Critique #148 — Lance Levens #2
Kevin Andrew Murphy July 6th, 2007
As he pointed to the canvas-covered sign on the flag pole above us, Mr. Saud tongued a sugar-coated pecan atop his Hickory Snickory Mint-a-Mocha, our flavor of the month at Fred’s Frozen Igloo: Gas and Chow. He was head of the Applied Arts Department at One Round Tech, where he taught Ash to make the sign. His black Lebanese hair was slicked back like Rudolph Valentino’s and he always wore gold—rings, bracelet, necklace. No one had ever seen his eyes. Ash said she had never once seen them. They were hidden behind red-tinted sunglasses.
“Ashley,†he said, in his funny high-pitched voice, “there is your masterpiece. I must say I am getting now officially excited.â€
Ash clapped her hands together and pecked me on the cheek. My girl does get emotional. She has long brown hair and a little chip missing from her front tooth. She had on a breezy skirt the wind was whipping up clear to her neck.
“Pheus, I’ve never unveiled a major opus!â€
I’m sorry, but it took me several tries to make it past “tongued a sugar-coated pecan atop his Hickory Snickory Mint-a-Mocha.” You seem to be going for some kind of satire here, but the deliberately campy, over-the-top style doesn’t work for me.
Way too much description versus action for the beginning of a story. I was especially put off by the description “black Lebanese hair” and the repetition concerning his eyes. IMO, by saying
instead of just “Ash had never once seen his eyes” I think you reduce the impact of the idea.
I would not turn the page.
Seaboe
I’m with Seaboe on the repetition, but I’m oddly curious. I can’t put my finger on why, but I think this story is pulling me along. Count me in for going to page 2.
Hi,
I must say I found it difficult to read..especially the first line, which was quite long and complicated. I would recommend simplifying it into the most important elements — it could be off putting to someone who likes things clear. I also think it confuses the POV - not that you have strayed — it just appears confusing.
Does he wear glasses with those side bits because you can see peoples eyes down the side of glasses? Perhaps they are wrap around glasses? It’s a bold statement with flaws unless you address them.
What is “Pheus”? What does it mean? Is it a local expression? I haven’t heard it.
Like Ivy, I would read on, not because of the situation but the character of Mr. Saud interests me..reminds me of the guy from the Chocolate Factory, but camper!
Probably this won’t come as a shock, but I’m not hooked. The first paragraph is an infodump, and the first sentence needs to be re-worked in order to be easily understandable. The second half of the third paragraph is another infodump. Worse, most of this information doesn’t even seem relevant. Does the chip in Ash’s tooth really play a huge role in this short story? Try to work the details in as you go along instead of stopping everything to tell us stuff…and dump the unimportant details. Or just cut to something like:
Okay, who is Pheus? I assume he hasn’t been introduced yet, but is standing around there, too. You will note that I left in your “Fred’s Frozen Igloo: Gas and Chow” since I know how you like brand names. I’d still prefer “my gas station” or “the dirty little gas stop” or something that gives me more of a mental image of the place.
Actually, even my cut version wasn’t very good due to a “whose POV” issue. That could be fixed with the “my gas station” in the first paragraph or establishing how many people are standing there from the start. Whatever. It’s not likely that you’ll take my suggestions, anyway.
If ‘I’ is Pheus in this story, then the confusion is why a daughter (’my girl’) is calling her father by name instead of ‘Daddy’ or ‘Dad’ or Pa’ or whatever. I’m envisioning a child, here, especially with the chipped-tooth bit and how she’s acting. It suddenly occurred to me, though, that you might mean ‘girlfriend.’ If so, this is to let you know of my confusion on the topic so that you can tell me that there is no problem and then refuse to change it.
Just as a side point, “opus” refers to a literary or musical accomplishment. It’s not used in the visual arts.
I got ‘girl’ = ‘girlfriend’ although I agree it’s a confusing (read don’t do it!) way of saying it.
I didn’t realise ‘Pheus’ was a name. I thought it was a mix of ‘Jesus!’ or ‘Phew!’
Silly me.
Adam
Lance,
I think this is a good example where less would be more. I would suggest if you were to cut out the first paragraph and place it a little later in the story you may have something there.
>“Ashley,†he said, in his funny high-pitched voice, “there is your masterpiece. I must say I am getting now officially excited.â€
>Ash clapped her hands together and pecked me on the cheek. My girl does get emotional. She has long brown hair and a little chip missing from her front tooth. She had on a breezy skirt the wind was whipping up clear to her neck.
>“Pheus, I’ve never unveiled a major opus!â€
If that is what you would have submitted I would have said I would turn the page. The first paragraph is toomuch to soak in right away, in my opinion.
Frank
Adam, the main reason I realized that “Pheus” was a name was because this character was in Lance’s previous submission. I had to go back to that submission to make sure, though, but it also confused me in this context.
Debbie,
I remembered the use from the first passage but I still thought it was a local profanity! Its use mid-sentence.. like:
Come here, Jesus, got him twice in the butt. ( I assumed the punctuation was off.)
Well for some reason it never occurred to me it was a name! I’ve never heard of it before. Is it the same story? Or is it a common name there?
Adam
I, at least, have never heard Pheus used before as a name. Hmm. Maybe I’m wrong, and it is a profanity… Haven’t heard it used as a profanity, either, though. *shrug*
I feel quite mean writing this, but here goes:
Ditto everything above. I had 4 immediate reactions as I was reading:
Use of ‘tongued’ is awkward, though the whole sentence is ghastly.
‘No one had ever seen his eyes. Ash said she had never once seen them’ - the second sentence is redundant, though you could merge the two if the fact that Ash has never seen his eyes is important.
I too baulked at ‘black Lebanese hair’.
It took me a while to decide that Pheus must be a name - I too thought it was a synonym for something like ‘golly!’. Until ‘My girl does get emotional’, I’d thought Ash was the POV character.
I think there’s a good premise in there somewhere, but it’s bogged down in decidedly odd prose at the moment. I’m afraid I wouldn’t turn the page.
Hope this helped :).
You lost me at the first sentence. And it seems to me that much of the information was presented out of order. It gives the feeling of a camera jumping from one shot to the next, and never giving us a clear context. The fact that he was wearing sunglasses should’ve been mentioned before the fact that Ash had never seen his eyes.
I couldn’t figure out why Ash would kiss the POV character, since the praise was coming from Mr. Saud. All in all, this opening was confusing, and I wouldn’t turn the page.