Dennis Haritou: JR had a story published in an online literary magazine and he asked me to take a look at it. I decided to write a brief review on Three Guys and then invite interested parties to read the story via the link below.
This story is about a chance encounter on a Manhattan street between a man and a woman that, it turns out, have some history. The POV of the guy is what we hear and he is plainly obsessed with his old acquaintance Mary, who he hasn’t seen in quite a while. But “plainly” is not an accurate word since right off we are treated to a methodical description of Mary’s appearance that is so sensual that it would make the god Eros proud. And there is a nice observation in the science of dalliance when the guy realizes that this random encounter will end just as quickly as it began unless he makes a segue to another encounter, this one planned rather than aleatory.
What follows is a meeting in a bar with what passes for the usual crowd in this man’s life and also a visit to Mary’s apartment; the consequences of which I am disinclined to reveal. Throughout these scenes, the intricate conversations about the NY worlds of high style photography and television and the descriptions of the settings have a fervid intensity that reminded me of Hitchcocks Vertigo and made me wish that I was a lot cooler than I am.
Some back story follows which helps us to understand why these two rare species of fish keep circling each other. I ended up understanding Mary better than I understood the narrator and felt that there was more behind his eyes than JR was willing or able to tell me in the format of an even relatively long short story. I thought of this story as a sodden seed mired in the mud of intense prose. Maybe if the seed got soaked and swollen enough, it would burst and take root and become a novel. There is certainly enough heat here for it to germinate.
Recent Comments