In Short

            In studying the short form it seems pertinent to dissect how short stories, (that weren’t written for books necessarily, but instead written to stand alone) can come together in a compilation successfully.  What first caught my eye in In Short was the thread between stories. I didn’t notice it right away. It was the Scottish connection between Judith Kitchen’s Culloden(62), and Emily Hiestand’s Afternoon Tea(65) that I spotted first. I kept noticing a string that tied one story to the next like this; another example is the hunting connection between Decoy (110) and Growing Up Game. When going back to do my close read I read the preface by Bernard Cooper and saw that he noted this by saying “Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones have arranged their anthology into thematic patterns” (20). I liked his use of the word pattern; it seemed in to imply the existence of a rhythm. This book definitely had a heartbeat to it, which seems fitting since this book is made up of themes that make up life. Initially I thought that these thematic connections between stories were too obvious to write about; like it wasn’t any big deal to notice. Then, I thought about its purpose and effect on the reader and decided it is worth mentioning.

            What drew my attention more specifically regarding these shared themes were the different perspectives being represented. I want to zero in on a specific stretch of the book starting on page 183 with Museum Piece, and ending with Modern Times on 194. In Museum Piece the author chooses to have a narrator that speaks to an anonymous “you” about Vermeer paintings. What’s curious here is that “you” as a character doesn’t actually exist, which gives the feeling that either the narrator is speaking to the reader (or maybe themselves?).  So, the perspective being represented could be said to be this “you” through the lens of the narrator.

            In “An End to the Still Lifes” we have a 1^st person narration of a childhood memory of taking art lessons. I’d say this piece shares a similar perspective to the previous one based on this sentence: “Art was to capture and make something pretty” (187).  I base this on the description by the previous author of Vermeer’s painting “A Lady Writing”, where he describes how the artist captured a oment. The subject matter is still art but the is more weight on the artist this time; giving the reader coverage of the subject of art from another side. The narrator’s perspective on art helps us transition into the next subject: WWII. The perspective presented on WWII is one of someone who has some distance from the war, but is still affected by it (the narrator has brothers in the war, and gets art lessons from someone who had to flee Europe due to the war (185, 187)). 

            WWII is what ties “An End to the Still Lifes” and “Three Fragments”. This piece offers a perspective of the war from someone who experienced it closer to home; close enough to stumble upon two dead German soldiers one day. Again the narration is in the 1^st person, and they paint a picture of the war, with bombs exploding regularly, as part of everyday life.

            In the next story, “Inheritance”, the subject matter is still war, but an entirely different one. In this one page story the narrator shares the story of their mother visiting a great-uncle who tells a tale of seeing Napoleon with his own eyes.  Here we get the perspective of someone who was actually in a war as a soldier through the lens of a couple family generations. This is also when we begin to transition into a new theme: Nostalgia, or yearning for/ remembering things past.

            In “Modern Times” we again get the perspective of someone who was a soldier in a war, but this time it’s a first hand account (“On the ground, the carnage of war, the gore, the frantically desperate attempts at rescue, the bitterly expiring hopes – they’re all the same as they ever been” (194)). Additionally the opinion that history repeats itself is expressed; a theme I think is repeated throughout the book. In contrast to the earlier story of the person on the ground who wasn’t a soldier but had to live with the war, the narrator in this story is up in those planes, bombing the people down below, and they share with us how being up in a plane can make you feel removed from the carnage below.

            One last note worthy thing to mention is that these themes don’t just transition from one to the next to the next in a linear flow, but instead we see subjects get brought back up to give us a new perspective. For instance, WWII gets bought back up in “Sanctuary” (244). This backs-up that idea of this book having a beat to it.

            Again all of this works toward the idea of showing one subject from many perspectives. Even though these stories were written at different times, with no knowledge of each other, the fit together nicely. Also, the juxtaposition of each makes readers think of new ideas they may not have otherwise thought of.