

If Nothing Else Happens, Read Clarice begins with a man disillusioned by television and deciding instead to dream up a fish. It's a skill he once learned from an old fisherman and the rest of the story recounts that lesson.
Dancing lightly with magical realism, I was apprehensive. It's not a form that I actively seek out and admittedly I feel stupid when I can't figure out what the heck it's all supposed to mean, which is quite often. Is it symbolic? Is it fantasy? I want to appreciate it for the creativity involved, but my logical side wants to ram a flaming Q-Tip into my brain. My logical side.
But in the absence of matches and cotton swabs, I instead filled in the logical gaps of Agualusa's story with assumptions. Dreaming up a fish is just using one's imagination. But more than that, it's using imagination as meditation. Drawing in bits of ones surroundings to help create an internal image of a perfect fish, detailed and real. Or else the old fisherman is crazy. Or crazy, but on to something.
It might help if I'd read Clarice. Clarice Lispector is a Brazilian author who I'd not heard of before, but fortunately I was also able to find one of her short stories online. (She's also a Sagittarius.) So, next Monday, I'll see if it all makes a little more sense. And if it doesn't, this week's story was pleasant enough as it was.
(Did you write a post for Short Story Monday? If so, please leave a link in the comments below!)
3 comments:
Sounds like an interesting story. I posted this week about Dennis Lehane's short stories. You can read it here
Not sure if this is a story I'm going to read. I'm also apprehensive about magical realism. I like to mostly understand what I'm reading.
I read Ponies this week
http://loniseye.blogspot.com/2011/05/ponies-by-kij-johnson.html
I haven't read this short story yet -- thanks for pointing it out. I read Agualusa's novella Book of Chameleons a while back and quite liked it!
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