{"id":185,"date":"2009-02-03T21:55:15","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T03:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/?p=185"},"modified":"2009-02-03T21:55:15","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T03:55:15","slug":"short-stories-light-and-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"Short Stories, Light and Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I just finished two collections of short stories, chosen seemingly at random.\u00a0 I basically picked these up because their covers intrigued me, having heard nothing about them.\u00a0 Also, I’m a fan of short stories as they are often a quick read but can contain very powerful statements about the human situation.<\/p>\n

These two collections are very different.\u00a0 The first, Men and Cartoons<\/em> by Jonathan Lethem, is an exploration, in some sense, of the superhero genre, though some of the stories touch more on science fiction than pure superheroics.\u00a0 But, more than that, these are just devices for Lethem to explore human personalities.\u00a0 In some cases, the protagonists aren’t even human, like in Interview with the Crab, in which a crab, who starred in a sit-com as a youngster, is interviewed in his later years about his fame and fortune.\u00a0 Super Goat Man is about one near-hero, a guy who really has no powers except he looks a bit like a goat, and how he never lives up to being a hero.<\/p>\n

All of these stories explore different quirks of people.\u00a0 At times, I felt the stories were a little flat, though there were definitely times, like in The Spray and The Shape We’re In, which describes a cell’s adventures in a human body, when I wondered how the hell he came up with this stuff. Some of the stories are definitely inventive and pretty way out there, making the overall collection well worth the read, even if in a couple of cases, I was growing a little bored.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The second collection is Rashomon<\/em> by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.\u00a0 I was intrigued by the title as I had seen the movie Rashomon by Akira Kurasawa in college, a movie which I really enjoyed and highly recommend.\u00a0 It wasn’t clear to me there was a connection, but I picked it up anyways.\u00a0 And, indeed, there is a connection.\u00a0 Though, it is a little convoluted, as Akutagawa’s story Rashomon has little to do with the movie.\u00a0 It is rather In a Bamboo Grove that inspired the movie Rashomon.\u00a0 I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection.\u00a0 They start out with his fiction, usually set in feudal Japan, and explore the human experience by putting people in odd situations.\u00a0 In a Bamboo Grove describes a death from multiple perspectives, giving each person’s take on what happened, including the victim.\u00a0 Hell Screen is about a painter who is commissioned to paint a screen with the Bhuddist hell depicted on it and the events that occur to complete the painting.\u00a0 The later stories move into more modern territory, but no less odd events.\u00a0 One describes a man who dies at the wrong time and is returned to life with the legs of a horse as his had already rotted.\u00a0 The last few stories are more autobiographical and describe Akutagawa’s descent into madness (he ultimately committed suicide).\u00a0 While I think it is very hard to convey the despair that someone must go through in such a state.\u00a0 I’ve read Plath’s The Bell Jar<\/em> and just didn’t feel the anguish she was trying to convey.\u00a0 I feel it a little bit more here, as Akutagawa describes the random things that end up tormenting him.\u00a0 In all the stories, Akutagawa has a unique perspective and is inventive in his subjects.\u00a0 This is another collection that I enjoyed and would recommend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished two collections of short stories, chosen seemingly at random.\u00a0 I basically picked these up because their covers intrigued me, having heard nothing about them.\u00a0 Also, I’m a fan of short stories as they are often a quick read but can contain very powerful statements about the human situation. These two collections are … Continue reading Short Stories, Light and Dark<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Blah\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}