tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post775414620880362785..comments2024-03-09T00:19:36.011-08:00Comments on Reading the Short Story: Steven Millhauser, "Getting Closer"Charles E. Mayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11642048806407593585noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-639230459739672932011-03-19T14:07:24.592-07:002011-03-19T14:07:24.592-07:00Thanks very much for your response, Kim. Your rea...Thanks very much for your response, Kim. Your reaction to the story is much like mine. And I agree, it is the rhythm of the sentences that communicate the impending. My friend Lee does not think the pov of the small boy works, but I can't imagine it any other way. I don't think this story is about the content but about the rhythm. Thank you for your comment.Charles E. Mayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11642048806407593585noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-87212288316805183422011-03-18T22:36:50.364-07:002011-03-18T22:36:50.364-07:00I related with great relish to your post about thi...I related with great relish to your post about this story.<br /><br />Although I'm a writer myself and read The New Yorker from cover-to-cover each week, I often skip their fiction, perhaps because I've read one too many stories written in a style I found stilted or less than engaging, or simply boring because the author was not a compelling storyteller. Occasionally I'll get hooked into a story that will so utterly overwhelm me that it feels like discovering the shimmering beauty of the written word for the first time. <br /><br />It felt that way for me when I read "Getting Closer." I read it three times in a row, re-reading and savoring passages, in awe of the breathtaking rhythm that builds with inexorable finality to the shattering climax. We watch the seed of nostalgia planted unceremoniously and in the course of a couple of pages, develop a dread for the child because we know too well how it will end up, the person looking back thirty-five years and asking with complete sincerity and utter bewilderment: how did I get here?<br /><br />The sense a child intuits of what life has in store, the immutable and irrevocable nature of certain things, the abject terror when the veil is lifted for the first time and he sees in too tender an incarnation that death is what looms ahead, and time, for all it's seeming slowness at that age, will have its way and there is no human power on earth that can stop this from happening, then an unspeakable sadness that smothers all existence for the time it takes to absorb the stultifying truth. <br /><br />Millhauser captures that and more with a poetry that is evanescent like time and the whole effect is like having the wind knocked out of you and being grateful for every breathless, reeling, gasping moment.Kim Carlsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07961150664830460127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3161136885462262525.post-71293083064255376242011-02-15T09:02:27.976-08:002011-02-15T09:02:27.976-08:00Not only don't I find 'Getting Closer'...Not only don't I find 'Getting Closer' to be a great short story, I find it a rather poor one. Two main reasons:<br /><br />1. It blasts its message at us.<br />2. The sensibility at the heart of the story is inauthentic. Nine-year-olds don't perceive the world in this way, seeing death under the 'shining skin of world' (ugh - trite!).<br /><br />I'm also perturbed by the inconsistency of the narrative voice, straining to be both childlike and writerly, which is very hard to pull off. Perhaps - but I'm not sure, I'll have to consider this upon further reading - it would have been better not to chose this particular POV.Leehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13770069472552779217noreply@blogger.com