Long and Short

I started reading "Don Quixote," the 700-page epic of dementia written in 1605. It's one of those books I always meant to read, someday, like when I retired. Half Price books had it filed under "D" for Miguel de Cervantes, which seemed like a suitable beginning.

Got about 40 pages in. The language is florid and requires careful reading and re-reading to extract the meaning. It was slow going. It's hot and I lost interest.

Turned instead to another book on my "to-read" shelf called "The Best Small Fictions of 2017." Fifty-five ultrashort stories of a page or two. Perfect mind candy for a hot day.

The series started in 2015. Each edition is available locally for list price, $30 for a slim book. We'll see how good the editor is first.

The stories have been good, ranging from "pretty good" to "excellent" as these sorts of anthologies tend to do. One particularly short one is worth copying here, simply because it exemplifies the potential of ultra-short stories: saying very little, but implying a lot.

Cole Meyer wrote:

Every morning I wake with a new woman on my left. Every morning I wake with my wife on the right, and I expect her to be yelling, to be angry, demanding to know why I've been unfaithful, but every morning she is only ashes in an urn. Dust collects on the nightstand so I know she hasn't emerged in the night, hasn't taken one look at the woman in her place and stormed off.  I wonder now, when this woman will leave. I think about making her pancakes, about sprinkling my wife on top so this woman will become a little more like her. Maybe she will take her hair color, her name. Maybe she will absorb her memories, absorb everything about her but her breasts and she will be my wife and healthy. I mark a tally through the dust, one for every night I should've slept alone.

Wow. I just read this story to Mrs NoCo and choked up halfway through. It gets more powerful every time I read it. The sense of loss is devastating.