Apparently this is a big story with creative writing courses. From what I understand, Hempel employs the minimalist style also shaped by writers like Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and the polarizing writer/editor Gordon Lish. I've read some Carver as well, and overall the style engages me like a branding iron: quick, intense, bold, its presentation of pain upfront and stark.
I'm sure my soul hasn't ripened enough to appreciate all of what this style offers, but, with this story, I find myself reaching for the significance in lines that seem to insist upon it. The often mentioned, "I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence," reads like a koan to me. I can't get inside it. I try. "That's the point," says the hipster to this and anything I claim not to understand. What is the context? The protagonist is in the hospital, recovering from a car accident, denying the doctor's encouraging prognosis. "I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life," she says. "... a severed head that finishes a sentence" strikes me as so shocking, clever, and sexy that I cannot reach it. It slaps me back.
For some reason, the line that most struck me was this: "In my neighborhood there is a fellow who was a chemistry teacher until an explosion took his face and left what was left behind." The rhythmic echo of the final piece is so haunting: "... and left what was left behind." It also drapes a sad irony over the straight mention of harvesting (organs), and even the protagonist's quip, "Aren't we all, I thought, somebody's harvest?" Even the sharks harvest the abalone hunters harvesting abalone. Jim Jones harvesting souls. What harvested this man's face? And in the protagonist's retellings and revisions, he is not mentioned. It is the story's dark point, which seems to make all the rest seem hopeful, brighter. In another sad or grisly moment, at least there is purpose, or the protagonist can manufacture one; she can correct, adjust, retell - play. "... and left what was left behind" just gives up. It's the feeling of the walking dead that she herself flirts with - "As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it" - but that has no equal. "The rest of him is neatly dressed in dark suits and shined shoes." I can't bear this man. Can't handle him. His story is too sincere, tight against the rules that the protagonist draws out for her storytelling.
"I moved through the days..." speaks of someone bored and poised and granted the luxury of cleverness. "In my neighborhood..." is a reality check, a sacrifice that enables the rest of the story to stretch out and discover itself.
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