About Oceanside by Daniel Woodrell

            (Here is Oceanside by Daniel Woodrell)

            As always, there’s a link up there if you’re interested because there will be spoilers.

            Here is a question: Is it something about writing about war that makes you want to buck traditional story telling techniques? Seriously. Think about Slaughterhouse 5, To the White Sea, The Things They Carried (the short story), Catch-22, The Thin Red Line. I’m not saying more war stories are necessarily more likely to try things differently, but you have to admit there are a lot that do.

            Take this one, for example. There’s not a story here, per se, in the obvious sense anyway in which a protagonist attempts obstacles to accomplish some goal. We just follow this boy (almost certainly under 18, right?) around Oceanside for a while. He sees some things and does some things (actually tries to do some things), and then it’s over.

            What I don’t think is that this is a bad thing. You can go ahead and break the rules, we all know that. The only rock hard requirement is that we don’t regret reading your story. And I didn’t. I just didn’t care the only thing close to a dramatic question is whether this kid would get anywhere with overalls girl, and anybody would classify that part of the story as an aside at the very least, no more or less important than any of the other parts.

            But why? Why didn’t I care? That’s usually hard to pinpoint exactly. It helps that Woodrell’s a good writer and that this is a short story and not anything else. More than that though, the message in the picture he painted just felt important and very real, and more quote unquote story would probably only have interfered.