Sunday, February 1, 2009

Tunis and Time

I read Tunis and Time from the collection. I have to be quite honest and say that I didn't like it at all...not one bit. I'm not sure what exactly was "mysterious" about it.

I thought it was just a story about a spy. Then at the very end it gives an italicized paragraph that reveals what happens to the spy AFTER the story...Not much mystery to it.

I chose it, originally, because I thought the main character sounded alot like Sam Spade in Maltese Falcon. He WASN'T!

Sam Spade is a cool character; good looking, smart, macho. In "Tunis", Layton is just an elderly, slovenly, loser who can't make good decisions.

I really don't think there was much mystery to the story. The reader is given alot of info about this guy, and then suddenly it is revealed that he was tricked. But since the big "reveal" happens to occur AFTER the story, there isn't any "aha" or "Wow". It's just sort of, "Oh, okay."

3 comments:

  1. Ok Rhonda this is my first time blogging. I debated reading that one the other night for my first short story because it sound similar to the Maltese Falcon. Guess I am glad I didn't sounds like you were disappointed. My short story I read left you hanging at the end to. Isn't a short story still suppose to tell you what ends up happening?

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  2. It's intriguing how the styles differ so much between the novels and various short stories our group has read. The novels will most likely have all loose ends neatly tied up by the end, where the short stories all seem to have various styles of mystery formats and endings. I think that very ability to twist the predictable format of the story is one of the reasons I have always really loved short stories.

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  3. Hi Rhonda -

    The "pot-luck" aspect of comparing the short story to the weekly reading has bit of a mystery for me too. Wish I was better read in the genre before trying to do that kind of comparison. I do find it helpful to read the novel first, then compare the short story as I am reading it. What approach do you guys use?

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