SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: December 9, 2022] “Night Flight”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
Like we always do at this time: the Short Story Advent Calendar is back for 2022. We had such a great time last year working with our first-ever guest editor, the one and only Alberto Manguel. This year, however, we’re bringing things back to basics. No overarching theme or format, just 25 top-class short stories, selected in-house, by some of the best writers in North America and beyond. It’s December 9. Diane Schoemperlen, author of Forms of Devotion, remembers not to pit stop at the Lake of Indifference.
This story is accompanied by collages that go with the story.
It is told in eight parts (with eight pictures). I wonder if you could see the pictures in a larger (and color) format if they would be more impactful.
I didn’t really get a lot out of this story, but I feel like the author is right in this comment about her story:
A curious combination of text and image that meanders and circles back on itself again and again with repeated motifs including knitting, maps, New York City, patience, fortitude, and darkness. I like to think that each reading of the story will reveal something new as the words and the collages intersect and intertwine on various levels.
In part two she takes a night flight to New York City. Part three discusses the New York Public Library.
Parts four and five discuss maps. As with many stories that I don’t like in total, in parts, I found this wonderful. Like these lines: “Maps are so noncommittal. This can either be infuriating or liberating.”
And
“Think of everything that you have ever lost, by accident or on purpose…. They are still back there somewhere, like trail of bread crumbs stretched out behind each and every one of us.”
But the ending is just not an ending.
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