From the Cradle
Publication(s)
- First publication
- Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores, edited by Greg Ketter, 2002
- Wolfe collection(s)
Wolfe's comments from the Introduction to Starwater Strains
"From the Cradle" is one of my favorites. Greg Ketter owns Dreamhaven, a wonderful bookstore in Minneapolis. He wanted to do a book of stories lain in bookstores, one of the best anthology ideas ever. I was eager to get into his book, and did.
Summary
A young man working in a bookstore reads several stories from a mysterious book left on consignment there, and it changes his life.
Analysis
- Sources of quotes
- Meanings of names
- References to other works
- Theories about what happens under the surface, what the narrator isn't telling us, who the narrator is and when and why s/he is telling the story, what the whole thing "means," etc.
If there are multiple or competing theories, each one should be given a name with a three-bang (!!!) header; if the page begins to get out-of-hand from the size of these, as could happen in a few cases, they should be shuffled off to their own page(s). - Etc.