Sunday, December 23, 2018

Riddle by Thomas McGuane Review


The short story Riddle by Thomas McGuane was published in the respectable magazine The New Yorker. The audio of the story was recorded for the rubric 'The Writer's Voice'.  


The title 'Riddle' is very suitable for this story. The idea of this narration is not clear. The author described a sequence of events which occurred to him. He recollected the time of being in a small  American town. The narrator witnessed there a scene of meeting the old man and the boy when the boy called out to the old man “Jack! Hey, Jack!,”. The author wrote, "I don't know if I can put my finger on it after all this time, but the excitement or joy, or whatever it was that these two experienced when they saw each other, has never left me.".


Next part of the story took place in that town many years later. The narrator saw an arguing man and woman. He went out from his car, his car was stolen, and another woman drove him to town. He had a conversation with this woman and in the police station. Ooh! So many actions which were not coherent!


After reading this story, I tried to find on the Internet the comments about the plot of this story. Other readers appreciated the literary style but they also faced the riddle of the main idea of this story. The vivid descriptions of everyday routine and the mystery of vague meaning made this story quite memorable.


This is the link to the story.

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