Archive for the ‘Short Stories’ Category.
November 17, 2007, 11:05 pm
If In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction is, in fact, the best of creative non-fiction, then creative non-fiction doesn’t have much to offer. Some of the stories were good but many weren’t particularly, and one about Haiti was nearly unreadable unless you happen to know an awful lot about Haiti already. Which perhaps is the problem in general. Non-fiction is more interesting when it’s by or about someone or something you know, when you can put yourself into the place of the narrator or into the scene being described. Somehow most of the stories in this book failed to pull me into them and creative non-fiction that doesn’t pull you in is just non-fiction.
November 9, 2007, 3:28 am
The cool thing about Grace Paley’s short stories is how little introduction there is to them. She plops you in the middle and lets you figure out who these people are and what they’re up to as you go along. Sometimes when I finally ah-ha’d the scene I’d go back and read the beginning again, to fully appreciate it, but if you’re less anal about understanding every word than I am, it’s not necessary.
I picked up The Little Disturbances of Man because I happened to see an article about Grace Paley’s recent death. I’d never heard of her before but now that I have, I’m likely to pick up another of her short story collections.