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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > Literary Merit > Empty Shoes, the story, not the challenge
Empty Shoes, the story, not the challenge  [message #74791] Fri, 24 August 2018 17:54 Go to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



When Doc Sawzall sent this to me he was a little nervous, considering it controversial. From here in the UK it is not. From a place where a right is not viewed as having an attendant responsibility I can see how it might be viewed as such.

I'm not about to give you any spoilers.

The tale is told at an almost breathless pace, and I suppose I could have split it into chapters, but challenge tales in chapters do not seem to command people's attention. And I think Empty Shoes is worth reading to the end.

[Updated on: Fri, 24 August 2018 18:34]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: Empty Shoes, the story, not the challenge  [message #74796 is a reply to message #74791] Sat, 25 August 2018 04:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Pedro

Toe is in the water

Registered: March 2014
Messages: 93



By chance I chose this as the first of the challenge stories to read. It is a powerful piece such that my own offering feels trivial,  unworthy of being in such company, and I should not have bothered submitting it. It is that moving that I am writing this in the small wee hours before it will let me get back to sleep.

It is written at a cracking pace but needed to be to maintain its immediacy. Had it been a longer story, especially one split into chapters it would have lost a lot of its impact.

A subject might be controversial but that should not prevent authors from addressing it as long as they are doing so with genuine purpose and not simply to be controversial and court publicity.

In this case, as Timmy said, it might be seen as controversial in a certain mindset in the US, but from elsewhere might be seen as common sense. Unfortunately common sense is something that seems to be anything but common and seems to be especially lacking if there are lawyers, politicians or the media involved. 


The idea that rights can be divorced from responsibilities is all too prevalent. They should not be seen as rights but as privileges  gained by taking care of the responsibilities.




Pedro
Re: Empty Shoes, the story, not the challenge  [message #74798 is a reply to message #74796] Sat, 25 August 2018 09:19 Go to previous message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



"Pedro wrote on Sat, 25 August 2018 05:11"
By chance I chose this as the first of the challenge stories to read. It is a powerful piece such that my own offering feels trivial,  unworthy of being in such company, and I should not have bothered submitting it.


--
There is as much a place for a light frivolity as there is for a piece dealing with very large issues. The site's objective is to show teenage gay boys, the adults they become, and in more than one case their parents, that homosexual people are entitled to the same rights, with their attendant responsibilities, as others. Each piece on the site in all areas show these elements in all that has been written.

Our purpose is to entertain and, by entertaining, to educate. Some education is large, other education is small, but each responates with someone, perhaps the same someone.

The greatest author coexists in any library with the least. What they have in common is far greater than their differences. They have dared to write something that was for others to read. And who is to say which is greater than others?



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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