- It opens strong and it's opening is juxtaposed well against the closing.
- It puts in conflict two very different people.
- It's got a strong narrative voice; the narrator strikes me as pretty self-reflective and reliable.
2) "The Largess of the Sea Maiden": As opposed to Silber's story, Denis Johnson's story is very untraditional. In fact, I wonder: Is it even a story? He writes in his autobiographical statement that the first section was a vignette that he wrote in a creative writing class he was teaching. What makes this a story rather than a series of vignettes connected only by the same narrator?
3) The "best": Some of these stories, like "Unsafe at Any Speed" and "Motherlode" are awesome, I think. Some, like "Sea Maiden," leave something to be desired (and there are a few others in the anthology that I didn't assign). Sometimes I wonder about what makes something "the best." Denis Johnson is one of my favorite writers and he's well-regarded in the world of letters, even winning the National Book Award. But I wonder: An editor for The New Yorker publishes a Johnson story b/c it's by Johnson and then TC Boyle chooses this story b/c it's by Johnson. Or maybe this is a case of taste? I know that a lot of you didn't think that "Motherlode" or "The Fugue" were as strong as I did and a few others thought. What makes something "the best"? Is this just a matter of taste and if you're TC Boyle (who's been in this anthology himself a few times), then you get to decide for a year? Which stories did you think were great and which wanting?
One thing I love about Silber's story is the way the author uses differing past tenses. The opening is +general; we see Kiki as distant, as someone who has been handed down to the narrator (and now us) as a legend, as someone who behaved bravely in 1970. And then in the closing, we've got a specific scene, a scene that shows that these two people are very different--and also the same. They're different b/c they have to be--they're separated by decades. But they're also the same in that they act rashly, they don't necessarily make the smart move, they act w/ their heart.
ReplyDeleteThe introduction caught my attention, time and place the story takes place.i'm fascinated with stories that takes place in a different time period and in other countries. About my aunt takes place in the 1970's in turkey ; it great how the story transports you to different places in turkey. While the characters are like in some way guides. One minute your in Istanbul with the aunt when she was in her twenties and the next minute in different parts of turkey. Anytime a story starts of like that i'm drawn right in.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the introduction to the story and the writer's ability to inform us about what mostly happens to people when they travel. It was a brilliant segway to the story. I really don't feel like they are two different people, they seemed similar to me, they both had regular jobs and lived in the projects. I notice there is alot of extra description in the story which helped readers to picture and have a clearer vision of what is happening for example; on page 280 i read People magazine while we inched our way to the bridge to the island; a teenage girl combing her hair, checking it in the mirror. I love all of that detailing, it is what I would love to accomplish as a writer to be able to be expressive and make sense.
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