Glossolalia Critique

The first thing I noticed was that Lewis’ identity is hidden in the first mention of “they”. I don’t see the purpose in this and wonder if it was intentional. However, I do like the change in referral to Charlie as Chuck when Lewis is speaking to him. This makes me wonder how “Chuck” feels about his nickname. Their knowledge of the bar makes me wonder how old they are and makes it hard to visualize them. Lewis seems to narrate the story like a long yarn. I think this feeling of exaggeration and suspense could be more incorporated into his character. I like the experiment of a story within a story, but I think the inner level of story is sort of glossed over. For instance, there’s the line “tried clawing a bull’s face off” which raises a lot of questions. Is it a literal bull? What train was he hopping on that had a bull? Wasn’t that dangerous? Did he get hurt or maimed? I also kind of wonder how the rest of the customers at the bar reacted to this, since he was apparently a regular. I wouldn’t sacrifice the last line spoken line for this, though. I would recommend he ends the story with the reaction of the bar folk and then there’s a pause in which he fishes and says “What I’ll remember about him is how he finished his stories…” And then work in the ending dialogue which worked well.