SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 2, 2021] “Lend Me Your Character”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
This story was probably my favorite of the collection.
It was meta- and funny with a feminist slant and a perverse kind of sexuality throughout.
The story is a conversation between two writers. The man has written a less than savory story while the woman has written something with more literary merit. The man wants to know if he can borrow her lead character for his next story.
She reluctantly agrees.
But when she sees how he used the character–she gives herself to him “after a single moist glance,” she is disgusted by him.
As the story continues, their relationship metaphorically grows closer and they speak of the characters as if they are speaking about themselves. It’s unclear whether the relationship is real of idealized, and the cleverness is really great.
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