"1/3 1/3 1/3"
Honestly, I didn't like this short story at all until the last half page. Besides that last half page I found it extremely dull. I know Brautigan was setting the stage for the "pounding at the gates of American Literature" line but if it hadn’t been an assigned reading I wouldn’t have made it passed the first page. I think the melancholy tone of it weights it down too much (funny coming from me, I know). But there were a few things I did like… I like the repetition of “1/3,” I like it when stories return to past ideas and I think Brautigan did it without over doing it. I mean, when you read the title you have no idea what the story is going to be about but he clarifies it in the first three lines and then reminds you throughout. He made sure the reader knew money was, basically, the motive behind the characters creating a novel. The only thing you know about the characters is the fact that they all live in poverty… he gives you little glimpses of who they are, but he goes into more detail about the welfare check than he does any of the characters. None of the characters even have names! At the end I love the transition into the characters creation. The horrible spelling, grammar and the typewriter slash marks, just by doing that it makes the whole story believable in a way. It was something I’d never seen before. Then, the last line… “pounding at the gates of American Literature,” I just love it!
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