23. Canal+, The Bear (2011)

A measuring stick with a convenient name.

In our jobs and lives we have our measuring sticks. Impossibly high standards to strive for, knowing that you’ll likely fall a bit short. But it’s only by shooting for the stars that we get to the moon. And the moon is where all the fun people with healthy perspectives end up anyway.

One of my measuring sticks for writing is this 322 word story that’s literally named Sticks by George Saunders. It’s from his book Tenth of December and is about a family with a dad who channels his emotions through a homemade metal crucifix in the front yard.

I read Sticks for the first time maybe ten years ago. Before that I’d assumed that prose writing had to be longer - at least, like, ten pages - to be considered literature. (I later discovered the writer Lydia Davis who takes this sort of brevity even further)

322 words was a blog post or maybe a brand manifesto for a pitch. Not actual art.

But good things can be brief! Like this other measuring stick, an ad for Canal+ which is as perfectly executed a joke as anything I’ve ever seen.

Because just as great art can occur in 322 words about a family, it can also occur in 78 second* of film about an ambitious bearskin rug.

*Hmmmm suspicious length - probably the director’s cut.