Fiction Packet 3

Although well written the works in this selection are missing something. Some ingredient that separates good work from great art.  It is one thing to tell a story, with great detail giving the reader a clear picture of what is happening, but another to make the reader care.  These stories are wonderful examples of what can be done with the English language, but not a good story do they make.  It is difficult to describe what it is they are missing, they leave the reader feeling unchanged, there is no contemplation of the how the work made one feel.  Peter Markus's When it Rains it Rains a River is a remarkable work of English.  It twists the language in ways that are sometime hard to understand, yet when read carefully it is coherent and detailed.  It flows like spoken story telling, and is perfect to the letter. At least the words are.  There is very little emotion involved, it was like the author worked so hard to make the story word perfect he left out a human element.  It could be I was reading it in the wrong context and missed this, but I didn't find my self reading it again, or considering the deeper meanings within.  I rad it, appreciated the language and moved on.  It was easily the best work in the packet.  The others, although well written, left me with nothing significant.  They felt dry, unemotional. The words explained emotions, clearly, but as the reader I had no compassion for the characters.  The end result of the stories didn't leave me breathless, or full of wonder.  They made me see the places, but not feel them. A great work of literature does this.  Short fiction is a challenge, the author only gets a short time to tell the story and needs to me concise and to the point.  To often authors will be either concise to the point of dryness, or cryptic to the level of poetry.  None of the authors herein were able to really bring the characters to life, the environments they were in were there, alive and detailed and electric, but the characters were just as dead as the wall that was being described.