Pajamas & Pages
After reading Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain", a sad Edith Wharton story last night, and the sharply drawn story of a friend this past week, I have found myself recently curious about the short story.
I wonder if it has a natural propensity to build both the lyric intensity of poetry and the narrative trajectory of the novel simultaneously. I am drawn to both. The ecstatic or epiphanic of the lyric correlates to vision, to my mind; story correlates to politics, to the work of survival and relating. We need each, held in a constant tension, I believe. I wonder if the short story has a certain propensity for holding such tension.
I selected some story collections today: Henry James, Flannery O'Connor, William T. Vollmann, Edna O'Brien, Ha Jin.
Think I'd like to smoothe my bed, climb into my pajama bottoms, have a cup of hot tea, and read by amber light before bed tonight. I may need some thoughtful slowness to rub the neck of this otherwise hectic week.
I wonder if it has a natural propensity to build both the lyric intensity of poetry and the narrative trajectory of the novel simultaneously. I am drawn to both. The ecstatic or epiphanic of the lyric correlates to vision, to my mind; story correlates to politics, to the work of survival and relating. We need each, held in a constant tension, I believe. I wonder if the short story has a certain propensity for holding such tension.
I selected some story collections today: Henry James, Flannery O'Connor, William T. Vollmann, Edna O'Brien, Ha Jin.
Think I'd like to smoothe my bed, climb into my pajama bottoms, have a cup of hot tea, and read by amber light before bed tonight. I may need some thoughtful slowness to rub the neck of this otherwise hectic week.