I thought it was very well-written. Would love to see the same story and characters condensed into a single scene where they dance around what they want to say based on the three or four run-ins and happenings they shared throughout this story.
Life commodified? Different ways of reading this. Both worlds they each inhabit are about capital. They live in a city defined by capitalism that embodies the terror of loss. Errors. Risk in a place too dangerous to lose.
But in the end…..terrible isolation and loneliness.
I really enjoyed this story. I think you captured the experience of yearning for someone, and yet not being able to reach out quite well. And the last two lines of dialogue they said to each other in the gallery,
"It wasn't me,"
"It wasn't me, either."
said so much by saying none of it at all, like the literary version of painting with negative space. Well done.
A slice of New York's landscape of alienation. The city's financial culture is at the forefront in this short story: fragmentation, market dynamics, lack of intimacy and fear of loss/death.
I thought it was very well-written. Would love to see the same story and characters condensed into a single scene where they dance around what they want to say based on the three or four run-ins and happenings they shared throughout this story.
Life commodified? Different ways of reading this. Both worlds they each inhabit are about capital. They live in a city defined by capitalism that embodies the terror of loss. Errors. Risk in a place too dangerous to lose.
But in the end…..terrible isolation and loneliness.
O. Henry characters struggling for attachment in slippery, shiny and smooth Plastic Land. It's very easy to ache right along with them.
I’d forgotten about O. Henry. Very important author in the New York of the early 20th Century.
Beautifully relatable—nicely done, Michael.
I really enjoyed this story. I think you captured the experience of yearning for someone, and yet not being able to reach out quite well. And the last two lines of dialogue they said to each other in the gallery,
"It wasn't me,"
"It wasn't me, either."
said so much by saying none of it at all, like the literary version of painting with negative space. Well done.
Thank you, B. H.
A slice of New York's landscape of alienation. The city's financial culture is at the forefront in this short story: fragmentation, market dynamics, lack of intimacy and fear of loss/death.