Monday, November 25, 2024

Fairy Tale Spotlight: I'm Looking for Kadak [Short Story Review]

"I'm Looking for Kadak" is a short story written by Harlan Ellison. It was published in 1974. This one ranked extremely high on the "weird idea" scale.

You'll have to forgive my explanation of this one as it is a bit of a muddled story. I don't have the patience to explain all of it with too much detail. What is actually happening here is that there is an alien race that had multiple arms and six eyes... that have also converted to Judaism. If that were not weird enough, the planet is about to be relocated and so they have to leave before everyone dies in the process.

The problem is that they have to perform a Jewish ritual before they can leave which requires 10 of them, but they are missing one. They have to find this former Jew named Kadak which apparently nobody likes because he... sort of... breathes really loudly??? It's so weird. This whole story is so weird.

This is the kind of story that makes me think the man was just pulling stuff out of his ass at the time. It has a sort of "dartboard method" feel to it. I just had a hard time enjoying it. It did not help that the author kept dropping tons and tons of Yiddish words into the narrative. I don't enjoy that sort of thing in any story. Just write in one language!

This is the kind of story that completely relies on its own novelty (Jewish aliens). It is otherwise kind of annoying to read. I don't really recommend it.

This blog was written on August 22, 2024.

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3 comments:

  1. There are cheap ways to be "original" and sheer nonsense is the easiest. It seems this author was either lazy... or used very strong drugs... or both.

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  2. It is important when writing to make yourself clear. Who wants to decipher what could have been translated? Such things can lessen the enjoyment of the work.

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