#155 Incarnations of Burned Children- David Foster Wallace
“If you’ve never wept and want to, have a child.”
What a horrifying title! As it suggests, this story is about
a child burned, or scalded really bad by a pot of boiling water. Mother is overwhelmed
trying to both cook and hold the child, Father is busy outside fixing the
tenant's front door.
Once again DFW pushes the boundaries of what short fiction
can be. This isn’t a vintage DFW weighty novelette. In fact this story is just
a single paragraph…a single paragraph three pages long of course. These are the
thoughts of the Father as he attempts to understand the situation, calm his
child’s pain, quiet the voice blaming the mother and angry at his own failure
to see the obvious.
Notable Passages: “Daddy bent in and was face to face with
the child on the table’s checked edge repeating the fact that he was here and
trying to calm the toddler’s cries but still the child’s breathlessly screamed,
a high pure shining sound that could stop his heart.”
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