Short Takes, take two

"The Spinners," Michael Datcher

A lack of familial commitment in urban ghettoes seems to be the central theme of this essay, an epidemic begun in childhood and propogated in a vicious cycle of distrust and an inability to take responsibility. Datcher talks about the lack of fathers and how he and the boys who were his neighbors showed off in front of the neighborhood men, delighting in their attention but still unable to trust them, unable to get attached to them because, as Datcher says, "their personal lives screamed, "I'm lost toooooo." The way the essay simply ends, not trailing off but cutting off abruptly, is just one of the devices the author uses to illustrate his point.

"Winter," Larry Woiwode

This essay was a bit longer than some others that I have read, and in a dramatically different style. Woiwode tells the story of being snowed in at a North Dakota farmstead, with many digressions into such subjects as his son, the history of his farmstead, and the specifics of the furnace he installs. The point Woiwode comes to at the end of his essay, though, is an unexpected one about death and wanting to be remembered "by a row of words... or maybe not." The end of the essay resolves the conflict--the author will not freeze to death, he repairs his furnace--but the important questions has already been asked, if not answered. How does one accept death, if at all?

Short Takes

I opened Short Takes to a random page to begin this assignment and, by some chance, ended up with Lawrence Millman's "Bookless in Biak." Another random page, this time closer to the beginning of the  book, and Amy Tan's "Confessions" came into my life. Choosing which to respond to took exponentially longer than reading either of the two/three page essays; I had before me a light, funny essay about the search for a book to have if not to read and a dark, moving essay about parents and memory and the duality of one's will to live when faced with the possibility of dying. After conversations I'd had with a friend over the past few days I could relate better to the Tan essay, but I'd had enough of suicide and sadness for a while, so here is my reflection on being bookless.

Millman speaks of not necessarily reading books but rather the inherent security that comes of having books. Thus I collect books and read them once, occasionally three twenty times but mostly once and then leave them to sit on the shelf and collect dust but I do not need to read them to be glad that they are there if I ever do need them.

I'm not sure if I'm doing this assignment right, or if I'm trying to be faithful to a typo. Fifty words is not enough words to communicate anything of substance, save in poetry.