Feedback Friday

meghanagain:

On Ways of Dealing With Tripping in Public, by Crispin Best.

This story is hilarious. It is a hilarious, hilarious story about someone’s father dying. I laughed roughly forty-eight times while reading this and sometimes I read a joke twice to see if it was still funny the second time, and 100% of the time, the joke was still funny. I am a huge jerk about written comedy. I think it is unsuccessful so much that it is disheartening sometimes to even attempt to find funny things so when someone just effortlessly whips out the laughs, like Crispin Best, here, it just kind of restores my faith in the whole enterprise. The skills is in the rhythm, and how simple it looks (“That was the end of my uncle.”) but how dead the humor would be without it.

I also really like the contrast between the zingy zingers and the lovely lines about the fire, and the death that the fire brought. I love the father’s obsession with better living, hints and tips that his children do not understand but still they can’t help but record them now. I even get the feeling that they still don’t entirely understand what their father was all about, which is fine and great and poignant, when you realize we all in a way could be like that father—about to be gobbled by flames before we have a chance to explain our platitudes.

I do wonder what the father thought about fire. Maybe he didn’t! But so much of the family died in a fire, I wonder if he had fire thoughts. Fire tips. or if he didn’t, why he didn’t. Or maybe it’s a family of people that doesn’t worry about the future.

Best of all, the ending kind of sneaks up on you. Which is funny considering that you know what happened from the first line. This is a trick that only short fiction can really accomplish, I think—it’s simple in that all it is is Something Happening, but complicated in its ways and means.

Crispin also has this blog which is currently a mix of things but mostly features stories that are in honor of every year from 1400 onwards. It sounds crazy but it’s true. And you can write a story if you have a year that you want to write on, and I would like to do that, I think, but first I have to commune with the years until one of them makes me love it particularly.

And finally, I don’t know much about Eyeshot, the place where I found this story, but clearly it has been around just maybe above or under my limited sightline like, FOREVER. Isn’t that always the way. Anyway, I’m glad I’m there now because the archives are top-notch. I keep reading stuff and going YESSSSSSSS.

This is Feedback Friday #1, people. Follow us over here, there will be more. And jump in whenever you like.