Ficton Packet 1

Reading the fiction packet 1 was pretty interesting. I think it broadened my idea of fiction a lot more. In the past, I really did not read many short stories. After reading these stories, I found that the authors got pretty creative. What I found most interesting was Sharon Krinsky's “Mystery Stories”. This was really cool because her stories were extremely short. They were no more than ten sentences each, yet, she left me with some kind of message. I thought it was so interesting that she made these stories so short because I felt I could still understand what she was trying to say. Also, I thought most of them were quite clever and funny. I really liked how she got her point across and was short and simple. My favorite passage on this page was 'Poetry', mainly because I thought it was pretty funny. My favorite line was the last sentence, 'I think they should be in a china cup'. It was funny because it made me think of how 'un-romantic' the story became, just by saying he put it in a paper cup. Yet, the character obviously meant for the moment to be romantic.

Another story that really caught my attention was 'Survivors' by Kim Addonizio. I thought the author added a comedic twist to an unfortunate occurrence. The first line of the story lured me in to finish reading. She started out very strong and I wanted to keep going. She says, “He and his lover were down to their last few T cells and arguing over who was going to die first”. This totally threw me off but I really wanted to keep reading. Later in the story, I noticed Addonizio was using very descriptive language, which painted a great picture of the scenario. I love how she took the attention away from the fact that they were dying of AIDS, and put it on him describing his lover's family. It gave me a sense of who the characters were. I also enjoyed how the author ended the story with a strong sentence to match the opening line. She says, “dear God, he thought, let me die first, don't let me survive him'. I like how she related the first and last sentence, yet goes a bit off track in the middle.

The third story that I really enjoyed reading was Allen Woodman's 'Wallet'. From the beginning to the end, I could see the image of the story in my head. The author used incredibly descriptive language and I was interested during the whole story. I was curious to see what the story would be about after reading the first line, 'Tired of losing his wallet to pickpockets, my father, at seventy, makes a phony one'. It made me wonder what the author was talking about, because it seemed a bit peculiar. Later on, I thought it was funny how he was planning on tricking the potential thief. I can just imagine an old man going into a department store and being dramatic about the whole thing. Another line I liked was when Woodman said, 'and he overdoes it like stage makeup on a community-theater actor'. It was very descriptive and pretty funny. The ending was, also, quite clever because the author ends it with the man and his father running away from the clerk.