American Short Fiction

This is a journal for, as the title suggests, short fiction and I had to read for a project for my Intermediate Fiction class. I happened to come across that 51 Issue and I am really glad that this was the issue our bookstore had because it was absolutely amazing.

When they said that they only accept the best I thought they were just saying that, but after reading all these stories I am convinced that they really meant it. All five stories were amazing, but the two that really stuck out to me were Marie Tells All by Ann Claycomb and The Wrong Chemicals by Matthew Baker.

Marie Tells All takes the fascination America seems to have with celebrity dating shows and puts us inside the head of one of the girls that lived it. The story starts after the show is over and Marie is telling us this story because we never watched the reality show so it was okay to tell us. It is not told in a linear matter, but through out the story we are told about Marie's experiences on the show as well as what got her there. Her sister, Teena, convinces her to go on the show after their father dies of cancer so they both can get some money and forget there fathers slow decline. Marie was the one who stayed with their dad and took care of him, but after finding out that their father cut Teena out of the life insurance Marie agrees to go onto the show. Though a lot of the story is told in the context of the show, by they end we learn it was never about Jesse or the show, but about Marie getting rid of her memories about her father and separating herself from her twin.

The Wrong Chemicals was rather slow and confusing to start with, but after I got into the story and understood what was going on it became really interesting. The narrator is depressed, but we don't understand why. Time in this piece is a big factor as it runs backwards and we see a man in his deep depression before we even learn what made him that way. However at the end of the story we learn that he witnessed the World Trade Center get hit as he worked in one of the towers, but was out for coffee, and that his children were killed inside and their bodies were never found. By the end of the piece we feel so much for the narrator who is rather annoying that the beginning of the story. It was an extremely moving piece and I suggest everyone at least gives it a read.