Cheston Knapp, “A Minor Momentousness in the History of Love”
Cheston Knapp’s “A Minor Momentousness in the History of Love” ( One Story 133, March 30, 2010) and I never bonded. It’s strange. The right sorts of elements were there. Characterization done by accretion and by showing, not by full disclosure and by telling (good example: how the narrator’s anger management issues creep up on us). There are scenes in which the narrator’s inner world vined around the events in the outside world (take the description of Charlotte on pages 2-3). We find inventive uses of metaphors (note the metaphors-turned-real of windows on page 7 and walls on page 9). Whiffs of poetry (notice the alliteration in a sentence like “Be hol d the whole body of my mental torture” [3; my italics]). But despite all those valid and varied techniques, the story never interested me. My main problem was the narrator, who was drearily uptight to the point of producing stilted language and boring descriptions. You get stuff like a towel that “is heavy with the saltwater weight ...