A collection of short stories that refuse to be the same

Without further ado: what's so interesting about the short story? That's more or less the question I asked people in a number of groups. WhatsApp. In fact, I deliberately sent private messages to some people. Of course, I did not forget to attach a short story entitled Youth Rage E that to all of them.
Here are some of their answers:

“Maybe some small details like unique secret symbols that E has that you want to highlight?”

“… I don’t understand what the author wrote. Starting from a cat carrying vomit, a show filter, to a 600-word article.”

“I don’t understand the short story…”

What they put forward could be said to be a common response. What is unusual is the short story collection Dea Anugrah. In the opening part Barking Talent, a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy, Gadjah Mada University, presents the story of a writer, young man E, who accepts his friend's offer to be a speaker at a seminar. At the end of the story, he is furious because he does not receive the same honorarium and treatment as other speakers. Here, the reader does not find an interesting opening, like the works of other writers. And, Dea also agrees: "But in my opinion, it is not an interesting story. The first sentence itself reads like this: 'Young man E grips the lid of the pickle jar with the fingers of his right hand and holds the bottom with the palm of his other hand...'" (p. 8).

Another thing that makes the opening short story unusual is Dea's writing style. She acts like a director who takes the reader from one scene to another quickly, jumping 'there in the past' and 'here today', and often presents events that are not very related to the main story. Also, like a mass media columnist, Dea uses the words "we" and "we know" to force the reader to simply accept, or agree with, the situation she describes. Dea also does not stir up the reader's emotions. In other words, the reader will not smile, let alone laugh out loud, or pause for a moment to sympathize, let alone shed tears, when reading it.

Not only that, in The Story of Afonso, Dea once again presents the unusual. The opening paragraph of the writing is likely to make anyone frown. She wrote this: “A crocodile is a crocodile is a crocodile, and a human is a human is a human. Is that a truism? No. Afonso Garcia de Solis, for example, was a crocodile was a human was a European explorer, and according to an anthropologist, was a catfish that—due to pure bad luck—ended up as a side dish for his own children’s lunch” (p. 11). If the writing is followed continuously, the reader will find that the writing is ‘only’ a travel report told by “I” in West Tulang Bawang, Lampung. In it, the reader can find the reason “I” went there, the activities “I” did, the people “I” talked to, and what they talked about.

Dea also presents the unusual in Contemporary Sad Stories (IV). In it, the reader meets the parents of I Gusti Putu Lokomotif alias Loko. If in Youth Rage E readers find very minimal dialogue, in this story readers actually 'only' find Loko's parents' dialogue. They argue starting from love, property, child custody, and in the end readers are brought to a debate about tossing a coin to make a decision. Perhaps, only in Dea's work, readers can find such an unusual conversation. What makes the story even more unusual, the debate was "Emergencyly recorded on a greenday cassette - Warning, Jakarta, April 2003. The transcript is attached to the thesis entitled Human Relations According to Arthur Schopenhauer. Archives of the library of the Faculty of Philosophy, Gadjah Mada University, 2015″ (p. 27).

In Contemporary Sad Stories (IX), the reader only finds chat, or maybe SMS, complete with a number of emoticons and the date of delivery, between the poet and his ex-girlfriend. The content begins with a series of poems sent by a poet named Fredrik to his ex-girlfriend, Shalani, on October 19, 2011. The message only received a reply from Shalani on October 23, 2011. The gist of the message: offering a woman to be Fredrik's lover. However, the man refused, and still chose to be a poet, with the consequence of not being able to get back together with his ex-girlfriend. From 2011, the reader is then invited to a conversation in 2013. Here, the poet's ex-girlfriend asks for support vote for a baby contest. It seems that Dea wanted to convey that the woman already had a child, and had not given any news, including her marriage, since the last communication in 2011. It was a bit bitter, indeed.

In constructing a sentence, as well as a paragraph, Dea also goes beyond the usual patterns. In Contemporary Sad Stories (XXIV), for example, he writes: “He wrote good stories that were concise like Lydia Davis. He wrote good stories that were concise like Lydia Davis and surprising like Danevi. He wrote good stories that were concise like Lydia Davis and surprising like Danevi and funny like Vonnegut. He wrote good stories that were concise like Lydia Davis and surprising like Danevi and funny like Vonnegut and philosophical like Borges. He wrote good stories that were concise like Lydia Davis and surprising like Danevi and funny like Vonnegut and philosophical like Borges and cynical like Maupassant. He wrote good stories that were concise like Lydia Davis and surprising like Danevi and funny like Vonnegut and philosophical like Borges…. and moving like Hemingway and talky like Bolaño” (pp. 64-65). Adding clauses to a sentence, repeating them and adding more, and so on, is very unusual in the rules of writing.

It seems that for Dea, writing dozens of short stories that follow general standards is not too difficult. Because, from this collection of short stories, readers can find that she has insight into world-class writers. Also, the diction she uses is rich. However, she chose another way by presenting a different work. When bookstores are filled with tips for getting rich and famous in a short time, when other writers use the same writing style and storytelling techniques, refusing the same can be a trick to attract readers' attention.