#504 Wings- Lorrie Moore

#504 Wings- Lorrie Moore

This story is the perfect depiction of how the world sees generation-x and probably a little how generation-x views itself—or maybe just how I view it. KC and Dench are in a long term relationship, in their late thirties and are going nowhere. Neither is their music career. Their last tour has ended and they are renting an old house and KC is doing some mid life re-evaluating.

“She spent a decade barking up the wrong tree.”

“She loved Dench. She was helpless before the whole emotional project of him. But it didn’t preclude hating him and everything around him, which included herself, the sound of her own voice—and the sound of his which was worse.”

While Dench is staying home probably having similar thoughts, KC befriends an old man and finds peace and truth in his presence. She likes the old-fashioned attention he gives her, like the parents she missed. She struggles with what to do from here on out.

The story is a good one, it hits on the right somber notes, not too powerful and not too delicate. The imagery is great, little detail like the old man complaining about age then flashing a smile with “Sepia teeth”…a color usually describing an old photograph.

And of all the movies, books, songs, and random conversations I’ve had over the years, never before has there been a better description of a Generation-X relationship than this one sentence:

“I don’t know what I want…and I don’t know what you’re doing.” AMAZING!!!

As with a lot of Moore’s stories I find this has a little too much “extra” material. There are pages of stuff that would be great for development in a novel, but I find extemporaneous in shorter fiction—but that is just a personal preference. I also get stopped when I come to a phrase like this:

“Patience was a chemical. Derived from a mineral. Derived from a star. She felt she had a bit of it. But it was not always fruitful. Or fruitful with the right fruit.”

It’s nice wordplay, great musical cadence, but it seems like phrase just dropped into the story for its form, and to me feels un-integrated in the flow of the piece. It happens a few times per story where I stop to re-read a passage and wonder why it’s there; They’re not unpleasant, just out of place. It would be like walking in a secluded forest and suddenly coming across a string quarter. That would be a beautiful sight, just not the sight you set out to find...and the rest of your hike you find it hard to enjoy the natural beauty of the forest because you have the string quarter stuck in your mind.

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35