r e a d i n g

Last month I decided to read every story written by Alice Munro, beginning with "Walker Brothers Cowboy" and ending with "Messenger," the epilogue to The View from Castle Rock. As often happens, I found myself beginning at the end of the project when the title story of The View from Castle Rock won the vote for our February selection on A Curious Singularity.

Here's my interim report on the story:

While reading "The View from Castle Rock," an old adage about short stories came to mind, namely the one coined by Edgar Allan Poe in his essay, "The Philosophy of Composition." Poe maintained that the requisite length of a short story is "the limit of a single sitting." Although I have not finished reading Munro's story yet--I'm almost there--I have to disagree with Poe's assertion that, "if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and every thing like totality is at once destroyed." This story is more of a novella in terms of length, but the "unity of impression" that Poe insists on hovers distinctly in my imagination even while "the affairs of the world" keep me from returning to "The View from Castle Rock." For me, so far, that impression is a sense of promise amidst the most unpromising circumstances, with a dash of foreboding thrown in to build suspense.

(Cross-posted at A Curious Singularity, Mar 2, 08)