Literally Reruns – Homes, Brothers and Fantasies by Tobias Haglund

Leila has brought out a serious piece by one of the founding father’s of the site – who is now a father father as well – how things have moved on. Anyway this is a story from lovely Tobias and this is what she said.

An author’s job is to say what needs to be said then get the hell out of the way. Tobias Haglund does that very well. Most everything he writes contains a deeper meaning; some call it “Social Commentary,” I prefer the less antiseptic  “Human Story.”

Haglund doesn’t proselytize. He simply presents the conditions without comment and allows the reader to decide. That sounds easy until you try to write objectively about a topic that you feel strongly about.

Q: There’s one lovely moment when he speaks of the boy he had frightened and how the kid will think of him whenever he sees a homeless man. I had a transient spit at me once long ago. I use him as an excuse when I must blow past the lines of homeless persons who now congregate on the streets of Seattle. The MC saw the boy’s POV. I find that it describes the MC’s relationship with his estranged family in the micro sense. Was that the intention–or do I think too much?

Q: At the end, when the MC awakens and sees his brother’s car and footprints, there was no mention of any kindness other than, I guess, not calling the police (but even there a cell might be preferable to the Swedish winter). And yet not even such a bleak reality dissipates the power of his fantasies. It seems that false hope is keeping the man alive. Upon finishing the sketch, did you have to fight off the temptation to gentle the guy’s condition a bit; maybe his brother could have stuck whatever a twenty dollar bill is called over there in his pocket? (I wish you had, but I’m glad, for the sake of integrity, you didn’t.)

Leila Allison

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Homes, Brothers and Fantasies

Q: There’s one lovely moment when he speaks of the boy he had frightened and how the kid will think of him whenever he sees a homeless man. I had a transient spit at me once long ago. I use him as an excuse when I must blow past the lines of homeless persons who now congregate on the streets of Seattle. The MC saw the boy’s POV. I find that it describes the MC’s relationship with his estranged family in the micro sense. Was that the intention–or do I think too much?

A little bit like that. Symbolically I’m thinking he (the boy) saw himself (as an adult) and what he had become. It wrote it a while ago, but think I was playing around with that idea. 

Q: At the end, when the MC awakens and sees his brother’s car and footprints, there was no mention of any kindness other than, I guess, not calling the police (but even there a cell might be preferable to the Swedish winter). And yet not even such a bleak reality dissipates the power of his fantasies. It seems that false hope is keeping the man alive. Upon finishing the sketch, did you have to fight off the temptation to gentle the guy’s condition a bit; maybe his brother could have stuck whatever a twenty dollar bill is called over there in his pocket? (I wish you had, but I’m glad, for the sake of integrity, you didn’t.)

Yes, I did fight off the idea. It’s very tempting, but I felt it would have cheated the moment. All the “it could have been”-moments would have lost their effect if it turned out he still actually could have them. But this winter wasn’t as bad as usual. Here it was a few days with -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit ) but it was mostly okay. Stockholm is not as cold as the north of Sweden though. But now the sun shines and it’s a few plus degrees. Still frost on the grass and not a leaf to be seen. Soon though…