Honoring Short Story Month With a Little Yellow Book

 

In honor of short story month, I am sharing an excerpt from one of my very favorite short stories of all time.

I wish I could get well faster.

But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

I get positively angry at the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breaths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.

Brilliant, right? The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a masterpiece. I first read this story in college. Many years later, in a small used book shop, I stumbled upon a small copy from a small press which was printed the year I was born, proving my crazy connection to this story was real.

Now, my little yellow book is a cherished possession, like a worn stuffed teddy bear from childhood.

It completes me.

 

First published in 1892, the story is available here and, if you have not read it, you really must. I insist.

 

My Sunday thoughts in 200 words or less.