robert is one of the founding donors to The Ransom Flash Fiction Collection at the University of Texas, Austin. He lives with his wife in San Francisco.