Low and flat – as was the rock, she supposed, that the first fish to venture gasping landward, all those millions of years ago, had struggled onto – the briefcase lay across the stranger’s knees in the thin, fluorescent light of the train carriage. It was not quite square with the man’s lap, resting a good ten degrees – roughly 0.17 radians, she quickly calculated – askew. The misalignment, seen both directly and reflected in the dark window of the train, transposed over hurtling fields and telegraph poles, bothered her a little. As for the briefcase itself, it was notable only for its consummate unremarkability; a brown gloss finish with a handle, she surmised – a briefcase so similar to the hundreds of others on that very train as to be rendered figuratively invisible. Literal invisibility, of course, remained beyond the capabilities of science and engineering. For now.
The man got off at the next stop, taking his briefcase with him.
For some reason, I quite enjoyed learning so much about the darned briefcase.
ReplyDeleteI did as well. The only parts that were truly ridiculous were the quick nods to irrelevant scientific/mathamatic/engineering junk.
ReplyDelete"She quickly calculated."
I kind of liked that. Is that bad?
ReplyDeleteNothing, nothing that involves numbers of any sort beyond two can possibly be Literary Fiction.
ReplyDeleteTime Traveler's Wife, much?
ReplyDeleteAlthough John is right--literary fiction can't handle numbers beyond two. No decimals. Readers are smart enough to make the connection between a random briefcase and nothing at all, but not smart enough to count.
Yeah, I liked this too. The woman came across as a weirdo-genius, and I'd read about someone like that.
ReplyDeleteIt's not necessarily bad writing - this could be done to show something about the woman's character. Maybe she is that annoying kind of person who notices obscure things, who likes to run random calculations in her head, and is bothered by angles (OCD?). I'm not saying she'd be a compellingly interesting character to write about, but I've read worse. :)
ReplyDeleteActually, I take that back. It can involve numbers if it's by Paul Auster.
ReplyDeleteNow that you've finished the week I think you should submit the whole thing to a "little magazine" under a fruity-sounding pseudonym. They only pay in copies, but what the hey.
I dunno, is it bad that i started my novel set in a desert with a description of a small, lush clearing with a bubbling brook in a forest, followed by the sentance "Certainly, such a place might be considered more pleasent that the harsh sun baked desert in which this story is actually set."?
ReplyDeleteMostly as a joke... :/
Hey, it's the kind of joke that Douglas Adams got lots of mileage out of.
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