Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Last Hours of Pompeii

A short story by Marc Nieson
Reviewed by Max A. Gordon

Setting: an apartment living room complete with TV/VCR
Protagonist: a father/ex-husband
Narrator: first person – “Dad”
Tense: present

Imagine being trapped and isolated, unable even to reach out and touch those most important to you. Imagine the impotence forced on you by having to watch as disaster devours your loved ones. Imagine, now, that you, yourself, have had a hand in creating the disaster.

These are themes touched upon in this short story. The narrator participates in and facilitates his young daughter’s obsession with watching disaster videos, specifically (as the title suggests) those involving volcanic catastrophe. He realizes that her obsession is distancing her from him on an emotional level, closing her off from their relationship rather than reinforcing it, as he intended. The more obsessed she becomes with the images, the more distant she becomes, and the more the images become a prophecy of the future of their relationship.

Reading this story is watching a slow-motion train wreck, both fascinating and horrifying, as the reader begins to realize the dangers that surround all of us with regard to the ones we love, posed by our inability to change the progress of our isolation. The cautionary warning offered here is to turn off the television, the internet, or whatever else we may be allowing to separate us from our loved ones, and to talk with them or play with them, or even to argue with them, but to somehow engage with them and, thereby, avoid the heartbreak of finding ourselves encased in ash, preserved forever in the unfulfilled act of touching one another’s lives.

At ~4000 words, this is a great read with very little to criticize. The inkwell is full!

ePublisher: Carve Magazine, Fall 2008 / Volume IX, Issue III
Carve describes itself: “Carve Magazine (or Carvezine) is an online literary magazine that publishes literary short fiction on a quarterly basis.”

Format: I read online, using a browser.

ePublisher: Carve Magazine, Fall 2008 / Volume IX, Issue III
Carve describes itself: “Carve Magazine (or Carvezine) is an online literary magazine that publishes literary short fiction on a quarterly basis.”

Format: I read online, using a browser.

0 comments:

Post a Comment