July 8 - "So Far from Anything"

“So Far from Anything”
by Benjamin Percy
Esquire, October 2007

* * * * * (Excellent) Realistic

Taking his eyes from the road for a second results in the narrator hitting and killing a man with his truck. The man contemplates the consequences of this momentary lapse of attention.

This story is an excellent example of writing in the second person point-of-view. The prose is vividly clear and descriptive, and it is easy to mistake these sentences for thoughts that could run through your own mind. I liked how each part of the story added a new layer to the overall tale. The simile that ends the story is fantastic, taking the seemingly unconnected fishing trip and hooking it nicely into the main action of the story. Everything about the story is well executed.

I was suspicious of the formatting – the story told line by line at the bottom of each page of the magazine – but the page breaks worked to add a poetic lyricism to the piece. I doubt this approach would work for just any story, but here it succeeded, presenting it in a memorable, likeable manner.