Dennis Haritou: Readers have the bad rep of being navel-gazers, like those New England Transcendentalists who would walk into a tree while they were reading about the history of ancient Rome. The pot roast is burning or little Fido needs to go out for a walk but you have your nose in a book and are oblivious. (I wish.)
But I think that reading keeps you honest. You can read a great short story like this one, for example, and there you are bracketed. The world and its burgeoning quota of animating life isn’t just all about your personal agenda anymore. It’s about all of us.
William Kittredge, in “Stone Boat”, has written 5-page short Story of the Week for Narrative Magazine that I’m not saying is perfect only because…how the hell could I know what’s perfect. The setting is the rain forest country of the Pacific Northwest near the Willamette Valley in the 1940′s. This is Ursula LeGuin and Jonathan Evison territory. I’ve been there and legends seem to seep out of the ground in that place. There is a cattle rancher, an Indian with attitude and a boy along with a herd of escaping cattle who dream of getting back to the orange-scented plains of Mexico…a country that they will never see again and also a country that a boy who has never been there can chain his dreams around so he can keep them from slipping away.
The boy has lost his grandfather to suicide and his father to the battlefields of World War II. But each of these three characters have their own personal survival story to tell. It’s all about: “The idea is not to be a fool who can’t live his life.” But you have to remember the small stuff also like how to keep your legs wide in the stirrups if you’re riding in pursuit of cattle into that rain forest. That’s so if your horse falls out from under you, you can get clear before you get your ass crushed.
I mentioned “bracketing” your experience, or getting a perspective on it. That happens right at the end of this story in a dazzling way…what a master of the short story form Mr. Kittredge is! The rules of Three Guys discussions forbid me from giving away too much but hell, I take my caution back, this short story is perfect.
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