shortshortshort.com, July 2008

There are many who travel to experience new cultures, but there are also people who travel to confirm their point of view that their own society is the best. In his first short short for July, “Travelogue,” Bruce Holland Rogers focuses on a couple that travels by train to a variety of foreign nations. While they find things that appeal to them, they also focus on the negatives of their experience. Rogers makes it clear that the travelers can see the good, but tend to focus on the bad, which comes to overwhelm the former, although doesn’t quite distract from it. Furthermore, they are not blind to the negatives of their own society, even if they don’t articulate them as they do those of foreign realms.

Belief comes to the forefront in “Higher Power,” in which John, an avowed atheist, seeks aid at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting held in a church. Made to feel like an outcast by the religious types who surround him, John eventually tells his story, a story which is seen by the others as proof of God’s existence and love but by John as a mere coincidence. This short tale is thought provoking in that it points out how individuals bring their own agendas and beliefs to their interpretation of events, all the while avoiding assigning morality to those viewpoints.

In “Caesar Coconut Caesar,” Rogers uses a stray dog caught between two families as a means of looking at consumer society and how it really doesn’t matter in the long run. The Johnson family adopted a stray from the pound, and eventually, the Ibarra family determined the dog had previously been theirs. One of the problems with writing short shorts, and “Caesar Coconut Caesar” is one of the longest Rogers has written, is that there is not enough space to fully explore the issues raised. In this case, the dilemma raised between the Ibarra and Johnson families gets short shrift and is not handled in a realistic manner, making the reader wish Rogers could devote more time and space to the issues.