https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/sgthing.html
This is one of Carver's most beloved short stories and probably his saddest. A mother picks out a birthday cake for her young son on Saturday, and on Monday he is the victim of a hit and run. He doesn't die immediately and Carver gets those hours of waiting across by putting the reader through them along with the parents. The doctor comes in, assuring them their boy will wake up. He doesn't. Meanwhile the baker keeps calling to ask when they will pick up the cake, each call getting angrier on his part. A gem of a story but hard to read if you have any experience with the death of a child.
11 comments:
This does sound powerful, Patti. I can only imagine how hard it is to lose a child...
Yes, I'm a big fan of Carver.
Currently reading Carol Shields's first collection, VARIOUS MIRACLES. So far, it's all good, but no one story has jumped out at me to the extent where I said, "Wow."
Philip K. Dick's early stories, in SECOND VARIETY, are often pretty dark. "Exhibit Piece" (1954) was adapted in the recent ELECTRIC DREAMS series, though the original story is far superior, IMHO. In fact, it could easily have been a TWILIGHT ZONE episode. 200 years in the future, George Miller is an expert on the mid-20th Century. He's in charge of a museum exhibit showing a "typical" home of the period, but then he starts hearing sounds indicating that someone is inside the piece, so goes in to check it out. If you can't see Rod Serling setting this one up, you've never seen TTZ.
Which one, Jeff? Not sure I have read that collection.
Yes, Margot, so many of us have.
This is a good story, a re-write of "The Bath" which treated the same subject and for which Carver received much backlash as "The Bath" is written in cold minimalism. Many readers found it to be unsympathetic, which prompted Carver to do the re-write.
I have one for this week: https://casualdebris.blogspot.com/2024/05/casual-shorts-isfdb-top-short-fiction.html
Thanks,
Frank
"Exhibit Piece" was adapted - loosely - into "Real Life" with Anna Paquin & Terrence Howard. It's now a Virtual Reality story and really not like the original at all.
I'm a fan of Carver's stories, too. Critics made fun of his minimalist style, but I found many of Carver's stories to be powerful like Margot did.
I have only read a few stories by Carver and did not like those. I will try again with another collection and I will read this story online. It does sound very sad.
He is probably the most influential short story writer in the US over the last forty years. In the doc about him on PBS, writing instructors said for years every story their students handed in sounded like him. But he is not for everyone. And his early stories (when he was an alcoholic) and his later stories are different. Also his editor Gordon Lish had a big hand in shaping his writing.
Just read a very good story by Carol Shields - "Fragility." A couple are flying from Toronto to Vancouver, where he is being transferred for work. They have a few days to find a new house to buy. There are a few references (the husband is the narrator) about their son, who has obviously died after a short, yes fragile, life. It's all just very nicely handled. In the end they fly home, and he realizes they will have to sell their house, and again, he thinks of his son.
I'll have to look for that collection.
Small favors, today. Let's see how it goes.
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