Response to This Week's Short Stories

Okay, so after reading the stories for this week i noticed a few things. Hemingway is great at giving a lot with very, very little. I didn't catch on to what the disagreement was about until I googled an analysis of the story, and then I appreciated it a lot more. I always enjoy the way Hemingway is able to capture setting and the subtext became a lot clearer after I recognized what the real disagreement is about. The thing I like most about reading Hemingway though, besides the dialogue that makes you want to know more, is the way he captures the essence of his settings with so precisely, with so few words.

I liked the story in the New Yorker the best though, because it really drew me in with all of the well flowing flashbacks and realizations. I like that the reader comes to the realizations and discoveries at the same time the main character does. At certain points though, I wanted more about the pedophile and the weird girl that invited herself in, and I'd have liked to understand the significance of the rocks, the graveyard, and the dog, because I know I'm missing a good chunk of the meaning behind those.

Lastly, I want to state that I absolutely hated "San Francisco." I usually try to give the author the benefit of the doubt but this story was just yucky. I get that she was trying to say something about time, and death and whatnot with the watch as some sort of metaphorical symbol, but I didn't enjoy the story enough to bother trying to figure it out. For me, I feel that this story doesn't take its readers into consideration enough; or maybe she is catering to a more high-brow audience. Whatever the case, it was not enjoyable to read, and it wasn't intriguing enough for me to put any real effort into extracting any kind of useful meaning out of it. I tried to find articles about this one on google, and there was a Chicago Tribune google blurb that mentioned something about how great it was, but when I clicked on the page i couldn't locate the article. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't appreciate this story and the way it made me feel while reading it provided me with an important reminder: write for the reader! (Sorry Amy Hempel.)

Oh, and I like the connection between long shots in film and backstory in fiction that Burroway mentions; that was insightful.