Fiction Packet Summary

Fiction Packet Summary

Brandon Lazovic

               

                So this week’s blog will be about the short fiction packet that we are reading. This packet contains content from various authors, each story about a page or so. I’ll only mention stories that stood out to me since there are so many. Each description though is going to be a little short considering the length of each entry. The first story in the packet is Survivors by Kim Addonizio. This story tells the tale of a gay couple who have been together for quite some time. The main clincher is they are arguing about who is going to die first. The cause is somewhat hidden, but the first sentence refers to them counting down to their last T cells. I feel as though it is a reference to AIDs, considering they are gay and the AIDs virus kills off antibodies and other cells in the body as it spreads.

                Next up is Colonel by Carolyn Forche and the thing that stood out about this story is the fact that this colonel cuts off peoples ears, stores them in a sack and just litters them upon a table to show potential enemies not to mess with him. The shock factor is definitely what made the story stand out in my mind. It’s pretty gruesome in a simplistic way as it doesn’t really go into detail about the ears.

After this is Walking the Baby to the Liquor Store by Michael Van Wallegxen. I found it kind of bizarre as this father takes his child to a liquor store to spend time with her. The child adores the liquor store and when they get home they even take a drink together. But of all the fixations a child could have, why a liquor store? Maybe it’s his own fixation manifesting and that he is actually the one who adores the liquor store and is using the child as a crutch and an excuse to go. But that’s just my own personal explanation.

                Resident by T.J. Beitleman describes a man named Esterowicz who used to fly kites in his youth. Years later as he becomes older he contemplates life, a hermit who moves from town to town. He comments on the wind as it’s a main point in the short story. My thought on this is the allusion that the wind is actually a sense of freedom, as he blows with the wind and moves of his own volition from place to place. But the kite that he used to fly as a child restricted him as he was the one who ground it down so it couldn’t fly away. As a child he didn’t have the absolute freedom that he does know as an adult, hence why he doesn’t fly kites anymore. He is the master of his own destiny in a sense.   

                The Letter from Home by Jamaica Kincaid was really interesting to read. In the beginning it discusses this woman’s daily chores, but it enters this stream of consciousness format. What really caught my attention was the way everything was described; brief and not too descriptive. Towards the middle of the story the description of certain things started to take on a cause and effect aspect which was interesting to read/pace. But as the person thought about things each train of thought would lead into another train of thought. For example, “the earth spins on its axis, the axis is imaginary, the valleys correspond to the sea, the sea corresponds to the dry land, the dry land corresponds to the snake whose limbs are now reduced.” A large portion of the story is like this and it’s just interesting to read it in that perspective. A few portions of the story are normal and it leads me to believe that they are significant and have a purpose to why they were written, but to what effect I’m not able to discern.

                But what was her Name? by Dawn Raffel caught my intrigue. It’s vague in a sense, but basically it describes the life cycle of a woman. She is first born into the world ‘by some trick of oxygen,’ then is forwarded to being an adult in the kitchen cooking, having born kids and married. It jumps again, this time to her sitting in her chair as an elderly woman, grown senile. “A man she as raised delivers a slipper. Look at him! He wears the groom’s robe. Her fingerbone will not release the ring. “Father?” she says. She sees her breath. She has white in the bed of her birth. The past had taken hold of her—the heart’s last sleight.” She’s grown senile, mistaking her son for her father. She soon dies, remembering the past. People say that the last thing you do before you die is see your life flash before your eyes and that is what she did, seeing her father from the past, long dead. Regarding the story I enjoyed the way it was written, it made me think more in depth about of the story.

                Morning News by Jeremy Stern was another story that interested me. The main gist of it was that a man with his wife received bad news. He thought about life and how he would spend his last week, or month, or year in life. He imagined a final meal atop the Eiffel Tower, but ended up buying a sixty inch television in a warehouse. The main message is to not take life for granted and live in the now rather than the past or the future as well as to appreciate what life has to offer from day to day.

                This packet is interesting to say the least. There are several fiction shorts that are definitely worth a read, but overall most of the stories are different from each other in topic, diction, vocabulary, syntax, and the overall message they are trying to convey. Some of them are very peculiar and strange, but I feel as though that’s their draw point. The diversity of the packet as whole made it a worthwhile read.