Saturday, August 11, 2012

On "The Hula War" by Paul Silverman (2751 words) ***

This story is full of wonderful turns of phrase and wonderful thoughts on turns of phrases. The author focuses on words that seem, at some level, to make no sense together--the soft and hard combined into one, like "flower headquarters" or "pineapple grenade."

This combination of soft and hard meets also in our characters and in their lives. Christine (the hula girl) and Patrick are couple. The former is soft in her girlish sort of way, the latter a wizened old soldier. Or so it appears. By story's end, it is the sensibilities of Patrick that are shaken and Christine is the resolute force lofting bombs. This is a piece on cultural alienation and cultural adoption, the ways in which we forge identity through our willed connections to the world around us. Read the story here at Moulin Review.

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