SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 12, 2021] “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk”
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 was the first story in this collection that I really didn’t like. I once wanted to read all of Kafka’s stories, but this one was so remarkably tedious, that it took me a few days to read it.
The premise is that the village has a singer named Josephine. And no one understands why her voice is so magical to them. So he’ll try to find out why.
And that’s it. For 24 pages.
How does he stretch it out so long?
First off, he wonders if her singing is actually piping (but there is no explanation as to what piping means here, so that whole line of thought it kind of nebulous).
By page 9 he’s still talking about how the people relate to Josephine. And still on page 14.
Will they miss her when she dies? They can’t say just yet.
Gah.
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