In praise of whimsy…
The great thing about short stories is that they don’t have to contain a ‘big idea’ like a novel – they can be slight and whimsical, a funny aside rather than a profound statement on life, a not-entirely-serious speculation of the ‘wouldn’t it be funny if…’ variety. Stories like Poe’s ‘The Spectacles’ (where a short-sighted man marries his great-great-grandmother), H. G. Wells’s ‘The Truth about Pyecraft’ (a slimming aid causes Pyecraft to float) and Graham Greene’s ‘Alas, Poor Maling’ (a rumbling stomach is mistaken for an air raid siren), are whimsical to the point of silliness, but an important breather for the reader of a short story collection. Somerset Maugham knew that for every ‘Rain’ you needed a few stories like ‘The Luncheon’ or ‘The Poet’.
Anyway, I’ve just added the first three pages of a story called ‘A Mystery Solved’ to the short story section. I’d like to think it fits into this whimsical tradition…
Read A Mystery Solved [warning: adult content]
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