Nine Stories
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Fri, 15 Oct 1999 23:28:02 -0400 (EDT)
I just reread it (skipping DDS because I had just reread a couple weeks ago).
No, it's not a terrible fate, Camille :), and I will miss hearing your voice
around here quite so often. The worst thing about rereading NS now is that I
should be reading Paradise Lost and Hamlet instead, and I'm Not :)
BUT, that being said, I think many imply some sort of rejection of the world.
Seymour shoots himself. The little kid runs away. DDS says everyone is a
nun. Teddy is a bit more overtly spiritual about it. The Laughing Man is an
outcast. The woman in Uncle Wiggly has her own form of isolation (highballs
and unhappiness). It's probably not there in Pretty Mouth, what you get is
an awareness of the dirtiness of the deed by the participants at the end.
For Esme? The rejection was in Sgt. X's attitude toward his visitor and his
psychological state itself -- the shell shock was partly a reflection of his
sense of horror at the state of this world (revealed through war), and that
was why Esme's kindness was so therapeutic.
But the stories...like most good stories I've read...don't lend themselves to
cut and dried analysis very easily. In Laughing Man, for example, the only
parallel I saw between the story told on the bus and the narrative action
itself (what was happening to the storyteller) was emotional -- the
children's suspense and worry about The Laughing Man was reflective of the
storytellers worry about his relationship. The death of the relationship was
parallel to the death of the Laughing Man. This story may be a commentary on
art itself -- metafiction, of sorts.
Ah, that's all, for now
Jim