On the Golden Porch

This kind of story is strange on the first read. It's the literary equivalent of an abstract painting. You know there has to be some point, but it just looks like random shapes and colors. There are a lot of great images; for example, "a caravan of camels passed with spectral tread through your house and dropped its Baghdad wares in the summer twilight" (pg. 570). I think the writer has to be able to paint those vivid images because the story doesn't work otherwise. There's no conventional plot for it to fall back on. The enjoyment in this kind of story is the imagery. It's like watching a movie with great special effects. The writer draws you away from plot and details and characters, and you enjoy the words and images for themselves. I don't think this would work as an ordinary style, because most stories need plot and structure. But it can be interesting as something different.

This style stretches the writer's imagination to create a dream atmosphere for the reader. With other kinds of story, the imagery has to be more subtle. You have to balance it with setting and character and plot and dialogue, whereas this style is more expressive. It can sharpen your ability to insert imagery with the same power into more traditional stories. She does tie it all together at the end, which is important so that there is another level beneath the imagery.

Does the author weave in clues about what the speaker is seeing and what is really there, or does the perspective only make sense at the end, when the speaker is grown up?