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Seafood Joint

From: Hans Anderson
Length: 00:07:05

A racist man turns violent against my friends and me at a seafood restaurant. Read the full description.
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Piece Description

A racist man turns violent against my friends and me at a seafood restaurant. My first up-close look at racism. We were minding our own business and now my world has changed for the worse. Fiction. For more information and conversation, visit this feature on Transom.org.

4 Comments Atom Feed

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Tripp Sommer

Posted on January 08, 2006 at 03:13 PM | Permalink

Review of Seafood Joint

This piece is intense. It starts with the narrator saying "...and then I pulled the trigger" and ends with "...wish me luck."
The narration is natural and conversational. It takes you inside the experience, complete with questions, confusion.
I am not a big fan of music under an entire piece, but this time it keeps the pace and doesn't interfere.
It gets us as close as I hope any of us gets to this kind of experience.
"There but for the grace of...go I."
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Todd Taliaferro

Posted on September 05, 2005 at 02:34 PM | Permalink

Review of Seafood Joint

OK, things I loved about this piece:
1. This story bitchslapped me.
2. It made my blood pressure rise and made me a little bit nauseated.
3. I'm consumed by the need to figure out whether or not this is a true story. Jesus, I hope not.
4. I was horrified because I could easily imagine myself in the exact same position, although I'd like to think I might not have the same instinctive reaction.

Things that I like about this piece:
1. The narrator is great to listen to--very natural storytelling style.
2. It gave me the feeling I was inside some sort of strange maze or something, where you think you're going one place, and suddenly you've taken a turn that brings you to another turn until finally you wind up at a completely startling destination with no idea what brought you there.
3. Very nice details in the story, which are thrown out so casually that you almost don't even notice them, yet they help to make the piece resonate.

Things I didn't love about the piece:
1. Maybe I'm a lazy bastard, but I really wanna know how it turned out. And now I'm going to have to waste huge amounts of time and mental energy investigating in order to find out.

But, hell, overall it's a small price to pay. Excellent work.
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R. Tyler Mack

Posted on March 30, 2005 at 09:20 AM | Permalink

Review of Seafood Joint

In this fascinating piece, Mr Anderson examines himself when placed in a confrontational situation with a racist at a restaurant. Things turn for the worst and the whole piece is told from a retrospective point-of-view with an ingenious suspense ending.

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Transcript

"Seafood Joint" by Hans Anderson.

What it came down to was that I paused, turned to my family and friends, yelled "LOOK AWAY" and then pulled the trigger. If I'd have just done it, without pausing, without yelling, it would have been clear self defense or heat-of-passion type of a situation.

It would have been an easy, lawful way out. We were just sitting there, talking, not provoking anyone. We were done eating, the kids were playing at their end of the table and I was holding little Bo on my lap, he tickling me, me laughing even though I'm not ticklish. We were talking about the Matrix, which had just come out. I'd seen it, but Bo's dad hadn't, probably wouldn't. He didn't like movies like that. It was so loud in the restaurant I didn't hear the drunk man at first. He nudged me on the shoulder and I turned and looked up. He was standing over my chair and when he first spoke,...
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