Delphinus's Bookshelf

The part that bugs me is 'did she even knew.' I would let it slide on other dudes but I expect greatest things from Delphinus.

This typo is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker (me). It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Its metabolic processes are now history! It's off the webpage! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the codex invisible! THIS IS AN EX-TYPO!

This is excellent! Superb at the least. Exemplary of your great character as a magnificent writer. You are an artisan of literature. The splendor of such a momentous occasion is palpable to say little. I could use it to sweeten my tea even. Perhaps I could pour it on some grapefruit and enjoy a delicious snack in your honor. I digress! You utterance of beauty! WE HAVE AN ARTIST!

...however, you wrote "it's mortal coil."

I like the idea a lot, and you did it well. The only critique I have is that I do think that the following sentence:

"I," she said, her voice hoarse, "am trying to work."

should be rephrased:

"I," she said hoarsely, "am trying to work."

Or at least something in that manner. Because right now that sentence is a bit of a pronoun attack (I, she, her).

Personally I think it was a partial success. The prose was fine, but the structure, which was the whole point of the piece, didn't quite work out. The whole point of a cyclic structure is to re-contextualise earlier events in light of the end of the piece. Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses this structure to great effect in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and won a Nobel Prize for doing it in a suitably hip, postmodern way. The recontextualisation in this piece was a little bit weak, and the events themselves didn't quite reflect the theme (eternal recurrence - I am a pretentious twat) effectively enough for their whole nature to be altered.

New short story up tonight, tomorrow, or Monday night, depending on when I finish it. This one is inspired by my people-watching.

EDIT: Oh, or you can be James Joyce and make a cyclical structure with no real beginning or end. But you'd need to be a super genius to do that proficiently. As far as I'm aware only Joyce and Pynchon have had any success like this.

Well, counting on your viewpoint of humans as interesting unshifted, this should prove interesting to my own personal self as a reader. (If it has changed it should be sincerely droll, most likely reflecting closely to how I feel about the human race.)

It's based on a girl I saw handing out leaflets for a phone company. I watched her from the floor above, and it was pretty heartbreaking to see. There were only a few responses from people nearby.

1) Ignore her completely and walk on.
2) Say "no thanks" and walk on.
3) Take a leaflet, talk to her, and carry on after about ten seconds. A few people did this.
4) Talk to her (about the product) for a few minutes. I think a couple of old guys did this.

It struck me just how uninterested people were in her, and how dehumanised she was. She was pretty hot, which is probably why she got the job (solid business tactic: people are more likely to accept offers from sexy women). So she's objectified as a vendor, and objectified as a sex object. The only worth she was given was her economic worth.

EDIT: I don't think this is really a reflection on human nature, just the materialism of (post)modern society.

Materialism is good. Compassion can hurt. I'm glad to see it promises intrigue.

Completed the first draft of that short story. It's just over a thousand words, but there are about three sections I want to expand, so it'll probably end up more like two thousand.

Get it on bebe.