Tag: Guns

  • Short Story Review: “Autobahn” by Hugo Hamilton

    (The short story “Autobahn” by Hugo Hamilton appeared in the September 23rd, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Christoph Niemann

    Funny how a situation, a moment that you are experiencing, can unlock a memory that even sometimes has nothing to do with what you are doing. Walking into my kid’s school the other day, I started to remember being at my grandmother’s house, and how it would smell when she was making apple dumplings. Interesting, how moments in our lives can be keys to the past. Hugo Hamilton’s “Autobahn” plays around with that idea, but in a more dramatic fashion.

    Here’s a super simple description of the story: The narrator, an Irish hitchhiker in Germany, is questioned at gun point by a police officer along the Autobahn, and while being held there, the narrator begins to remember his father.

    This is a very short story, and though it isn’t a flash piece, it had that quality to it. Also, this story did remind me of a song, perhaps because there were two “melodies” happening with the piece; the cop story line, and the father story line. (And then it could be that the story ends mentioning a Doors’ song.) I found that Hamilton did a good job switching between these two narratives, like jumping from the chorus to the bridge, and then back again. Both story lines had the threat of violence to them, which created tension needed to keep the story dramatic, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that the narrator was never really in danger.

    What I found most interesting about “Autobahn” were two bits; one was the theme, and the other was the climax. I liked how Hamilton laid out the difficult and conflicting the relationship was between the narrator and his father. How the father could be abusive toward his son, but also encourage his son’s talents, and how circling that square is a never-ending challenge which ends up making memories of the father always close to the surface. Then there was the climax, where the narrator describes a moment when he saw his father at a newsstand, but his father didn’t see him. It was drawn well, and had a lasting but fleeting feeling to it.

    I liked this story, though it did feel light. Like, the story wanted to go to a third gear, so the speak, but pulled back in the last section. Over all, Hugo Hamilton created a very specific emotional moment, that I could relate to, as sometimes you can’t stop a memory from coming up.

  • Start the Clock Until the Next Shooting

    I was thinking that someone should just write a list-article on all the nations that solved their gun problems, specifically, how they did it.

    Maybe if the piece had some cutesy click-bait name like “You Won’t Believe How These Five Nations Solved Their Mass Shooting Problem.”

    I wish I had a better point to make rather than throwing weak-ass jokes and snide comments at a serious problem.

    But the fact of the matter is that the gun debate was lost when no one did anything after Sandy Hook. No laws were passed, and not a single politician suffered for voting against doing anything. Collectively, we all admitted that this is a problem that we don’t want to solve. We prefer to have guns and dead children. We would rather see people walking around with AR-15’s that do anything about stopping all of suicides that happen though the use of guns. We prefer to have open carry than protect people from domestic violence.

    I do feel hopeless.

    I worry every day when I drop my kid off at school.

    I worry about my family members who are teachers.

    Maybe we should just give in to Republicans and allow everyone to have a gun, especially teachers. I mean, we don’t trust teachers with books, but we can trust them with a gun. Build walls around schools, and make them little forts of learning. Give people access to mental health support, which might be a form of health care, but I am sure we could come up with a good conservative label for it, like FREEDOM ROBUSTNESS!!! All of this would cost money, and I am sure that Republicans will come up with some way to expand the government without raising taxes. We should call their bluff, and say yes to everything they propose.

    I mean, let’s see what will happen. Clearly, it’s okay if a few more kids are killed as we wait.

    There’s no rush…