Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea
by CD Rose
2024
Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea is a recent collection of literary short stories by CD Rose. Overall this collection was fine. Rose is clearly trying to push on the boundaries of the short story form, sometimes in ways that employ an identifiable gimmick, sometimes just by working against established expectations. The first story in the collection, "Ognosia," named for an essay by Olga Tokarczuk seems to take, in turn, the perspectives of almost a dozen different people in a bar one evening, a kaleidoscopic effect I don't think I've ever seen before. In several other stories Rose tries alternating paragraphs of two very different plots or styles, but I never found this braiding or interlacing very successful any of the times he tried it.
The best story was "Proud Woman, Pearl Necklace, Twenty Years," which shows us a single class session from the perspective of the teacher of a class for adult English as a Foreign Language students. He writes the title phrases on the board, asks the students to play 20 Questions about Guy de Maupassant's story "The Necklace", then retells it to them and helps them express their reactions.
Most of my other favorites were probably mostly the gimmick stories. "I'm in Love with a German Film Star" is a list of songs that the narrator associates with a specific actress, possibly fictional, identified only as 'Magda,' whom he has a crush on, and a vignette about each song explaining the association.
"What Remains of Claire Blanck" is a series of mostly empty pages, with the notations for footnotes placed as though at the end of specific sentences, and the notes themselves at the foot of each page. The notes are a mix of identifying the role of a sentence in the non-existent story, explaining some of the supposed imagery (always something white or blank), and playful touches like praising the way something is written.
"A Brief History of the Short Story" is actually three very short stories. In the first, an old French man spends his morning in a cafe and reads a newspaper story about America. In the second, a minor Soviet bureaucrat goes to buy vodka before some friends come over, and happens to read a story about the old Frenchman. In the third, a young American author reads the Russian story while hanging out in a coffee shop, then sees a newspaper with the story the Frenchman read. I liked this one, but thought it would've been more successful if the third part reenacted the newspaper story instead of just featuring it as a prop.
Near the beginning, there are three stories in a row that supposedly give non-fictional accounts of minor figures involved in the early days of photography. Near the end, there's a trio of stories, including the collection title, about famous people having a day off. "St Augustine Checks His Twitter Feed" is the best of these three.
The best story was "Proud Woman, Pearl Necklace, Twenty Years," which shows us a single class session from the perspective of the teacher of a class for adult English as a Foreign Language students. He writes the title phrases on the board, asks the students to play 20 Questions about Guy de Maupassant's story "The Necklace", then retells it to them and helps them express their reactions.
Most of my other favorites were probably mostly the gimmick stories. "I'm in Love with a German Film Star" is a list of songs that the narrator associates with a specific actress, possibly fictional, identified only as 'Magda,' whom he has a crush on, and a vignette about each song explaining the association.
"What Remains of Claire Blanck" is a series of mostly empty pages, with the notations for footnotes placed as though at the end of specific sentences, and the notes themselves at the foot of each page. The notes are a mix of identifying the role of a sentence in the non-existent story, explaining some of the supposed imagery (always something white or blank), and playful touches like praising the way something is written.
"A Brief History of the Short Story" is actually three very short stories. In the first, an old French man spends his morning in a cafe and reads a newspaper story about America. In the second, a minor Soviet bureaucrat goes to buy vodka before some friends come over, and happens to read a story about the old Frenchman. In the third, a young American author reads the Russian story while hanging out in a coffee shop, then sees a newspaper with the story the Frenchman read. I liked this one, but thought it would've been more successful if the third part reenacted the newspaper story instead of just featuring it as a prop.
Near the beginning, there are three stories in a row that supposedly give non-fictional accounts of minor figures involved in the early days of photography. Near the end, there's a trio of stories, including the collection title, about famous people having a day off. "St Augustine Checks His Twitter Feed" is the best of these three.
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