More Postcards

These postcards are my very small haul from the September postcard show in Burlington. I'm trying to come up with ways to insert the postcards that I've collected into my thesis book, and so far all I've got is using them as spacers between stories, even if they don't relate to the story preceding or following. Would this be wierd? Would I have to have an explination for why I placed certain cards in certain places? There is also the question of captioning. I thought to use whatever is printed/written on the back of the card. Again with no explination, allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions. Feedback?

Yorkdale Shopping Centre

Scarborough Civic Centre

Oakville Shopping Mall

Elliot Lake, Ontario

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Cobourg, Ontario

Review

The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion

I read this book more to get a sense of the style of writing than the subject matter. Though the theme of elegy that ran through it could relate to how I feel about my chosen thesis subject. The suburbs are constantly criticized for being what they are. Flat cities, bulldozed farmland, strip malls, parking lots and tract housing. It’s true that all of those things exist in the suburbs, but that’s not the sum total of what they are. What I liked about Joan Didion’s style was that she wrote this book as if she were speaking to someone, maybe herself, and explaining an event in her life, and everything that followed it. It’s not completely chronological, it jumps around a bit, but it’s easy to follow and understand exactly what was happening and how she was feeling.

For the stories that I’m writing, I want that kind of connection to the reader, like I’m just having a conversation with someone, telling them a story that happened to me or someone I know. So far, my most successful stories, in my opinion, are the ones that I’ve written in this way. The ones that don’t feel right, that seem to be missing something, or aren’t as interesting, are the ones where I lost this connection. I started telling the story from a more detached perspective or maybe I exaggerated a little too much. But for some reason or other, there are stories that I don’t like, because they don’t feel authentic. I want to write a book (thesis) that shows the suburbs and the events that occur there, in as real a way as possible. I want to reader to feel like they were an invisible observer, standing with the narrator, waiting for what happened next. I’m not sure how I can accomplish this except to keep writing and practice the tone and atmosphere that I want.