Fiction Packet 11/6/13

Fiction Packet #3

Brandon Lazovic

                So we had a few packets to read for our creative writing class this week. The first set of stories was from the book The Singing Fish by Peter Markos. My interpretation of the stories would have to be a mixed response. It feels like tribal myths, the way it is written, the elements, the way things happen and are all explained are a lead example of this. The last story that was written could also justify how children age and grow up, learning and how they try and explain things in life. The word ‘mud’ is used in large amounts throughout the stories, which could allude to that tribal age of misunderstanding about the world, or possibly refer to skin color and African culture. It would make sense because of the way the stories are written in an unlearned dialectic, but it’s just a shot in the dark.

                The next story is called The Falling Girl by Dino Buzzati. The story begins with a girl falling down a skyscraper. The story itself, I feel, alludes to life. At the top of the skyscraper you are young, and when most people are young they try to grow up as quick as possible, passing by all the imagery of life (evident as this girl moves quickly from all the people she passes as she falls). There is a sense of freedom and independence that young people tend to have. It isn’t until the age begins to creep on someone that they realize that they aren’t alone and there are people out there with better things than them, better looks, better material objects, better lives. This stage is similar to a mid-life crisis, and this girl experiences that as she sees other women dressed in better clothes falling just like she is. Then the story alludes to only seeing old women fall to their deaths at the bottom of the skyscraper, which reinforces the transitional stages of life as they make their descent. They tend to hear thumps at the bottom, which I feel represent someone’s worth in life. In this circumstance, however, they don’t hear anything as this girl hits the cement.

                The story August 25^th, 1983 by Jorge Luis Borges is about a man finding himself in his hotel room, aged. I feel as though the man is a representation of himself, the younger of the two being the optimist and the older one being the pessimist. A reference to the stoics was made, adding to a philosophical aspect to the story that might support the split personalities of the narrator. The pessimistic side died the night in the story, but it took a piece of the optimist with him. In this sense maybe the pessimist won out in a duel of the personalities, influencing the other half more than the other half influenced it.

                Lastly, The Fifth Story by Clarice Lespector is actually quite interesting. It describes various scenarios in which to kill cockroaches. However, with each story the thought process into killing them gets more intensive as the narrator puts more thought into their actions. It likens the cockroaches to Pompei as the volcano buried the town alive. This story might actually be explaining the human psyche and how we think into things so heavily. Everything is intrinsic, the pathways into thought every branching away as every action that we take has a reaction and another action. It kind of makes me think of Nietsche where nothing matters, having a nihilistic attitude. There’s also a theory that for every action somewhere in another parallel world you perform the opposite choice, so nothing you do technically matters. Not sure if this correlates with this story, but it makes me think of those two things.