The Great White North
The opening line of “Reportage” immediately informs the reader what the deal is all about: an economic boom is taking place in Manitoba, Canada after the unlikely discovery of a genuine, authentic Roman arena there. Not everybody celebrated this breathtaking left turn in the known history of the world. Especially some of those people in that country known as Canada’s diaper. Those guys immediately jumped to the conclusion that only metaphor efficiently make clear:
“…there was a certain amount of skepticism at first, and although I don’t like to say so, most of it came from south of the border. It was like a we-had-a- Roman-ruin-and-they-didn’t sort of thing. One guy claimed it was an elaborate hoax. A Disneyesque snow job. Like we’d done it with mirrors.”
Consequences of the Windows Tax
“Windows” is the story of the imposition of a Windows Tax on and how it particularly affects a couple of artists dependent upon natural light. Only actually operating and visible windows are taxed so, of course, to protect wealth one need simply shutter up. What is the effect upon this particular couple? Since they are of an aesthetic nature, mere literal analysis simply won’t do:
“The plotted austerities of our own domestic life, so appealing at first, soon faded. A life in the dark is close to motionless… intimate moments, and our most intense, tend to fall into that crack of the day when the sun has been cut down to a bent sliver of itself and even that about to disappear on the horizon.”
A World Without Weather
“Weather” is a fantastical tale about what happens to weather when those in charge of analyzing and reporting it go on strike. Against all odds, apparently, if no one is there to tell you how it works, it ceases working. It is not just weathermen who go on strike, but weather itself, leaving the ability to describe its impact not unlike that describing the effect of government revenue planning:
“To live frictionlessly in the world is to understand the real grief of empty space. Nostalgically I recalled the fluting of air currents in the late afternoon hours, hissing against the backyard shrubs"
"The Harp"
The description of the titular musical instrument comprises the entirety of its opening paragraph. That opening paragraph is a textbook demonstration of how to write a description of a literal thing using almost nothing but non-literal imagery that transform it into nearly into a purely metaphorical state:
“The harp was falling through the air, only I didn’t know it was a harp. It was only this blocky chunk of matter, vaguely triangular, this thing, silhouetted against the city sky, held there for a split second like a stencil’s hard-edged blank, more of an absence than a real object of heft and substance.”
The Darkness
Death and taxes are not the only sure things. Ben Franklin was wrong about that, but then again he died long before “darkness” became quite possibly the most ubiquitous single metaphor in fiction. The ascension seems to have coincided with the arrival of the twentieth century, but only continued gaining momentum since. The author is well acquainted with the metaphorical flexibility of the concept:
“A wave of darkness had rolled in between what he used to be and what he’d become”
“Inside was trapped the darkness of a primitive world; we might just as well have been living in caves or burrows.”
“Don’t hide your dark side from yourself, she always said, it’s what keeps us going forward”
"The truth had been darkened out."
