Fiction Packet #3

Fiction Packet #3 is the latest entry in our series of fiction readings, and I believe our class will be pleased with its contents after a curious lack of enthusiasm for Juice. For the most part, the stories here are self-contained and generally absent from any cryptic, metaphorical nonsense which tripped most everyone up in Juice, and just having a concrete narrative that can be followed from beginning to end feels almost like a breath of fresh air.

The one exception to this would be the exerpts from "The Sing Fish," a curious tale of boys and girls and moons and mud and, of course, fish. I'm going to shy away from explaining that one. That isn't to say that all the other stories are simplicity defined; there are plenty of eccentric aspects to them, of mystery and ambiguity, which really highlight their creativity-- they just aren't meandering, seemingly disparate sentences strung together, yet they don't just hand a story to the reader and leave them with nothing gained.

"The Falling Girl" gives us a head-scratching look into a scenario where, at the top of a skyscraper, people are jumping towards the ground to reach a party of magnificent proportions. We're experiencing this through the eyes of an inquisitive girl, who seems to be dreamily observing everything. We learn that, on the lower floors, inhabitants of the skyscraper only see older folks falling, and suddenly the context of the conversations in the beginning of the story seem less dream-like and more metaphorical, clearing up the intent of the story very nicely. What began as a somewhat droll, daydream-inspired short story evolved into a clever perspective on the progression of life, hinging on just a few key lines to change the entire feel of the text. I like that the author uses some wonderful imagery juxtaposed with plain, ordinary dialog, giving us a sense of wonder while presenting it in a deadpan sort of way.

"The Fifth Story" is a collection of five stories, all of which are centered around the exact same day, the exact same action. A man, innocently enough, wants to kill the plague of roaches infesting his home; fair enough. He learns of a recipe from a woman that will dry them from the insides out, and we have our story. This same story is then recapped over the next several tales, until we get a maddening amount of detail of the mental process behind the decision that is, at first, as simple as just exterminating some pests. Our narrator compares himself to a killer, questions the morality behind ruining these creature's lives, ponders if he should do it every night, for they'll keep coming back up the pipes, and launches a rather brilliant ranting metaphor on the similarities of the dried-up shells of the cockroaches to the horrors befallen the island of Pompeii. The implication, I think, would have him in the place of the personified murderous volcano, slaughtering all without discrimination or forethought.

On a side note, both of these stories are written in a foreign language and translated, which leaves me to wonder how much of the integral word choice, the meaning and feeling behind each word was lost in translation. There are many foreign phrases and words that hold no simple meaning in the English language, and I wonder if these authors crafted even better works in their native language, only hindered of their true potential for us by a language barrier.