#276 Mnemonics- Kurt Vonnegut

#276 Mnemonics- Kurt Vonnegut

This is just a small story about Alfred Moorehead, a new man. He has learned to unlock a gift for memory. His career has taken off and his life is almost perfect, but there is always one thing that stops us from being happy.

“Now since he has attended the company’s two-day Memory Clinic, names, facts, and numbers clung to his memory like burdocks to an Airdale. The clinic had, in fact, indirectly cleared up just about every major problem in his uncomplicated life, save one—his inability to break the ice with his secretary, Ellen, whom he had silently adored for two years.”

His mnemonic prowess was due to his ability to attach a fact or a figure in his head to the image of a beautiful movie star. This talent was put to the test one day by a long list of things to remember, and when he had to use the image of Ellen as well as the famous starlets, his fondness for her finally slips.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#118 Small Fry- Anton Chekhov

#118 Small Fry- Anton Chekhov

Two office clerks are working late on Easter. As they hear the Easter Bells ringing from the church and the crowds of happy passersby, they lament their sad lives.

“The need for a new, better life wrung his heart with unbearable anguish. He passionately longed to find himself suddenly in the street, to merge with the living crowd, to take part in the festivity…”

But they had chosen to work out of necessity “What’s there to be greedy about: two roubles in cash, plus a necktie…It’s need, not greed!”

As he kills some time writing a letter to his benefactor, “a man he hated and feared with all his soul,” he kills a cockroach he had saved only moments before. It made him feel good. With that his compassion had died, and the circle of life moved forward.

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26