{"id":11833,"date":"2010-01-11T10:36:41","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T14:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11833"},"modified":"2016-06-06T14:30:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T18:30:58","slug":"t-coraghessan-boyle-a-death-in-kitchawank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/01\/11\/t-coraghessan-boyle-a-death-in-kitchawank\/","title":{"rendered":"T. Coraghessan Boyle: “A Death in Kitchawank”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A Death in Kitchawank\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby T. Coraghessan Boyle<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the January 18, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span>\r\nClick here<\/a> to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker<\/em> webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
Besides the great short fiction, there is another benefit to reading fiction in The New Yorker<\/em>:\u00a0you get a chance to sample the writing of someone you otherwise would never read.\u00a0I have never read a book or short story by T.C. Boyle.\u00a0Frankly, there has never even been the temptation to read one of his books, except for World\u2019s End<\/em>, and that\u2019s just because it won the PEN\/Faulkner.\u00a0From what I\u2019ve heard of his work, it doesn\u2019t appeal to me.<\/p>\n
But then I get the chance to try it here with \u201cA Death in Kitchawank.\u201d\u00a0I\u2019m afraid I still feel no need to read his work.<\/p>\n
The arch of the story takes place over a number of years in a small lake-side community that has to import its hundreds of billions of grains of sand every few years after it has blown away into the grass. That is a nice visual, and it is particularly nice as it also describes the passage of time in this piece.\u00a0Slow and\u00a0steady, and always taking things with it. Not only does time cause the characters to drift away as they grow, but we know from the title that somewhere a death is going to happen.<\/p>\n
The piece is written well, but to me it was too slow, bogged down by details I didn\u2019t care about. I got really tired while reading it \u2014 and I\u2019m pretty sure that was caused by the story and not by anything else. It felt, not unpleasantly at times, that I was sitting in the warm sun on a lakeside, drifting away \u2014 but that\u2019s not what I\u2019m looking for when I read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “A Death in Kitchawank.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"T. Coraghessan Boyle: \"A Death in Kitchawank\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[94,306],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-11833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-yorker-fiction","category-t-coraghessan-boyle","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/A-Death-in-Kitchawank.jpg?fit=690%2C777&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-34R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18394,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11833\/revisions\/18394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11833"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}