The Role of Elegy

I thought I'd get the specifics out of the way first, since they're the easiest to comment on.

Design a lake. Place it at the edge of a city. Think of it as a door. Then let yourself in.

This is excellent, each section is immensely crisp. It makes a very good hook - so good, in fact, I'd think about placing it right at the start. It's an instant draw.

A film made of frames shows the variations of hours that slide through time like a hand-wound camera slides film through a slot until it stops on the sprockets and holds.

This is also fascinating, the way the sentence wraps around itself - for some reason it reminds me of a Mobius Band. Veeeery clever.

Your sense of lack will too.

Oh, tremendous, truly.


General comments, well - what can I say? Brad, this is truly brutal. It hurts to read. I've gone through it a couple of times now and each time it's been like a pressure in my chest. The style you've chosen requires a very close reading of the text to try and gain any kind of understanding, but it's so densely packed with 'memory, sorrow and thorn' as my friend would put it that just getting from section to section is heartwrenching. You find yourself dreading what is to come in the next one, and yet completely unable to turn away.

I'll be honest, I can't critique this, it's beyond my skill to do so. I don't know quite how you've done it - you've written something that's hazy and leaves me quite confused, and yet the more I read through it the more it presents itself to me as a tightly wound, tightly focused piece of work virtually without a word out of place. I am at a loss.

All I know is that if this is a work of fiction, it is one of great invention put together with tremendous skill - if it is a recollection, the skill is no less, but you will have made me worry about you quite a bit. It's a piece of work that makes me want to give you a long hug, I think.

I can understand why there are no comments - it's rather intimidating, but it deserves a great deal of recognition. Take care of yourself, there is a bone-deep depth of sorrow [and something else, I think] present in this that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Brilliant, and frightening.