Monday, January 19, 2009

James Salter's Last Night

I was just listening to a New Yorker Fiction podcast while doing many other things - writing the previous post, playing online scrabble stuff, but the short story that they were reading, Last Night by James Salter, was so incredibly powerful, even in the snatches I heard, that my heart started beating much faster. I was just commenting on the stories I was critiquing about how a reader is liable to stop reading a short story at any point, if they aren't gripped, if they are bored, confused. Well, this is the amazing illustration of that point: I couldn't not listen to this story, it is so gripping that it tore me away from all distractions. Stunning. Click here to listen to the podcast.

2 comments:

TOM VOWLER said...

That's some story. The moment, that moment, is why I read, why I write. Thanks for the link, Tania.

Mel u said...

Thanks so much for this link-I just read an article on the author in the Paris review!