short story identification
Dates: 4/14/04,2:17 PM through 4/19/04,10:03 AM (2 postings)
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Fiction_L Archives
short story identification
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FROM: Linda Dietert <[removed]@yahoo.com>
REC'D: 4/14/04, 2:17 PM
I am trying to identify two short stories.
The first includes in the title either "dry white
sheet" or "long white sheet". The patron read the
story in high school, possibly in a Norton anthology.
The plot involves 3 to 4 groups of people, each group
in a different room, who are giving the task of
getting a white sheet completely dry. One of the
groups works diligently and finally devises a way to
achieve a completely dry sheet, only to have the
taskmaster drench them and the sheet.
The other story was heard on a radio program in
Wisconsin "about 20 years ago." The story took no
more than 15 minutes of air time. In the story a man
and a dog are alone on a desolate planet, possibly
after a plane crash. At the end of the story, the man
says to the dog, "I wish you could talk.", to which
the dog replies, "I can talk, I was just waiting for
you to ask me."
Any assistance will be most appreciated.
=====
Linda Dietert
Reference Librarian
Farmers Branch Manske Library
Farmers Branch TX
FROM: Dennis Lien <[removed]@tc.umn.edu>
REC'D: 4/19/04, 10:03 AM
My segment of the Collective Brain finally remembered and found
this one: it's "The Long Sheet" by William Sansom. It's in his
1944 collection FIREMAN FLOWER and the recent "best of" Sansom
from Tartarus Press, VARIOUS TEMPTATIONS*. (The last is a
low-print-run hc published in England only, so you'll probably
have better luck finding the 1944 collection.) It's also in
at least one anthology, HORIZON STORIES, ed. Cyril Connolly
(1946).
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/christopherpriest/sanrev.htm
(the Tartarus Press VARIOUS TEMPTATIONS has the same title but
not the same contents as an earlier Sansom collection of the
same name)
>
>The other story was heard on a radio program in
>Wisconsin "about 20 years ago." The story took no
>more than 15 minutes of air time. In the story a man
>and a dog are alone on a desolate planet, possibly
>after a plane crash. At the end of the story, the man
>says to the dog, "I wish you could talk.", to which
>the dog replies, "I can talk, I was just waiting for
>you to ask me."
>
>Any assistance will be most appreciated.
Only thing *vaguely* near this I can think would be a misremembering
of "Desertion" by Clifford Simak. (This was adapted for radio in
the early 1950s on either X MINUS ONE or DIMENSION X, so it may
still be rerun on local airwaves, but I think it was a half hour
show rather than fifteen minutes--and the plot isn't all that close.)
Spoiler alert--
In "Desertion," earth scientists can't explore Jupiter directly, but
have a technique of transferring human consciousness into a wolf-like
native animal. But the humans so treated have not been coming back
to base to have the process reversed. The viewpoint character is
part of an expanded experiment: not only is his being transferred,
but so is that of his dog. The pair revel in the ability to
communicate as old friends, and enjoy their freedom from the
dreary research center. At the end they realize that they, too,
will decide never to return to "civilization," for (as the last
lines have it)--
"They would turn me back into a dog."
"And me back into a man."
As I said, not very close.
Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // [removed]@tc.umn.edu
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