Who Are You?

The creative part for this week’s and next week’s blog is an excerpt of one of my short stories. The following excerpt is scene one:


“Hey Mommy! How was your day?” Puzzled eyes are starring at me. Today, it’s one of these bad days. Again, I wished I could turn back the time and pretend I was living in 1975. It was a cheesy world for a little girl. It’s amazing how carefree kids can be. I remember our holidays at the coast. We used to go every summer on vacation. It was always the same place and the same people. We liked it though. “Do you remember the day, when I and Jimmy Wallace got into this fistfight? I can’t even remember how it happened. Can you? No? Anyways, when I came home you got mad at me. ’Not again’, did you say. And then I would tell you what had happened and you would grab my hand we would go to Jimmy’s parents in order to talk to them. You always seemed to be so strong and dominant. You were as firm as a rock. Can you imagine how often I wished to be like you? No? Why didn’t I tell you before? Maybe, you would have seen me with different eyes. Anyways, how was you day again? Could you please sit down? I’ve brought some lunch. I hope you like it. I mean you used to like it. Do you know what this is? No?” “Please, Mommy, don’t go to the phone and call 911. It’s not necessary. You know that, don’t you? It’s me, your daughter. What do you mean you have no daughter? Of course, you have. Look at me! I said look at me, please. Don’t you see how similar we look? No? My grandma always told me how similar we look. Remember? No?” I go toward you and try to embrace you. You seem to be as less affected as anybody could be… (to be continued)

Response to Good People by David Foster Wallace

Although the short story is very similar, even too similar to my taste, to Ernest Hemingway’s story entitled Hills like White Elephants, Good People written by David Foster Wallace is well done. It is amazing how the author gives the reader an insight in the main character’s life. We learn that the couple is facing some sort of problem and all indicates that the girl got pregnant and they both have decided to go to a doctor and have the baby aborted. Actually, the text does not reveal if it really is about an abortion. So the author kind of plays with the reader’s expectations and finally, lets him in the dark.

Moreover, the text strikes with many stylistic devices that makes the story more vivid. For instance, the speaker point’s at the girl’s cleanliness several times which seemed to be rather unusual to describe a person.

The girl wore a thin old checked cotton shirt with pearl-colored snaps with the long sleeves down and always smelled very good and clean, like someone you could trust and care about even if you weren’t in love.

Sheri’s hair was colored an almost corn blond, very clean, the skin through her central part pink in the sunlight

Describing how clean she is seems to indicate her pureness although she is pregnant.

All in all this short story is a very interesting one by not telling the reader concretely what really has happened to the young couple but by implying so much action.

Response on The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Honestly, I am not sure yet whether I like this excerpt or whether not. This is may be because there is so less action in this piece of literature that helps me forming an opinion. This excerpt tells about a character who mentions his favourite place which is under the eucalyptus trees and his relationship to nature and how he perceives especially the eucalyptus trees and some animals.

The first odd thing about the character is how he discovers human traits in the eucalyptus trees:

“I began to notice that the uppermost twigs and leaves were lyrical happy dancers glad that they had been apportioned the top, with all that rumbling experience of the whole tree swaying beneath them making their dance … I noticed how the leaves almost looked human the way they bowed and then leaped up and then swayed lyrically side to side. It was a crazy vision in my mind but beautiful.”

Then he continues describing a “hummingbird, a beautiful little blue hummingbird no bigger than a dragonfly, kept making a whistling jet dive at me, definitely saying hello to me, every day, usually in the morning”.

This seems to create a very harmonic- even too harmonic- picture of the scene. But then he continues to say that he was “afraid he would drive right into my head with his long beaker like a hatpin”.

All in all it is interesting how the speaker creates a certain distance by on the one hand describing the romantic landscape picture and on the other hand perceiving a little hummingbird as a threat.