I am of two minds on this topic. On the one hand, the idea of clearing airport security, turning towards the gates, and finding a kiosk along the wall dispensing free stories is simply spectacular! Printed on strips of paper reminiscent of CVS receipts, the stories are chosen according to how long it takes to read them: one-minute, three-minutes, or five-minutes.

What an interesting way to look at literature, or better said, the marriage of technology and literature. The idea for these kiosks came from a French publishing house called Short Édition. Founded in 2011, they seek to bring short works penned by recent authors to the public. Self-described as a “new kind of literary pulse,” Short Édition placed its first “story-dispensers” in 2016, and by 2018, had established a subsidiary in the US. By now, the devices number about 300 around the world and are found not just in select airports, but in hotels, cafes, doctors’ offices, and libraries.

Short Édition supplies not only kiosks like the one I bumped into, but table-top cubes that work the same way, as well as discs mounted on walls with QR codes leading to children’s tales, short-stories, or comics. The publishing house’s website has a portal for writers to submit their original works, as well as several rows of icons for their quarterly reviews. All of this is paid for, apparently, by advertising that appears on a screen while the long strips with stories are being printed. I confess that I was too focused on the slot out of which the stories popped to notice anything being advertised.

I pushed all three buttons on Sunday (for a total of 9 minutes of reading although, to be fair, it read much quicker). As different as the experience was, I find nothing wrong with the concept or the way it works. The question, though, is “What kind of stories are being dispensed?” I won’t pretend to have a deep answer for this, as I received just three samples (in retrospect, I could have kept pushing the buttons to see what else came forth). Here’s my summary of the three offerings.

The first item, a one-minute read that stretched down about 9 inches of paper, was a flaccid poem similar to what a well-intended 10^th grader in search of meaning would write: blank-verse, no punctuation, boring choice of words. It was slightly better than completely vacuous.

The second (a three-minute read, weighing in at 22 inches) struggled more desperately to convey meaning. Here, a bear responds to the threat of fire that dreaded humans have brought into his forest. Unless I missed the point, the story struck me as a not-skilled variation on today’s most trendy mantra, namely “Nature good; man bad.” The author apparently is an experienced journalist, and a bit of skill did show. His political agenda, though, overshadowed any hope for the piece, as did his hackneyed content.

The five-minute read had a more interesting premise (with a full 36 inches to develop itself!). A man who regularly visits his now non-responsive wife in a care facility walks past a bookstore window every time he makes the trip. On a little shelf in the window, he sees the same four worn volumes standing together. Day after day, he observes these books as their covers continue to fade in the sunlight (cue the metaphor, please, to his wife’s condition). One day, all four of the books are missing! For reasons he does not understand, he becomes angry. He enters the shop, tries to locate the books while waiting for a woman customer to end an impassioned reminiscence she is pouring out upon the archetypal, cardigan-sweater-wearing proprietor. Frustrated by the lady’s narrative that delays his inquiry, our “hero” moves to the back and repeatedly picks up other old books, crumpling their initial pages. As he expresses irrational frustration about missing books, the reader understands his real frustration involves his helplessness in the wife’s deteriorating condition. Suddenly, he spies the four books stacked on the shop’s main counter. He buys them, takes them home and, while shelving them, realizes that the face of the woman narrating her woes to the proprietor was, in fact, the face of his ailing wife.

The story’s premise is interesting, for sure. The execution of the premise, though? Well, if I had to give a grade, I’d accord it a generous B-. Any story so devoid of proper punctuate and relying on incomplete sentences for its principal effects isn’t getting a full B in my class.

So, that’s my assessment. Meanwhile, have you seen these kiosks? If so, where have you found them? Have you taken the plunge and pushed their button? What did you receive? I would love to know what you thought. Short Édition admirably wants to cultivate new and unknown writers. They want to spawn reading, and this literary-techno endeavor probably bears some fruit in that direction. But is it also forging poor stereotypes of literature?

Here’s what I wish Short Édition would do: place more of these kiosks, but let them have buttons to choose classic literature, starting with things like a Aesop’s fables, Greek mythology, collections of national proverbs, esteemed poetry, famous letters, great speeches, and other fine items that once filled every child’s copy book. Let the kiosks dispense better short stories by O’Henry. Flannery O’Connor, and Wendell Berry. Let there be a “Russian” button for short stories by Tolstoi, Pushkin, Gogol, and Chekhov as well as a French button for stories by Guy de Maupassant. Let there be a button for “famous eyewitness-accounts of critical events in past centuries, essays on pedagogy and aesthetics, and everything else that gives value to the reader beyond a momentary distraction. And make sure they all are constructed in complete sentences with real punctuation, proper capitalization, and multisyllabic words.

Maybe I’m being a poot. Maybe the fun, indeed the real value, comes simply from having a story pop out at you. Maybe someone will be sitting next to a person who is scrolling through a 36- inch skinny story and say, “Hey, what is that?” Our wise reader will say, “Oh, it’s a free story.” “Really? Free? Where’d you get it?” “Um, just around the corner at that kiosk near security—probably you didn’t notice it, but it’s there.” “Really? That’s so cool.” Silence ensues for a minute, and then the second person says: “Have any interest in getting another one and showing me where it is? I mean, it looks like you’re down to the last 4 inches of this one.” “Sure thing,” says our first reader, and off they trot, back towards security (which, ordinarily one would never do unless a cell phone got left behind). Once there, both parties take turns pressing all the buttons while smiling happily. Gathering up their six scrolls of varying lengths, they head back to their gate, passing an Airport Do-Dads Shop along the corridor. Peeking inside, they see racks of books. The first reader proclaims: “These aren’t going to last very long. Let’s go find something for the flight. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of staring at a screen across the Atlantic.” “Me too, buddy.” Without another word, they go in.

And that story, my friend, was a 1-minute read.