Wednesday, August 01, 2007

The Birds Poised to Fly

I read a great little short story with that title by Patricia Highsmith yesterday.

A man called Don has written to his lover in Europe to propose marriage and checks his mailbox with mounting distress each morning to see if she has replied. This situation impairs his reason just enough to drive the flawed decision-making that ensues. It is a perfect marriage of concept and story. Unlike say The Beach.

At the gallery last night TC suggested playfully that Borges might have made a better go of that particular conceit. And then we moved on to try to think of other novels or movies where the concept is truly superb, but begins to lose effectiveness rapidly as more and more 'story' (and pyschology) is added. We could only think of The Matrix...

Anybody have any other suggestions?

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