I am a fan of Neil Gaiman. If you’ve been around this blog for any length of time, that much is obvious. But I am a fan of him because of his work, not a fan of his work simply because it is written by Neil Gaiman. That is an important distinction. There is (gasp!) work that Neil Gaiman has done that I am not a fan of, for one reason or another. His collaboration with Michael Reaves, Interworld, comes to mind. As do some of the short stories in his collections Angels and Visitations, Smoke and Mirrors, and this one too.
While I do not understand it when anyone says that Neil Gaiman is a “bad writer” (a position I find indefensible) I do understand completely when people say that they cannot connect with him or his stories. I understand that when I read some of his short stories that do nothing for me. I understand it even more when his short stories make me angry (you’ll have to wait for a coming week to find out about that). This week’s selections are far from my favorites. I will readily admit that in my normal re-readings of Fragile Things I often skip these altogether. I am truly hoping I am a rare exception in this and that some of you liked these and will talk them up. If not, please know that the collection does turn around. There are great stories to come. And if you did like these, don’t be shy, tell us all why that is the case.
Do I have to remind you that there might be spoilers ahead? Yes I do, because I want to be a conscientious blogger.
And here we go.
- Going Wodwo
This is the week where I echo some of what others have said the past two weeks about the poems encountered in each section: this one did not do anything for me. (And how odd is it that out of the three groupings of 4 stories, each has contained a poem?).
I admit to not being very familiar with the Green Man mythos and while I can appreciate some of the imagery of rebirth and of going back to nature, it does not touch me in the way a poem must if you are to consider it a cherished gem.
I do like this stanza very much though:
“I’ll find a tree as wide as ten fat men
Clear water rilling over its grey roots
Berries I’ll find, and crabapples and nuts,
And call it home.”
If I was to make my home in a tree, or if I were to become a tree, that wouldn’t be a bad one to aspire to. Not bad at all.
I appreciate what Gaiman was going for. I am a big fan of trees and the woods in general and Gaiman and others have done wonderful things with trees and tree/nature spirits in their work.
This one fell flat for me.
- Bitter Grounds
There are parts of this story that I find so compelling, particularly the idea of a man just checking out on life and then stepping into the life of another person when presented with the opportunity to do so. The boldness and bravado the man shows in going to present an anthropological speech at a conference when he has no real understanding of the subject is mind blowing, mostly because I cannot see myself doing that. I’ve certainly been put in awkward situations where I’ve had to wing it in front of a crowd and generally I feel I handle it pretty well. But to do that on purpose? It just isn’t me.
Another thing that fascinates me about this story is speculating what happened to the anthropology professor when the man leaves him to run back to the hotel to retrieve his wallet. He comes back to the site of the broken down car and the car has had its window smashed, the professor’s belongings are strewn about, and both he and the tow truck driver are gone. The moment comes and goes so fast that it is almost glossed over, but it gives me that same eerie, creepy feeling that I get when reading Closing Time and the boys go into the playhouse and don’t come back out. What happened? That alone makes this one freaky story.
But in the end I don’t like this story either, and that lies entirely with the fact that the ending is way too enigmatic for me. I contrast this to Closing Time, wherein we all have different ideas about what might have happened but a basic ending is still there: the story ends with something creepy happening to the kids, the story tellers walk away and get a somewhat cryptic revelation but it isn’t one that is completely “out there”. Bitter Grounds has an “out there” ending, in my opinion. Stories like that are very dissatisfying to me. Thankfully this was a short story and not a novel. I’ve read several novels that end that way and I am rarely satisfied with them.
The references to zombies and the Coffee Girls really went over my head. The odd and eerie characters the protagonist meets in New Orleans are probably a reference to something that I should get, but I just don’t.
- Other People
Other people is a great story, and a terrible one at the same time. It is possibly one of the most awful interpretations of hell that I’ve ever read. It is a highly effective story, well told with nary a wasted word. This is one I am not fond of for very different reasons than the first two. I’m not fond of it because I don’t like the subject matter at all. I acknowledge Gaiman’s skill with this one, he really does deliver an effective, jarring story that draws you up short and makes you think about life and the decisions you make. For me it is a story that I only wanted to read once and it was hard to get myself to listen to it again this time.
Chilling, disturbing, well-written.
Not for me.
- Keepsakes and Treasures
Confession time: I read this when the book was first published. I listened to it when I bought the audio version a year later. I’ve never listened to it nor read it again. And I couldn’t do it this time either. A few minutes in and I decided I had no need to experience this story again, even for the sake of this discussion.
On occasion Neil Gaiman writes what I can only describe as “adult” stories, and I define that as stories with decidedly adult content. Not mature content, necessarily, but adult content. With rare exceptions (there was “adult” stuff in both Sandman and American Gods), I hate these stories. And to be honest I didn’t like most of those parts of Sandman and American Gods, but the bulk of the story was so amazing that it minimized those scenes. In Gaiman’s adult stories sex is often realized as a dirty, dark, dangerous, abusive thing. These stories are uncomfortable and the pay off for me is never so strong that I feel like it is worth it. I wonder how a person who writes something as beautiful as The Graveyard Book or Stardust or (short story-wise) Chivalry or A Study in Emerald or Instructions can write stuff so filled with unnecessary gratuitous sex and violence. And not just gratuitous, but disturbing.
I’ve read enough Gaiman to know that he isn’t doing it to be gratuitous, he does have a point and he probably does an amazing job making that point with the use of such emotionally-charged imagery. But I just don’t like it. I get nothing worthwhile from stories like Keepsakes and Treasures.
_______________________
So there we have it. I imagine this is shocking to those who know how much I am fond of Neil Gaiman. This is my least favorite section of Fragile Things and I’m actually thankful to get past it.
The good news is I am very fond of three of the four stories for next week. The stories for next week’s discussion are:
Good Boys Deserve Favors
The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch
Strange Little Girls
Harlequin Valentine
As always, leave your link below so we can check it out. Can’t wait to see what everyone else thought of this week’s stories.
It’s interesting to see your reaction to these stories, Carl. I have to say I had a somewhat different reaction to these.
In particular, I really liked Bitter Grounds despite its strangeness. It just had this atmospheric content and so much outlandishness combined with the mundane that it really appealed to me.
With Gaiman rather poking fun on how much you need to know about a subject to get by at a conference being part of the overall fun. I agree, the ending is not clear, but even at the very start the narrator mentions how he’s already dead in a way and the coffee girls coming for him actually felt like a natural conclusion to the story.
—
Other People in my opinion was a cleverly structured story and an effective one in delivering the message. However, I think it didn’t make my favorites for the opposite reason than it didn’t make yours. From your review, it sounds like the story has too much negative impact during the reading. For me, I felt it just didn’t have enough of a punch. Would reconsidering the decisions you made in life with all the consequences of them really be that awful?
—
I do agree on Keepsakes and Treasures. It’s surprisingly different from other Gaiman stories with its rather adult theme. I was a little shocked I guess, but I am amenable to it if I felt it served a useful purpose in the story. Instead I was rather left with a feeling of “What was that about?” at the end. If there was a point, I thoroughly missed it.
Still lots of other Gaiman stories to enjoy 🙂
I was truly hoping people would have opposite reactions to me this week simply so we all weren’t complaining about the stories, LOL!
Gaiman has written a few other stories like Keepsakes and Treasures and I never like them. I don’t understand his need to flex his creative muscles in those directions, but given all the output of his that I love I am not going to complain too loudly.
I think if you really and truly saw the actual short and long term consequences of your actions that it would indeed be agonizing. If you could see and understand how much you hurt others with your words and actions, if you could see the paths that people’s lives took because of your actions (especially big ones like adultery, abuse, etc.) and even the life-long effects of words and also neglect, I do think it would be maddening. I think the psychological torture would be much worse than the physical.
I don’t “hate” Bitter Grounds, so I do agree with your points and you are right in that the beginning and end do form some kind of bookend to the piece. It is a story that frustrates me because there were brilliant moments in it and yet it falls so short for me in its final execution.
“Would reconsidering the decisions you made in life with all the consequences of them really be that awful?”
I was thinking this, too, as I read it, but while I don’t think I would be as affected by looking at my life, and neither would most people, this is a guy who was glad some chick walked out of his life so she wouldn’t know he was sleeping with her sister. I’m guessing there’s a lot of other stuff in his life that’s going to be terrible to look at objectively. Like the demon itself, yes?
Possibly, although I do think we would be surprised by how much what we do does affect other people even when we think our lives are mostly filled with good decisions. What would make it even more potentially agonizing (and this isn’t where the story goes) is if we were shown what our lives could have been if we had made different decisions!
And I agree, I suspect this is a guy who made most of his decisions based on his own selfishness and own desires and that he hurt many along the way without caring much about it.
Especially true in light of the fact that we can only make decisions based upon what we know. Some things that are done with the best of intentions can have very negative consequences…
That being said, I agree with you entirely on “Keepsakes and Treasures,” with an added corollary. I want to pick up all of the characters out of the story and drop them into the hell depicted in “Other People.”
As I said on your site, the characters in Keepsakes and Treasures would probably get off on the happenings in Other People! But I do agree!
Interesting. If I was to choose a stanza from Going Wodwo it would be the one after the one you chose:
I’ll tell the wind my name, and no one else.
True madness takes us or leaves us in the wood
half-way through all our lives. My skin will be
my face now.
I didn’t like one of the two remaining stories. The other two were okay, but not up there with my favourites from this collection.
I love trees so much that that stanza in Going Wodwo just came alive for me. It is the kind of tree, size-wise, that you could imagine building a Swiss Family Robinson house in and living in the beauty of nature.
Look forward to checking out your thoughts.
LOL, Carl, I didn’t like Going Wodwo for precisely the opposite reason – that I *do* know about the Green Man mythos, and I don’t think it’s successful on those grounds. Gaiman clearly gets it, he just doesn’t put it well here, and it shows up in the collection it was originally published in as a very lame contribution, in my opinion.
I liked the character in Bitter Grounds blagging his way through the conference very much – but I have to go to a lot of conferences, and it just appealed to my rather iconoclastic sense of humour. I’m still struggling to know exactly what happened, and I think there was a time when so much uncertainty would have driven me demented, but I’m getting quite good at living with it…and I’m afraid the Coffee Girls are going to remain a mystery as all the references to them on the interwebz seem to circle back to Gaiman.
I absolutely agree with you on Other People! In answer to Maria’s question, I think how agonising it was might depend on what you’d done in life, but don’t we all have inflated ideas of self-worth? Once the demon had begun questioning that, then the rest follows inexorably.
I do and I don’t agree on Keepsakes and Treasures, and that may be to do with approaching it fresh from hearing Gaiman talk about his approach to his characters and knowing Smith and Mr Alice already from Monarch in the Glen, which is now included in the new edition of American Gods – so it wasn’t an isolated, nasty story, but the history of two individuals. It reminded me, I was rather surprised to find, of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, and I would dearly love to know whether Gaiman has read that.
That’s funny, but I can certainly see that. And your idea of it being a “lame contribution” echos frustrations I have had sometimes when I see Neil Gaiman’s name on a collection. I by and large really enjoy his poems and love having them in a collection of HIS work. But when you wait long periods of time for Gaiman output and you see an anthology with his name on it and open it to find just a brief poem, the disappointment is palpable, even when the poem is great.
I loved the conference part of Bitter Grounds. I’ve had to give public presentations too and often feel that even when I am prepared I do my best work if I just BS my way through it. I love the advice given about how to deflect questions and sound academic doing so. And there really are some engaging parts to the story where you find yourself hooked in and wondering just what is going to happen. I just find the ending to be a let-down after all the rest.
I know the Smith and Alice characters too from both AG and from reading Monarch of the Glen time and time again and I think they are good nasty characters that work well in the context of those stories. As a stand alone story I just don’t get anything out of these stories where people are used in the sex trade industry, where sexual abuse and sexual perversity are part of what the whole story is supposed to be about without there being, in my opinion, anything redeeming about the story. There are ways to present nasty things, even subject matter like this, in a way that doesn’t feel like guilty voyeurism. On occasion when Neil writes like this they feel like the kind of “literature” that would be submitted to a collection of Playboy or Penthouse literature collections and they just aren’t up my alley at all.
I’d certainly agree in general about stories that make you feel like a voyeur, I usually avoid them assiduously – putting aside my comments about the characters appearing elsewhere and taking it as a standalone story, I think I have to say that you are right, and if I hadn’t had any context I would have simply disliked it. In fact, in my first reading of FG, it was Other People that stopped me – it was unpleasant enough that when I finished it, I put the book aside for later. And yes, I don’t much like those bits of AG either. And when I said it reminded me of the Alexandria Quartet, it was of the bits in that I didn’t like – but, as in AG, it was part of a much greater sweep of story, which justified its inclusion.
I’m often a bit apologetic about my own squeamishness and wonder if I’m just not facing up to how nasty the world can be, but on the whole, I’m not sure that the short story is the place to put that right!
And I agree very much with your point that this story is an examination of characters who have a place in a larger universe and should in part be judged as such, which I did not do. I generally pride myself on doing so and often make justification for liking stories because I am looking at them that way. So thanks for pointing that out.
I still don’t like it, but more because of those negative things and not because it would work better potentially as part of the AG story.
I am not familiar with the Alexandra Quartet at all.
I have, of late, been apologetic myself, often feeling as if I have to go out of my way to say, “I’m not a prude” when the reality is that I just have certain standards of what I feel comfortable with and what I don’t. And those standards are certainly not firm, they are flexible based on the circumstances but I, nor you or anyone else, should have to feel apologetic about the things we like or dislike.
I’m intrigued by your reaction to the ending of “Bitter Grounds”, but I probably shouldn’t be surprised — I liked it so much better because it was so completely unresolved, whereas in “Closing Time” I felt like the ending was a failed attempt at resolution. I’d rather be able to invent from scratch my own rationalization for an ambiguous ending than be told where to start, I guess. But that car! Was the guy a zombie? Did he eat the tow-truck guy after a knock-down drag-out fight? Was he some sort of spirit that leaves behind wallets and hotel confirmations? Did the narrator just make up this whole thing? I don’t know why, but I love having all of these questions!
And, yeah, “Keepsakes and Treasures”, ew. Ew ew gross. My strategy was to take the obvious symbolism and then just think about that instead of the squicky. Ew.
I don’t mind a story that is unresolved, provided it maintains some level of good story telling and, for me, Bitter Grounds just doesn’t quite make it. Closing Time does, as does the story within October in the Chair. So it looks like we both agree that sometimes authors make “failed attempts at a resolution” and in Gaiman’s case we just see that with different stories.
I am so intrigued by the whole thing that happened with the car, the tow truck driver, etc. I often wonder if the tow truck driver did something to the guy or what. And this time I actually started doubting the narrator somewhat, wondering if perhaps he himself did something to the guy. That is the kind of unresolved, and in this case creepy, stuff that I like. I just felt much of the “coffee girls” part of the story was largely unsupported and so it is an unsatisfactory end because it is just too ambiguous.
I’m with you on Keepsakes and Treasures. 🙂
In my post about Keepsakes and treasures I said I didn’t like it, that it felt dark and depressing simply to be dark and depressing, but now that it has been recalled to me that these are characters that show up in other works of Gaiman I have to reconsider that opinion. It strikes me that in order to have truly evil characters you have to know about them and what they are capable of, so a character study like Keepsakes is really valuable for the author.
And for the reader to provide that information that yes these characters are evil and nasty and disturbing. So when it ties in to something larger it works. As a standalone story I don’t think it does.
Also, someone has just pointed out that the first line in Bitter Grounds refers to the fact that the narrator counts himself as dead. I had forgotten that (doh!), makes the whole zombie plot a lot more tied in.
The British Harper Collins edition is missing a few stories, one of which is next week’s “The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch” so I think I’ll have to see if I can find it anywhere online. It sounds vaguely familiar, so maybe I have read it somewhere….
I agree with you in part about Keepsakes and Treasures, and yet many authors (and Gaiman at times) are able to write disturbing, nasty characters without resorting to sensationalized dark sex and violence. It is that which to me feels unnecessary and lessens my respect for the work.
I see your point in Bitter Grounds, but at the same time it shouldn’t take someone else pointing out to you or any reader about the first part of the story to make it make more sense. The story should give you enough that by the end you recall those details. I’m probably just being overly critical though, but given my gushing affection for Gaiman, I suppose overreacting on the other end of the spectrum at least gives me balance.
I vaguely recalled there being a difference in the UK vs. American editions, which came to mind when you had mentioned that your copy didn’t have as many stories. I do hope you can track it down online, it is one of the stories that I really enjoy.
I just noticed that my edition doesn’t have that story either, so if you do find it anywhere online I would be interested in hearing where!
Oh, Carl! I’m sorry that this week didn’t really strike a chord with you at all – at least not a good one! You asked for someone to feel differently and, for the most part, it sounds like it’s my turn to fit that bill! With the exception of “Bitter Grounds”, which I didn’t (and still don’t) get, like, at all. I mean, at least in terms of what was REALLY happening. However, I ADORED “Going Wodwo” as well as “Other People”. I think that that the conversation here in the comments kind of embodies what I loved most about it – that the idea of having to face the essential truth of everything you’ve done, and the way it’s affected other people, is truly a horrifying concept, worthy of hell.
As it pertains to Mr. Smith and Mr. Alice, I actually kind of liked this story. No…not liked…appreciated. That’s the way I put it in my post. While I also got the heebie-jeebies when thinking about the actual plot content of the story, I’ve got to give credit and praise to Neil Gaiman for creating a character of the most horrid ilk, who I still find myself sympathizing with. I mean, when you think of all of the horrible things that Mr. Smith had to go through in his younger life, and the fact that Mr. Alice is the only person to make him feel like part of a family…it’s perhaps a bit easier to comprehend, if not understand. Then again, I haven’t read the other story(ies?) featuring these two characters, so maybe my opinion will change.
All in all, I thought your thoughts were fascinating!
Oh no worries Chelsea, I love so much of what Gaiman does that to have a few stories which elicit negative reactions is a nice change of pace! I might make you all sick with my praise of him otherwise. LOL!
I don’t disagree with your thoughts about Gaiman’s abilities when it comes to the story of Mr. Smith and Mr. Alice. He does do a good job of creating sympathetic evil characters, which makes any story much more rich. I’m just getting to a point in my life where I don’t want to read about people’s mothers being used sexually, about underage boys being used sexually, etc. I don’t need those details to know that a person has had a hard life, etc. I don’t find it entertaining, and I read for entertainment. And I’ve said other places that I deal with sexual abuse, etc. in my work life and so I can do without it in my fiction.
I think there are beautiful parts of Going Wodwo but as an overall work it just doesn’t do it for me like the other two poems in the collection. I like the overall idea but am not familiar enough with the mythos that it addresses to get more out of it as I did with The Hidden Chamber because of my familiarity with Bluebeard Stories.
And I do like Other People in one sense. I do think it is a very, very effective story. It just isn’t one that I ever feel like reading a second time. Whatever message it needs to convey is one that I guess I feel cognizant of anyway and so now that I’ve read it three or four times I just don’t feel the need to anymore.
I find yours fascinating as well and am sincerely glad that most people aren’t ready to chuck the collection in the bin after this week’s stories. That is what I was hoping for.
I am quite sure that this will be my least favorite section of the book then, too, although you’ll see that I did find redeeming qualities in all the stories (which is why I love Neil Gaiman, I guess). However, I did love Going Wodwo.
I hope that is the case Emily. I too find redeeming qualities in Gaiman’s stories. There are even parts of effective story telling in Keepsakes and Treasures, but I just don’t like it.
This was actually the first poem that I really liked in this collection! I am not really familiar with the Green Man mythos either so I guess that’s something else for me to learn about — something I frequently find myself doing with all of Gaiman’s work!
And I agree that Bitter Grounds had elements that I liked but overall I wasn’t satisfied with it. I think I might have preferred it if it had just been about stepping into someone else’s shoes and didn’t go into the black magic and voodoo.
I did like Other People and thought it was really well written. I guess that the subject matter didn’t make me uncomfortable because it could totally be a metaphor — probably also because I don’t believe in hell.
And, like you, I feel like I got nothing worthwhile from Keepsakes and, after my second reading of it, plan to never read it again. I never really thought about Gaiman’s portrayals of sex through his works but they aren’t loving/healthy for the most part, are they (the beginning of American Gods being the prime example)? Stardust is the only exception that I can think of right now.
I can’t wait for something a bit brighter in next week’s reading!
I’m glad about the poem Kristen. I honestly would like it better if I knew more about the green man mythos, and someday I want to read that whole collection and then maybe I’ll appreciate this one more.
I’m with you in that I would have liked Bitter Grounds better had it just been the story without all the magical elements.
Other People is really well done but just isn’t pleasant, regardless of one’s beliefs, so while it makes thought-provoking reading the first time you read it, it isn’t one I feel any compulsion to read ever again.
I’m trying to think of any other positive sexual situations in Gaiman’s works and I’m not sure I can think of any either. There aren’t really sexual situations in Neverwhere that I can recall. There certainly aren’t any in the YA books. I think Anansi Boys might have some positive, or at the very least completely normal, sexual situations in it.
I feel like you and I are definitely on the same wavelength here, Carl. I didn’t particularly like any of the readings from this week.
In Bitter Grounds, I felt as if Gaiman was trying to mix too many horror elements in his story (the disappearing Anthro professor, the creepy New Orleans vibe, the zombies), and so at the end, I wasn’t sure what was supposed to have happened to the narrator. I feel like there are several stories within Bitter Grounds that might be more successful if they stood on their own. But, unfortunately, that’s not my choice to make. 🙂
I also questioned Gaiman’s use of violence and sex in Keepsakes and Treasures. There just seemed like a lot that was unnecessary. Sure, we can have a character that is violent and nasty, but does he have to be a pedophile too? Sure, there can be an ultra rich character who commits nefarious deeds, but does he also have to be a sex addict? I dunno. I guess I could take one or two of these traits, but to have them all thrown into one story was a little overwhelming.
I’m sorry for the both of us then, Anna! LOL! It was a disappointing week of short stories. I am actually glad I listened to them a few weeks ago right after a few of the other ones I like. I am now at the point where I have to start listening to this next week’s stories, so it will be fun now to keep my reading/listening right in line with where we are in our group reading.
I’m with you all the way in your assessment of Bitter Grounds. I hadn’t thought about it so much that way before reading your and Kristen’s comments, but you are right, there is a lot going on and I would have liked the story with less genre-elements in it.
I’m never entertained my violent sex crimes, especially when that in any way has to do with underage kids and so stories like Keepsakes and Treasures just make me sick irregardless of the strong elements of the story or the skill of the storyteller.
After trying force myself to write about this week’s readings, I decided not to. I was not a fan of the stories. As one with PTSD from sexual assault, I found Keepsakes and Treasures horrible. Maybe this attests to Gaiman’s skill as a writer, I was suitably horrified by the actions of Mr. Alice and Smith, but it dredged up some very painful memories and led to a few nightmares that night. Also, I don’t see the point of the story. Nothing is resolved. Nothing ends. It seems like meaningless, indulgent violence.
On a happier note, the Going Wodwo poem made me smile because it reminds me of one of my dad’s favorite sayings; instead of answering a question with a “yes”, he always says “does a wild man pee in the woods?”
I’d say out of the group Bitter Grounds was okay, but certainly not my favorite story.
I’m sorry that you aren’t writing about them on one hand because I obviously am not a fan of this week’s offerings and so I am enjoying reading the reasons other people feel the same way, as well as the reasons for the opposite.
Your thoughts on Keepsakes and Treasures echo mine, even without my having the experiences you had. That kind of storytelling, particular from him, is pointless. He can do the same thing as or more effectively without resorting to being disgusting. I wish he would grow out of this kind of writing. I feel that it is beneath him at this stage of his career.
That is a great story about your dad. I’m going to have to use that line!!!
I was just sort of ‘meh’ about these stories. I am enjoying the next batch much better!
Me too, they certainly weren’t my favorite.
I feel the same way that you do about Gaiman’s Keepsakes and Treasures-style stories. They never sit well with me. I’m a huge fan of his work, but sometimes it does feel like those “adult” bit are written by a different author, or at least a different aspect of his personality.
I also think that when you love a particular author it’s good, in fact it is important, to still be critical of their work. If you blindly love all of it, you’re certainly not appreciating it in the way you should.
Well said, Melissa. I do agree. It is one thing too if an author writes only novels and isn’t a very prolific writer. But with someone like Gaiman who has written a bunch of short stories in addition to his novels and comics, it only makes sense that a person wouldn’t love it all. My estimation of Gaiman only grows over the years and that I think helps me be more fairly critical of the stuff of his that I personally do not like. And stories like “Keepsakes and Treasures” are far up on the do not like list.
I would argue that the point of the sex in Keepsakes is not for the sake of sex, but to explore something bizarre and disturbing in the narrator’s behavior. Funnily enough, I liked this week’s stories much more than last week’s. I didn’t really “get” the New Orleans stuff either, but there’s a hint of some sort of Creole witch-doctery something going on that interested me and made me want to read some Zora Neale Hurston.