Oh ho ho! What have we here? A petit bon-bon of literary delight! An amuse-bouche of ribbiting rhythm! Undeniably, the author has a way with words, such that I am inspired—nay, compelled—to leave a comment here. Your short story has truly tickled my tinglewomble!
When I first encountered this piece, I did so with eyebrows raised. Fiction? The sheer banality of it. You can imagine my astonishment when I found myself drawn into the world from the first syllable—no! Not drawn, but fully submerged, my agency stripped, my nerves laid bare. This short story has my giggled my grundles and film-flammed my fablooza! Good day to you sir!
Your protagonist, Marlene—truly, a name that conjures infinite ontologies—so attuned of emotion I now consider her to be a good compatriot, and her dorm room at NYU my second abode. The traces of her thought processes are imprinted upon my own, irrevocably. Will I ever return to the world as such I once experienced it? Such was the mastery of craft I have witnessed today.
As we progressed through the plot, more and more complexities arrived, until the piece revealed itself to be a veritable bildungsroman, so compact, so precise, yet so incisive. The locations became metaphorical, mythical in my mind, parables of other selves we might embody or not embody. The coffee-shop, the classroom, etc. Are these merely societal constructs or are they more? But I digress. My ballywoggle has been bamboozled!
Where lesser authors would fall victim to trope and cliche, you have truly elevated this form such that it fully defies categorization. Indeed, the interpolation of Aristotle's Poetics through Marlene's drama class left much to digest. The muses sing and dance your praises! Thalia, Terpsichore, Euterpe all move to the sweet symphony of words. Even Melpomene smiles! Polyhymnia… well, she’s been unresponsive for decades, but would surely extol, loudly, this glorious fictive arrival.
So rarely is a short fiction necessary, but in times like these, reading pieces such as this truly massages my mimblelaxy. As a connoisseur of great literature, I humbly thank you. Can we even comprehend beauty such as this? I will share this piece on Facebook and copy my niece, who also attends NYU.
A further query, if I may be so bold: I cannot help but wonder, when you placed the word ‘sequined,' as you did with aplomb in paragraph 83 when Marlene is trying on her ‘going-out dress,’ did you perchance perceive the elated vibrations that would course through the consciousness of the readers? Would any other semiotic stroke do as much? How can we hope to understand genius such as this?
You have indeed fully tickled my tinglewomble with your literary locutions, good sir! I look forward to anything you should choose to write, and will be following ThoughtCatalog.com closely henceforth! Bravo! Bravo! Bravissimo!
P.S. Have you thought about expanding the piece into a longer work? I positively quiver in anticipation!