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Beavers, by Arthur Miller
Somethings just make you feel that you have been wasting your time. I recently re-encountered Harper's Magazine and wondered why I ever left. It is a great read. The February issue included the short story Beavers by Arthur Miller (a link to a blog with a nice bio).
The Beavers tells us the story of a man that owns a nice property by a lake. He has owned this land for a long time. The lake has been a part of his happy life and he has planted the trees around his lake. One day, the man discovers an unwanted guest: a beaver. The man is not happy, the beaver seems to have decided to move to his lake and since the man thinks that beaver crap is poisonous, the beaver can't stay. Unable to take action, the man calls a friend who supposedly knows how to deal with these things. His friend tells him that the beaver and his mate have to be shot dead because they will not move and he offers to do the job. He shoots a warning shot but the beaver doesn't flee and both beavers are then shot. None of the men feel bad about killing the beavers but the man can't let go of the thought that the beaver could feel humanlike feelings and could have humanlike dreams because the beaver was acting contrary to nature: the beaver was trying to build a dam when the pond was already deep enough and perfect for its lodge.
I apologize for my summary is really bad: I urge Arthur Miller fans or just good prose fans to read the original. There are all kinds of theories to make the distinction between good literature and bad writing, but they all fall short when trying to explain why this text will live and that one is just another page with scribbles. I always thought it was a matter of instinct but then instinct varies from person to person and that is why it is so rare that two people agree on something like "the best 10 books ever written" or even "the best 3 fiction books published in 2004". All this to say that the Beavers seems to be one of those pieces of litearature that are beyond personal taste and seasonal dislikes. Another one of my beliefs is that you can pretty much judge a book by its first sentence. Here is the Beavers' first sentence:
The pond, normally as silent as a glass of water, now gave up a sound, a splash at the man's approach.
Glass of water and silence. What an image!