“Sixty Acres” by Raymond Carver

 

He cleaned his teeth with his tongue and squinted in the late-afternoon winter half-light. He wasn’t afraid; it wasn’t that, he told himself. He just didn’t want trouble.

Another choice from Mr. Lewis’ “Best Western Stories of all-Time.”

Well-written?

Without a doubt.

Evocative of mood, place, and character?

On the money.

But…this reader has a low threshold for elliptical endings, stories that just paint scenes in a few broad strokes and simply end.

Yes, much of life is that way, perhaps all—we stop any story at any moment and there are unanswered questions.

But I must admit when I sit down to read I have a plot-trained Pavlovian desire for resolution. For endings that one does not necessarily receive in “real” life.

This reaction to the story is more about me than Mr. Carver’s craft.

Mr. Carver writes with incisive precision; I would have followed it more happily to an ending.