A Special Day
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend A certain NY magazine asked me to write a story for their 9/11 Fifth Anniversary issue. The assignment was: imagine that 9/11/2001 never happened. They rejected my story as “sentimental.” I plead guilty. The action here is on 9/11/2006. A perfectly ordinary day, but special to some…. Product details and pricing info |
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2 Customer Reviews Posted
- My Problems With this Story
- I didn't really like this. It's very sappy, a too bright look at a world that will never be. People simply don't talk like this, don't often seek community like this. It tries too hard for Norman Rockwell, and I don't think Mr. Bisson is effective in his writing of dialouge especially that of a five year old. I don't want to say I feel ripped off, it was only two quarters, but I expected something more than wishes. I'm sorry, Mr. Bisson, this place, that elevator, will simply never be.
- 2006-10-05, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- And you thought ascending an elevator was a pointless activity, hm?
- Well, you'd be wrong with that broad assessment, bucko. It sure as you-know-what isn't!
Author Terry Bisson does a smooth and handy job of painting a clearer picture (if somewhat halcyon-ed, but he gets A-for-effort and ten-plus points for trying) of the way the world should really function between people in this sweet little number of his entitled, A SPECIAL DAY.
To tell you truth--since it's possible I lie to you in other places as part of these many reviews I make--if I'd have had my way in this Short, I'd have forwarded my nominations for at least a number of other macabre and off-beat socially-outcast type characters in this mixed crew of seeming fish out of water, suspended 78 floors in the skyscraper-ed sky in the Big Apple.
Gosh, you know...you've got to love how someone can pack so much into such a short amount of space! Bisson's content is better than chunk light tuna (although I don't know about that succulent white meat in the peel back tin--there's more protein in there than...).
I've heard many people flippantly say how Shorts are easy to write...how they're cheesy one-offs for wannabe writers who don't have the brass spheres and the "sitsfleisch" to actually pound out the opening sequence, and then some, of the Great American Novel.
Phooey! I don't buy a word of it!
"Short-shorts" (and their close relative, "short-short-shorts," or Shorts-to-the-Power-of-Three) are quite the complex little beasties. Hey, you over there in the office cubicle, munching away on your Jonagold or the Granny Smith apple, or worse, eating your little cardboard box of MSG-sprayed Chinese takeout while hardly having a chance to leave your station for fear of missing that all-hail so important stock quote...***you*** think it's easy to jimmy in a beginning-a middle-and an end sequence within the high-pressured close-quartered confines of eleven (11) pages?!
Well try again, my friend.
Rather, we should be turning to the likes of authors like Mr. Bisson for some pointers on the finer aspects of the slimming craft.
A SPECIAL DAY is as good as anything I've read at the Shorts program already, and I recommend the read. If it affects you as it did me, then we indeed have hope for a less confrontational tomorrow.
Perhaps one day we can establish small islands of peace in places were people can just get along.
If they can do it in New York, they can do it anywhere. Like Frankie sang, "If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere. It's up to you, New York, New York!"
-- ADM in Prague - 2006-09-14, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
