Short Stories Half Blog

While reading through the table of contents for The Best American Short Stories 2008 Edition, I stumbled upon the short story "Puppy" by George Saunders. What originally drew me, was the title. Without even knowing the basis of the story, I already knew that at least a part of it revolved around one of my favorite animals. Whether this was figurative or literal was unknown to me until I actually skimmed through the story. I had not heard of the writer George Saunders, nor of any other work that he had written after looking through a brief list of his past works. From the initial paragraph, it is evident that his writing is very contemporary. The entire first paragraph which is close to 20 lines on The New Yorker website is one long continuous sentence sprinkled with a variety of punctuation such as parenthetical, comas, dashes, and an exclamation point to conclude the lengthy thought. There are a few words that are repeated for emphasis such as "autumnal sun", "brilliance", and "haunted house". Saunders uses parenthetical throughout the story to introduce a different voice's opinion. This is really contemporary from what I am normally used to in a story. I'm not sure whether this will be the story and author combination that I will use for my essay, but an open mind to a story like this couldn't hurt.