SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 16, 2021] “The Dwarf in the Television Set”
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 made me a little uncomfortable because of the whole “dwarf in the television set” aspect. Manguel describes it as a fantastic farce, but the whole thing felt weird and unfunny. Maybe I would have thought it was funny if I read it when it came out.
The dwarf lives inside a gigantic color TV. The TV is owned by Gastão (who owns a department store with many TVs).
Gastão and the dwarf met in an acting class (like the Seinfeld episode that came out three years earlier). The dwarf says he has to live in the the TV, but there’s no explanation as to why.
Then an employee from Gastão’s store arrives. It transpires that he is there to ask Gastão for advice about his frigid wife. But the dwarf makes his presence known and the employee flees.
I guess it is a farce, just not a very funny one, and with a rather violent ending.
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