Tuesday, December 7, 2010

"Going" by Amy Hempel

I love the short story "Going" written by Amy Hempel. In such a short story she was able to tell so much her Character. I also like how the story would explain itself on how and why each thing happened and the story starts off good right off the bat he is in the hospital and he wakes up noticing that there's a typo on the menu when he wakes up, instead of being concerned about his own health and what had happened in 2 days he was pretty calm to be just waking up. Another thing i liked about the story and like the connection of the binoculars while driving : two ways. Sometimes you can have two feelings at once and can be difficult to describe and Binoculars while driving (fast and slow, far and close all at the same time)is a great way to describe that feeling. Amy also made her character very interesting in a way that he had a bit of mystery behind him. The last thing he remembers was seeing a scorpion sting itself to death cause the bartender put tequila on its tail and then when he was leaving the man asked where he was going and he simply responded he was just "Going"... but Why 2 days of memory loss i still didn't get why 2 days?

Thursday, December 2, 2010

"Big Me"

"Big Me" by Dan Chaon was a story i really enjoyed reading but i felt like i didnt fully understand it and needed to read it a second time to see if there was anything I had missed the first time because the first time I read "Big Me" the end of it left me with a lot of questions about Andy's life growing up, and how his imagination had taken a far bigger role then reality did which made him to have these "black outs". I wasn't sure if something more traumatic then what is explained to him is what actually happened and maybe his brain actually created these new more enjoyable memories that had this fun story of him being a detective who goes on these missions to gather as many facts as he can on Louis Mickleson the teacher who moved into his hang out house and will also be his 7th grade teacher who apparently looks like an old version of himself so... I going to have to agree with his wife when she said "If I told you that I had periods when I... lost time... wouldn't you be concerned? Wouldn't you want me to see a doctor?" to him having, 'black outs', at certain points was something to be concerned about, and its likely to be something his brain had intentionally blocked out because its something traumatic, and he mentions his childhood being terrible, and how dysfunctional his family is. I'm going to have to agree with Mrs. O'Day... im concerned for Andy and hope things work out for him

US Drag pt 2

i was very disappointed by the ending being so.. uneventful it felt like the story was building for something bigger to happen. I also did really see MUCH change but consider all of the characters were so unique in the some of the oddest ways yet not TOO odd, they all seem like they have personality disorders like Christopher might be autistic or something. I also feel the play would have been a lot better had they found ED or at least developed on the the "ed" situation considering everyone is staying away from ed i guess they did a good job at it then i guess, but i guess not finding ED makes it more realistic considering no matter how interesting me and my friends my be if we were to set out to find a serial killer I'd say were not very likely to find him. U.S. Drag spoke for its self in being a Drag for me