Hap's "The Only Tree in the Forest"

If you haven't read it you might like to. Don't be put off by the large number of chapters. All of them are very short. Some are no more than a single sentence.

It's the best thing I've read in I don't know how long.

It reminds me of Lord Dunsany's "Where The Tides Ebb and Flow" in story, style and effect. Each story is about a silent, nameless entity slowly ripening in wisdom over centuries of endurance and observation. Each uses a voice that is distant and mostly reserved, which balances effectively against the emotional arousal the author builds--Dunsany quickly, Hap more slowly--and then maintains until the story's final moments. Each ends on a note of redemption, though Hap's protagonist never did anything wrong, and we never find out what Dunsany's protagonist did.

But I think Hap goes Dunsany one better in a couple of ways.

For one thing Hap's prose is terser than Dunsany's, which leads to a greater aesthetic tension (a term meaning "contrast," basically) between the words themselves and what they convey. It's not as lyrical as Dunsany's. Then again, a lyric can mean either a song or a poem, and the chief virtue of a poem is that it says the most possible with the fewest number of words. In that sense Hap's prose is strongly poetic.

For another, Dunsany's tale is all on one level. It creates an intense emotional frisson at the very start and maintains it until the very end, and that's all. It's a great accomplishment, like a daring and graceful tightrope act. Yet while a tightrope act may thrill us, when it's over we don't walk away contemplating what the acrobat meant.

But "The Only Tree in the Forest" is an extended metaphor. That is, it's a metaphor the author develops and explores not in just one line or paragraph but over the course of the entire work. It's also a multiple metaphor that can be read at the individual level (Hey--I'm like that) the group level (Hey--we're like that) and the level of humanity in general (Hey--EVERYBODY'S like that).

What that metaphor is I won't tell you. It would spoil the surprise. But if you've ever wondered how to answer the question "why do you watch that stuff anyway?'--I think Hap got it right.

Comments

[iisaw]

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm following Hap, but missed this one somehow. (And I love Dunsany, so that was a sure way to hook me!)

[Reese]

Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. :)
And thank you for the commentary!
...Though I appear, as far as I'm recalling my own thoughts on it, to have completely missed the extended metaphor. Oh well. Not all that surprising, for me, I think...

[Bad Horse]

Thank you! That's a beautiful story.