Challenge 926

Back Around

In David Barber’s Guidelines for Earth Writers, why can’t Bewildering Stories be on the guidelines list?
In Stephen Ellams’ Night Falls: How long has the relationship lasted? Twenty years? Thirty? What went wrong with it?
In John Rossi’s The Adventures of Dead Dan: The Old Religion:
1. Drina knows Dan can’t eat or drink; why does she arrange to meet with him in a restaurant?
2. What makes Dan so special? How does he differ basically from the other Undead? What aspects of his condition might pose practical problems in “real life”?
In John Stephens’ Going Home Again:
1. What “haunted house” clichés does this story contradict, and almost at every turn?
2. Why doesn’t Tom rent the house and go back and live in a home where he had been happy?
In Luis López Nieves’ Lisa Gherardini:
1. Does the story contain traces of irony or sarcasm? Why doesn’t Lisa carry on chatty conversations with the guards and visitors? Why might one suspect that the author would prefer that the Mona Lisa be displayed at, say, the Prado Museum in Madrid?
2. When the image in the painting comes to life, does it represent the real model or one in the imagination of the beholder? What are the advantages of both kinds of incarnations?
In David Rogers’ Seeing Buffalo:
1. Do the buffalo have any real function in the story? Would omitting them affect anything else substantially? And does the bull have any role other than making a brief “walk-on” appearance?
2. What would possess any parents to give their daughter such a haunted name as Pasiphae?
3. Does Tom read any literature that he had not already read before coming to the farm? Why would the ancient story of Pasiphae be of no help to him in understanding Patty and the farm?
4. Does Tom James learn anything about the history of the farm, or about Patty, or about himself? Does the story basically end where it began? Does it overstep our Vignettes guideline?

Responses welcome!