52SS#4: The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.
A quick google search led me to this website, which appears to be a good source of crime short stories. I was really looking for detective fiction, which this website has plenty of, but I read this creepy Poe story instead.
I couldn’t help but hear Vincent Price’s voice when I read it. I had to look up a few words here and there, but there’s a universal structure to Poe’s stories that makes me think they’d be just as unsettling written in Polish (more so, maybe).
03.18.0952SS#3: Tedford and the Megalodon by Jim Shepard
I had a Borders gift card burning a hole in my pocket since Christmas so I swung in the other day and picked up McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. It’s usually my policy to look up reviews on Amazon first, but all the names looked great on that cover and Michael Chabon’s intro was exciting. Unfortunately, the stories aren’t as exciting. At least, the one I read wasn’t; and the Amazon reviews, which I looked at later, leave me with a bit of buyer’s remorse.
Anyway, I read the first story of the volume (and a few pages of the second story) and here’s how I would describe it, using fifty-cent words, verbose and prevaricating.
And to top it off, there’s not really anything thrilling about it at all. While I was trudging through it’s dense, dialog-less paragraphs I wished I was reading Fletch instead.
Sorry, but this story was just boring.
Caveat emptor; read the intro in a bookstore, then go find the stories he talks about in other books.
03.11.0952SS #2: A Small Room In Koboldtown by Michael Swanwick
Continuing with another Hugo nominee was a good idea. I’m not a sci-fi reader, so it can be as foreign as reading something from the 18th Century sometimes, but this story had a nowness to it that transcends genre. It’s a detective story that feels a bit like The Wire, only with haints and solids and boggarts (yeah, I had no clue at first either) .
Take a look at this quote from the first paragraph:
He fetched tax forms for the alderman’s constituents, delivered stacks of documents to trollish functionaries, fixed L&I violations, presented boxes of candied John-the-Conqueror root to retiring secretaries, absent-mindedly dropped slim envelopes containing twenty-dollar bills on desks. When somebody important died, he brought a white goat to the back door of the Fane of Darkness to be sacrificed to the Nameless One.
It starts off with all that procedural porn that grounds you in the real world (you know the seedy, cynical world from whence Rod Blagojevich oozed), but then Swanwick conjures up The Nameless One. It’s comedic and exciting. I love it! And it only gets better.
Also, Swanwick’s technique for describing a city reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan. Think “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”:
He canvassed voters in haint neighborhoods like Ginny Gall, Beluthahatchie, and Diddy-Wah-Diddy, where the bars were smoky, the music was good, and it was dangerous to smile at the whores.
Good read. Very entertaining.
03.6.0952SS #1: How To Talk To Girls At Parties by Neil Gaiman
Jeff sent me a link to this story after I told him about my 52 Short Stories plan. Apparently all of the Hugo nominees are available to read on the net.
I started liking this story at precisely the moment when the narrator, who is being dragged to a party, says, when it is revealed that they may not know how to get to the party, “Hope welled slowly up inside me.” I know that feeling. Usually it’s when your boss gives you a crappy assignment, and suddenly the server crashes. Hope wells slowly up inside you that the server will just die there in the closet and you’ll be left with nothing to do.
This is occurs very early in the story, and was enough of an emotional hook to keep me there for the rest of it (which I read at work).
The real hook in this story doesn’t come in until much later. I won’t spoil it, but it’s wonderful. This was the first bit of Neil Gaiman that I’ve read, so I look forward to more.
Criticism: Something bugged me about the narrator’s perspective being 30 years in the future. It seemed to get in the way of the story.
Lesson gleaned: Hook the reader early and often. Make them identify with the character in a specific and original way.
03.5.09Reading goals
I’m the worst kind of writer, the kind that doesn’t read. Stephen King says, harshly, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” Well, yes, those are both true. But somehow I find the odd opportunity to do them enough that I can still call myself a writer.
My buddy, Jeff, reads more than either of us writes, for the past two years exceeding his goal of 52 books per year. I won’t pretend that I can match that goal, but I’m starting a modest program for the next year that I think will be both enjoyable and fruitful: 52 short stories in one year.
But here’s the catch: after reading the story I’ll post something to my blog. It may be a single-sentence review, a standout quote, or even a paragraph or two.
I’ll try to write these blurbs with a view toward storytelling, i.e. what techniques can be gleaned from the reading.
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