Tag: Short Short Stories

  • Short Story Review: “Snowy Day” by Lee Chang-Dong (Translated from the Korean, by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang.)

    (The short story “Snowy Day” by Lee Chang-Dong appeared in the March 6th, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (Yes, there will be SPOILERS!)

    Illustration by Anuj Shrestha

    “Snowy Day” is an okay story. Not awful, not amazing either, and in the end, I do recommend that you should read it. It was written by Lee Chang-Dong, translated from the Korean by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang. I broke my own rule with this story and looked up who the author was to gain some background information, as I was curious and wanted to know why the author structured this story the way that he did. By the way, Lee Chang-Dong is an accomplished South Korean film director, screenwriter, and novelist.

    What struck me about “Snowy Day” was that the story felt like it was written from a different time; specifically, like a late 1940’s short story in Collier’sor some other magazine of that period. And what I mean by that is those stories of that time were structured in a classic form, but were beginning to take on a more Modern subject matter, so those stories had a disjointed, incongruent feel. That’s what “Snowy Day” felt like.

    The structure of this piece had an old feel to it. The story is bookended with a girl coming to a military camp looking for her new boyfriend, who is a private on the base. Then the story shifts to the private being on guard duty with a corporal, and this is where the majority of the action takes place, in this one setting. And the story follows the rule of three multiple times, and even slips in an “O. Henry” twist at the climax of the “dumb” character being smart, and the “tough” character being a coward. Then we return back to the girl being informed that the private is in the hospital and she leaves the base.

    Nothing surprised me in this story. Literary structure and form handled badly can be formulaic, and Lee Chang-Dong avoided that. The character of the private is intriguing, and made a good protagonist, while the girl feels more like a woman from a Poe story; tragic and doomed to have her heart broken. The other characters are left to serve the structure of the story. Yet, there still was this purposeful disjointed feel to the story. That these worlds weren’t fitting together as they should, which created an underlining tension. I think the structure is what helped create that, functioning as foreshadowing since we know how this structure is supposed to work.

    Like I said, the story is okay. I didn’t feel like my time was wasted reading “Snowy Day,” but it wasn’t compelling either. What I liked in reading this was seeing an author that respected and knew how to use form and structure to tell a story.

  • Short Story Review: “My Wonderful Description of Flowers” by Danielle Dutton

    (The short story “My Wonderful Description of Flowers” by Danielle Dutton appeared in the December 5th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I can’t help it; I spoil this story…)

    Photograph by Ioulex for The New Yorker

    I have been getting into short short stories, and flash fiction. What I am enjoying about these smaller works is that is that I feel like most of the writers are playing with the short story form, and experimenting with what can work when it comes to narrative. Maybe this is a reflection of the digital age, and texting – use as few words as possible and get to the point.

    “My Wonderful Description of Flowers” by Danielle Dutton is not a flash fiction piece, but for The New Yorker, it is a shorter short story at just three pages. There is no plot to this story, and I think that was purposeful. The story functions like a dream, and in the first paragraph, the narrator tells us that her husband had a dream, though he very rarely dreams. And with that framing, the story is on its way. There are a few narrative threads, or lines that weave in and out of the story; the husband not returning a text message, their child playing a video game that doesn’t seem to be like any type of normal game, a lecture and reception, a stranger who had corresponded with the narrator, and then a train ride that leads to the end of the line.

    The prose is lovely, light, and ethereal in the sense that it flows back and forth from narrative threads, which could only work together in a dream. What keeps the narrative moving forward is the growing frustration with the messages not being returned, and the train literally running toward the end of the line. These two threads do function as the device that creates the rising action, so the story has the feeling of a plot, or at least that a climax is coming. Dutton has created this frame for the story to live in, and then she goes on to fill spaces with movements, gestures, actions and observations. It’s a wonderful experiment in testing what a narrative can be, and be used to hold a story together. And like a good guest, the story knows not to overstay its welcome, and gives an ending that isn’t climatic, but is satisfying as it fits within the atmosphere of this dream-like world.

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