You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There by Elizabeth Taylor, 1957
The magic trick:
Assembling a collection of sharp observations that get by on their own merit rather than building into some larger meaning
This is an excellent example of how a story can get by purely on recreating recognizable elements of life.
The plot – if you could even say there is one – barely hangs together. The ending, if I may risk spoiling it, is an O. Henry punch line.
But that’s OK. The observations, the dialogue, the little details of human truth are all so good and consistent you don’t care if the story lands somewhere more meaningful.
The pieces never really assemble, but they work just fine as individual moments.
And that’s quite a trick on Taylor’s part.
The selection:
As she waited, shivering as she paced about the room, growing more and more goose-fleshed, she saw the reasonableness in her father’s thought about the sherry and wished that she had not wasted it and, even more, that she had lain twenty minutes longer in her warm bath.
He came as the clock struck out the hours and, when she ran and opened the door to him, said: “Heavens, ma’am, how exquisite you look!”
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