>I enjoyed "Junior Jackson's Parable" by James Hannah
enough... I felt a
>little guilty about laughing as much as I did at
Junior's bad luck,
>because I'm not sure Hannah intended for the story to
be
>funny. But that's the way it struck me.
I thought Hannah had a good ear for the way someone would
tell his story.
There is humor, set up by a kind of ironic separation of his
situation from
the reader, who is presumably more in control of what happens
in his/her
life. Chance can and does prevail in such peoples'
lives.
>The Kellerman story was well-written, but I didn't
like it. Too bleak for
>my tastes.
Didn't mind the bleakness, but found the kid's narrative
curiously flat. I
think I see the problem facing Kellerman: present one of
those girls who
drift into situations, whatever provides for the joy of the
moment, a
character who has little forethought. (The murder is quite
improvised, for
instance.) The problem is that such a character would not be,
in and of
herself, very interesting. This one certainly wasn't. She's
the sum of
what happened.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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