A stumpy shrivel glins his head slightly whilst addressing the Slugorian vice chancellor: "They travel between those large boxes in small boxes. The small boxes have wheels, but the big boxes have none and remain stationary."
The vice chancellor brawned briefly, sipped at Slugorian tea through his proboscis, then glinned over to the shrivel. "Really?" he said. "What do they call the boxes with wheels?"
"They call them cars, Your Eminence."
"And the big boxes without wheels?"
"Houses."
"How do these... creatures..."
"Earthlings."
"... how do they move between cars and houses?"
"Sometimes the cars enter an adjoining port for an extended period. We cannot observe what happens inside. But often a car will stop outside a house and make a loud beep. After the beep, an Earthling usually appears and moves from the house to the car."
"Is it a language?"
"We think it's a courting gesture and prelude to reproduction. There is more reproduction in cars of some varieties. They are rarer and bear emblems such as BMW and Jaguar."
"That reminds me of a joke," said the vice chancellor.
"Oh, please, do share it, Your Eminence," said the shrivel.
"Did you hear about the homeless snail? He was adopted by a family of slugs!"
And they both snortled proboscisly.[1]
[2013-06-07]
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The most impactful endings to any books I've ever read.
Two, in this order:
1
Truman Capote, "Dazzle," in Music for Chameleons.
2Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions.
In both those cases, I put the book down and just had to decompress. I won't tell you what the endings were in case you'd like to enjoy them yourself.
[2013-05-05]
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[1]
The genesis of an idea: Mrs Blystone (née Emerson), when she was teaching 8th grade English at Bethel Christian School, read a short story from the front of the class, a vignette, really, in which a creature from outer space was watching our cars go to and fro and wondered if the people inside were the guts.
I don't recall the author or the genre. It confused me at the time. I was trying to pick out which elements of the story identified it with a genre, for I had a keen interest in words very early, but for the life of me, I couldn't.
She read a different story each day as examples of different genres. Another involved a man who had trouble picking up coins with his fat fingers. Another was O Henry's "Gift of the Magi"; any story with a religious analogy in the title is a winner at a Christian school.
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