A Very Strange Fancy That Is Guy de Maupassant Part 1

I just finished a very delicious volume of some of Guy de Maupassant's more interesting short stories. I knew it was a delightful find right off the bat on account of I've been reading the guy since 1993. Yes, it was that long ago, and it was some of his very simple works which glued that long name to memory.
He's this French writer, dubbed as one of the Fathers of Short Stories, who writes with a twisted appetite for tragedy in its very simple presentations.

He seals his stories from spoling; he avoids happy endings as much as he can. He has nothing against killing the main character in a heartbeat, as you would a candle after a power outage. He speaks of lost and unrequited love, of betrayal, of revenge, and he does it well, so well that he makes you root for his characters however pathetic they are right off the get go.

He strings his adjectives so effectively, it takes but a few to design, in creating a mental picture, his specific brand of sadness. He makes you root for a prostitute, he makes you feel sympathetic towards a dying old horse, he makes fun of the new found poverty of a middle aged couple, and he does it well with a deceptive plot so brilliantly engineered you'll never guess what happens next.

He lived for 43 years, and he masterpieced around 300 short stories in his lifetime. He sufferred a sexually transmitted disease towards the collapse of his sanity with his confinement in an institution for the mentally abandoned. He's horny, and he died in a nuthouse, but he wrote so freaking well he inspired me to write him something in return.

Related Posts:
A Very Strange Fancy That Is Guy de Maupassant Part 2