Between Here and the Yellow Sea
by Nic Pizzolatto
read: 2014
I've been watching the first few episodes of True Detective on HBO, and I thought I'd track down some of creator / writer Nic Pizzolatto's writing. Between Here and the Yellow Sea is his first published work, a collection of short stories. I'd liken it to Flannery O'Connor's short stories in terms of weight and style, as well as the Southern setting. He doesn't do neat or happy endings. Every character seems to be chasing something he can't find, usually a void produced by a death or abandonment.
In a recent interview about True Detective, Pizzolatto talked about his interest in "memory and the idea of an objective truth." That theme permeates Between Here and the Yellow Sea. In "Two Shores," a man learns he may be the father of a child, but the mother and baby are both dead. "It's a truth that can't do anything for you," his girlfriend admonishes him, asking why he pursues paternity tests. "Because it's the truth," he responds. In the title story, the narrator travels across country to find a girl he once knew, only to be stunned when he realizes her eyes are a different color than he remembers in his mind's eye. Pizzolatto's characters are haunted by their false memories, and when they try to fill the voids in their pasts with present substitutes, it predictably ends in tragedy.
by Nic Pizzolatto
read: 2014
I've been watching the first few episodes of True Detective on HBO, and I thought I'd track down some of creator / writer Nic Pizzolatto's writing. Between Here and the Yellow Sea is his first published work, a collection of short stories. I'd liken it to Flannery O'Connor's short stories in terms of weight and style, as well as the Southern setting. He doesn't do neat or happy endings. Every character seems to be chasing something he can't find, usually a void produced by a death or abandonment.
In a recent interview about True Detective, Pizzolatto talked about his interest in "memory and the idea of an objective truth." That theme permeates Between Here and the Yellow Sea. In "Two Shores," a man learns he may be the father of a child, but the mother and baby are both dead. "It's a truth that can't do anything for you," his girlfriend admonishes him, asking why he pursues paternity tests. "Because it's the truth," he responds. In the title story, the narrator travels across country to find a girl he once knew, only to be stunned when he realizes her eyes are a different color than he remembers in his mind's eye. Pizzolatto's characters are haunted by their false memories, and when they try to fill the voids in their pasts with present substitutes, it predictably ends in tragedy.
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