Past, Perfect, Present Tense

So continuing the reading of Past, Perfect, Present Tense, I have come to fall in love with short stories.  It still baffles me that the author can include plot, characterization, diction, syntax, voice, perspective, themes, imagery in such little amount of words. And putting into use the new diction and syntax vocab we learned, I now know that the title’s asyndeton(because it is leaving out the conjunction ‘and’). Am I right? J Anyways, one of the things I like  is that  I can pick up the book during those 10 minutes in class when I have nothing to do, read a short story, close the book, set it down on the table, and then just think about all I was able to gather from those 10 pages. It’s great. Normally, for me, reading is a start-stop activity. I rarely sit down for a couple hours and read continuously. So, by the time, I find my page in a 400 page novel and remember all the things that happened, it’s time to put the book away.

There was one short story, out of the 5 I’ve read that really stuck with me. It’s called The Electric Summer. It’s describing a young girl (Geneva) living in 1904, when St. Louis decided to host the centennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. She’s the epitome of the “Classic Country Girl”. She isn’t very worldly, she’s rather isolated. Contrarily, she has an aunt, named Elvera, who drives an automobile, which is quite unique for an early 20^th century woman. So her aunt is that eclectic, oddball that all family members kind of frown upon. Never the less, Aunt Elvera asks Geneva if she would like to accompany her to the Fair. Geneva really wants to go, but her parents turn Elvera’s invite down. Granted, Geneva’s kind of crushed. But then… that same night, Geneva and her mom are sitting on the porch and her mom surprises her. They will be going to the Fair. Together.

Being from a little farm, Geneva and her mother are scared to be going to such a crowded and big place, but once they get there, they are blown away. Here, Richard Peck does an amazing job offering imagery and description to really emphasize the setting and make it ‘pop’. One of my favorite lines in the book is when Richard Peck writes about the nighttime feel of the Fair, with its dancing people, blaring instruments, and colorful lights, "...the fountains played to this music and the thunder of the fireworks.” There are two main parts in this sentence that I'd like to address. Firstly, the fountain. Fountains by nature are just beautiful, with it's clear, flowing water spurting up into the air with majestic loops. But this quote makes the scene that much more ethereal by describing how the fountain not only skyrockets upward, but that it does so to the beat of the music playing. Secondly, the fireworks were described as "thundering" which speaks to the effervescent, brazen, immodest milieu of the fair- a direct contrast to the mundane, secluded, self-conscious life- style Geneva lives when she is on her farm. This emphasizes how big of a change in environment Geneva is experiencing, and how big of an impact this Fair is having on her perspective. In general, this line spoke to me because I can almost hear the blaring music and exploding fireworks. It totally sounds like summer.

Here's some snippets of the Fair: