Critical Response 5

Colleen Mundy
Dr. Tony Barnstone
ENGL 302
March 24, 2009

Critical Response #5
The visiting writers that came to Whittier to read some of their works included Michael Czyzniejewski. The story he chose to read us, “Cwm”, was extremely interesting to me because of its humor and caught so much of my attention that I decided to buy his book: Elephants in Our Bedroom.
“Cwm” starts with a man in a gym locker room shower and right from the very first line, Czyniejewski captures the attention of the reader with the line about peanuts not being nuts. I love the way that he revisits this line throughout the story, saying that peanuts weren’t nuts, but actually beans. The narrator’s excitement at sharing this fact with his wife when he got home, in addition to his deep thought on the subject which caused subsequent thoughts of his own, and his desire to go back and really talk to the man who knew about the peanuts, all made him seem like such a real person and made me get into the story. Also, the scene in the shower where he speaks to the other men, but is not heard, and when he contemplates when to go back to the gym so as to run into the man again-all very realistic things.
Also, the way that Czyniejewski read his work aloud made it come to life. Obviously it is his work, he knows how he wants it to be read, but the humor he put in his voice made it all seem that much more realistic and humorous to me.