PC066: One Paper Airplane Graffito Love Note

[Listener]

I don't think I liked this story. It was very long, the reader was talented but I think he might have had the wrong accent, I had no idea what time period this was -- was it an olde-tyme 50s thing or a sleepy-little-town thing -- and the films referenced didn't lock it down for me at all. The general plot -- boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl starts graffiti trend in her former town, boy waits for her to come back -- was good, but all the surreal stuff around it didn't work for me. It felt too much like magical realism trying to be fantasy, instead of one or the other.

[Jinmoonlight]

I enjoyed what this story might have been rather than the story itself.  I imagine the story would have fared better as a book or a movie as opposed to a short. 

[Swamp]

I enjoyed this story very much.  It was touching and hopeful.  I like a good love story wrapped in good fantasy.  I liked that, to take control of her life's story,   Anna began writing it herself.  I also liked the thought of someones life being played out in books and movies.  I suppose if we looked hard enough we good all find scenes from our life played out in movies.  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome does that for me. 

Seriously, this story reminded me a lot of Mira which played on PP a couple months back, mainly because of the plot points of a mysterious woman coming in and out of a man's life and the movie theater playing old movies.  However, this story was more hopeful.

[Kanasta]

To me this felt a bit overstuffed with fantastic elements- like someone had two different story ideas and decided to put them into one story. Did Anna start the "graffiti trend"? If so, I think the story would have been stronger had it not started with a description of graffiti in the town , how revered graffiti/confession artists were, etc. Maybe I missed a time jump in the narrative, but it seemed to me that the story was taking place in a town where it was already common to post your "confessions" as graffiti, so it was not as powerful when Anna posted hers, and also did not make sense that townspeople were calling her a vandal and a hooligan for doing so, when apparently graffito artists were so highly regarded. Also a bit of a plot hole - if Anna was writing her life story all over town, how did our hero manage to miss all the mentions of her husband, so that her revelation came as such a shock?
Some good ideas and I liked the writing style, but did not feel that it all hung together.

[Talia]

I liked the fantasy aspect of the story. I hated the romance, It made me want to throw up.

However, that's likely tied to issues on my end rather than the story. I have to go to a wedding in a week and the very thought makes me sick to my stomach and want to barf.

Bleh.

[Swamp]

Maybe I missed a time jump in the narrative, but it seemed to me that the story was taking place in a town where it was already common to post your "confessions" as graffiti, so it was not as powerful when Anna posted hers, and also did not make sense that townspeople were calling her a vandal and a hooligan for doing so, when apparently graffito artists were so highly regarded. Also a bit of a plot hole - if Anna was writing her life story all over town, how did our hero manage to miss all the mentions of her husband, so that her revelation came as such a shock?

After the narrator described the graffito confessions, he said "I know how it all started..."  At that point you can picture Wayne and Garth (SNL reference) waving their hands and going "Didiloo  Didiloo" to mark a flash back in time.

Anna wrote her first graffito on the train cars the night after their first date at the movie theater to start taking control of her life.  If someone was going to write about her life, it might as well be her.  At first, the toenspeople didn't like it, but as it continued, it became widely appreciated, and copied.

[Kanasta]

Thanks Swamp- I thought I must have missed something! That's tyhe trouble when you're listening on a noisy commute... Still doesn't explain how our hero managed to miss all the graffito references to hubby though...

[eytanz]

Thanks Swamp- I thought I must have missed something! That's tyhe trouble when you're listening on a noisy commute... Still doesn't explain how our hero managed to miss all the graffito references to hubby though...

I think - though I was a bit confused about this myself, so I'm not entirely sure - that this is an artifact of the mixed chronology - the graffity that mentions a husband was a new one (and perhaps a copycat one), not one of the original series that were written in the flashback, before Anna told the narrator she was married.

I was somewhat confused by the cow graffity - it sounded like it was one of the first ones, but Anna herself didn't seem to know what it said. Oh well.

Anyway, I enjoyed this story, but was not wowed by it. A good one, but not one I'm likely to remember in a few months time.

[Anarkey]

Though a bit on the sappy side, this story managed to succeed for me.  I enjoyed it.  Since sap and mush are usually non-starter story qualities for me, though this seems like faint praise, it really isn't.  A story that overcomes my biases has to work twice as hard and be extra good at what it does, and this one did and was.  This one was like a lot of Jeffrey Ford stories, which start out in voices and about subjects which I'm almost certain to have no interest in and then draw me in inexorably despite all that.  Nice job, Will McIntosh and great reading as usual by Chris Reynaga.

(And btw, if we're still taking nominees for coolest name, I'd submit that "Reynaga" is a damn cool name.)

[DKT]

Thanks Swamp- I thought I must have missed something! That's tyhe trouble when you're listening on a noisy commute... Still doesn't explain how our hero managed to miss all the graffito references to hubby though...

I'm pretty sure the only clue that she had a husband was the line "I should feel guilty, but I don't." At least, chronologically-wise. There might have been something more at the beginning of the story before we flashback and find out how all the graffito confessions started, but I don't remember for sure.

[DKT]

For anyone interested in anonymous confessions, I can't recommend Post Secret enough. I thumbed through my friend's copy it's a fascinating compilation of confessions people anonymously mailed on the back of postcards to an artist.

[Rain]

I didnt really care for this story, it didnt help that the main character was just a really unlikable guy

[JP_M]

I loved this one.  One of my favorites.  Too many authors in fantasy neglect the emotional drama, this did not.  It was so touching that when the story finished, I was riding a crowded elevator and trying very hard not to cry.

[yicheng]

I loved this one.  The prose was lyrical and entrancing.  This felt like a Magical Realism story, and reminded me of those Griffin and Sabine books about two lovers who corresponded by mail but could not meet.  Gorgeously written and read.

[AliceNred]

I loved this one.

To me she was a kind of unwilling modern muse.

What can I say, I love fresh twist on old classics.

[Unblinking]

The parts of this story that I like I really really liked, and the parts that I didn't I really really didn't.

The parts that I didn't
-the town taking up the graffiti trend with no one complaining about it.  If someone writes a love note on the side of my house, I'm not going to be thinking about how heartfelt it is, I'm going to be thinking about how now I'm going to have to repaint the damned house.  Now if the anonymous artist would come back and paint it back to its original color, or if it were drawn in chalk on a sidewalk (so the rain would wash it clean) that would be another thing entirely.
-Her mother death by coin-smothering I just found to be completely ridiculous to the point of making the whole story seem like a lame joke.  If I loosen my belief so that this can be a metaphor it's not so bad.

The parts that I did like:
-The unexplained fantasy element of elements of her life showing up in media.  That was cool and nothing I've ever seen.
-The fact that to take control of her life she wrote her own story.
-I really enjoyed the ending when he saw the movie, given the import of movies in her life.  It would've been slightly cooler (but not much) if he'd professed at the end that he'd start looking for the shop she worked in, because that's what happened in the movie, instead of just generally hoping to see her again some day.