I really like the idea of this journal because it's so hopeful. I really like this particular story because the writing got my attention.
The story begins like this: "Archie Mezinis was a walker — a boardwalk stroller, a country road rambler, a city street seeker." I really like how the story defines the specificity of the main character's walking so clearly.
Archie, who knows a good find when he sees one, seems like he would fit in on the popular show Storage Wars. According to the story, "His practiced eye could spot a three-inch Meissen figurine and know it really was Japanese, or a Murano cigarette tin worth twice the asking price now that smoking was socially hazardous. "
On this particular day, Archie finds something especially interesting. Did you enjoy this story as well? If so, why?
I enjoyed the story. Your commentary helped me interpret it ~ it is very context specific, once you remember at the end that you're seeing in r.kv.r.y, and since you primed my reading with all the possible forms of recovery that a story might fit into.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, how when you place a story in context, it can alter its focus. It might have been about singles meeting or collecting or another topic, and had I been primed to look for a theme, I might have read it differently.
So, your blog post teaches a lesson in framing and how the venue in which a story appears may slant the reader.
I read the story differently once I knew more about the journal as well. I'm enjoying doing these posts because they're helping me learn about a lot of new journals or journals that I had heard of or maybe not known a lot about. It helped too when I looked up more about that flea market. It's true that where a piece appears can frame our reading of it. I think that writers often have to sell a story to get it to fit a venue especially now with so many theme issues out there, and, yet, on its own, a story can be read in so many ways.
ReplyDelete