The synching, so early in the story, of Chuck’s decline to the world’s destruction almost completely undermines the ensuing Acts Two and One, leaving them little more to do than a working-out of the plot. But clues recur with a deflating obviousness from Act to Act: a roller-skating girl with pigtails (Violet McGraw) turns up in Marty’s world and in Chuck’s; so does the undertaker; so does a padlocked door at the top of a staircase; so does the song “Gimme Some Lovin’ ”; and so, even, does Marty himself. The trickery of its creation is clever but impersonal for reasons that go beyond the story’s stiff detail-twiddling: the effort to convert the powerful pathos of Chuck’s terminal illness into a coherent and consistent narrative arc ends up filtering out his perspective, the extremes of his subjectivity.
Author: Richard Brody
Published at: 2025-06-16 22:31:11
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