Yesterday, knowing this story would be up here, I very untypically didn’t wait to read it in my paper copy of the magazine (which usually gets to me on Thursday afternoons, tho sometimes Friday, occasionally Saturday or even Monday, and a couple of times a year not until I call and have them resend).

I hesitate to post the first comment, I don’t like to publish any spoilers, which I may, and this may be all I have to say about this story.

As I read, I anticipated recognizing the reason I was reading the story, other than to follow the suspense of the danger Tom ,”his wife”, their unexpected “little one”, and their cabin are in, how Tom attempts to deal with it, and to finally learn the outcome.

Long into the story, we get to know vaguely that there is some distance between Tom and his wife, which puts their focus on the little one, such that she (the little one) is “their safe point” and all that matters “to each of them separately”.

My question throughout was: why don’t they leave, get out of there, especially if they care so much about the little one? Apparently only rationalizations: he (Tom) can take care of it.

Great description of the setting and the technical aspects of the circumstances. I later listened to the author’s reading, which he did well, with an effective affective urgency…, but I fell asleep on it. Today I read the author interview, which spells out his intentions, and made the story a bit more interesting than it had been for me. That’s about all from me, probably. I’m not inclined to give it much more time. I feel a bit guilty. I’m missing sonething. I imagine others will find a lot more in it than I did, which I’ll be interested to read.

While I enjoyed this story, I’m not entirely sure I have a lot to say about it. I also found the description of the storm quite evocative, and I liked the underlying stress from the storm, the electrical wires, the tree, and the family situation. One of my favorite examples is this:

Again, the ground seemed to lose its certainty. An illusion — just the wind, pushing through the cluster of bramble at the foot of the trees — exaggerated as the fluid wake of adrenaline went through him.

Then he saw that the ground was actually moving. The earth around the pines lifting. It seemed to swell and exhale deep within the briers. To pulse as the wind swayed the high trees.

In the crepuscular light, each tree trunk seemed to be growing from some breathing, harbored animal.

But, also, I feel I’m missing something. Not to say it cannot be just what I found it to be, but if that’s the case it does feel a bit like an exercise rather than a fully developed story.

I have not read the interview yet, but I’m going to do that soon to see what I can see.

By the way, Eddie, you asked in the other thread how to make the block quote. You have to use html code for block quotes. Let me see if I can type it here in a way that shows the html code:

Pulse

In my previous comment, I wasn’t heeding, or was simply ignoring, the view I’ve advocated for assessing or criticizing a story. I’ve said that we should go in without expectations. I do tend to expect certain characteristics in the “modern short story”, which is what I’ve expect New Yorker stories to be. Central to that is that it won’t be “just a story”, by which I may mean just a plot (especially formulaic) and two-dimensional (or maybe stereotypical) characters. I expect more than a crisis and tension leading to a happy or tragic ending—“which will it be?”

So (according to me) I should have accepted the story as a well described situation, proceeding much like a ‘true life” episode, in which interpersonal relations are not the issue. Instead I kept waiting for that aspect to be developed. Had I not been “expecting” that, it would have come as a surprise revelation. Instead, it just seemed too little too late. On the other hand, he *did tell us early on that “the little one” was unexpected—sort of a hint: I noticed it, but it wasn’t enough for me.

Put it this way: Had I been the author’s friend, reading the story before submission, I might have told him, “You know, it’s truly well written…, but I would like it better if you built the interpersonal relationship into the story from the beginning, rather than waiting until nearly the end and then merely telling us in a few words what it was.”

We are left to imagine the outcome… Maybe that’s the best choice: A happy ending would let us all off the hook. What context are we offered that would make a tragic ending more meaningful than an uncertain one? Maybe the author is offering a cautionary tale, without being fatalistic?

Trevor: Thanks, I’ll check that out.