Play Book Tag discussion
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A Lodging for the Night
December 2016: Short Story
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A Lodging for the Night by Robert Louis Stevenson - 3 stars
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"one takes away only a splinter and that is rarely pleasant."Love this phrasing, but don't agree with its conclusion, lol. I feel as though good short story writers engage the reader and also make the reader work in the sense that they are almost like a small puzzle where the reader has to provide some interpretation. The older I get, the more I am appreciating and enjoying this form.
Anita wrote: ""The older I get, the more I am appreciating and enjoying this form. ."I'm just the opposite. I liked them more when I was younger and avoid them now.
This tag, so far, has taught me to stick with authors I love if I'm going to read short stories. Normally I'm not a fan, because they seem so unsatisfying, but a skilled (re: favorite) author makes it better.
The beauty of the short story is just that, it can be finished quickly however, to me it lacks the depth and totality of a novel and one takes away only a splinter and that is rarely pleasant.
This story surely was evocative of the setting a cold winter's night in Paris in 1456, a poet named Francis Villon is writing with some friends one evening:
Yet there was a small house, backed up against a cemetery wall, which was still awake and awake to evil purpose in that snoring district. There was not much to betray it from without; only a stream of warm vapor from the chimney-top, a patch where the snow melted on the roof, and a few half-obliterated footprints at the door. But within, behind the shuttered windows, Master Francis Villon, the poet and some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted were keeping the night alive and passing round the bottle.
This is a bit of a morality tale with no clear ending.