A Story a Day #37: Robert Benchley

March 22nd, 2020

"The Sunday Menace"

Robert Benchley

A narrator muses on how annoying and awful Sunday afternoons are. They say that Sunday mornings are pleasant enough, but soon give way to the unpleasant afternoon. Everything is cast in the shadow of the looming week. People can't agree on what to do. The only thing to do is weather it out until it's over.

This is a very short story, if you can call it a story, of only a couple pages. It doesn't feature particular characters or a plot, but rather muses on the general idea of Sunday afternoons. It gives a vareity of scenarios and situations and how all of them fail to please the way they should. In fact, this story remeinds me more of a poem than a story as it bounces from place to place just loosely connecting them under the same broad topic. I liked it, actually, the different style and flair of it. In fiction terms, it reminds me most of stories that are written in vignettes, or short lyrical chapters that do not connect overtly. I find this style much more in tune with real life and memory and this musing very realistic as well.