{"id":519,"date":"2022-01-21T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/greenblotter\/?p=519"},"modified":"2022-01-21T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T16:00:00","slug":"doesnt-really-matter-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things-right-review-of-susan-yims-hi-_______-do-you-have-a-small-minute-to-talk-about-your-extended-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/2022\/01\/21\/doesnt-really-matter-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things-right-review-of-susan-yims-hi-_______-do-you-have-a-small-minute-to-talk-about-your-extended-warrant\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDoesn\u2019t really matter in the grand scheme of things, right?\u201d: Review of Susan Yim\u2019s \u201cHi _______, do you have a small minute to talk about your extended warranty?\u201d (HAD, January 15, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
reviewed by Isaac Fox<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\"image<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

About a quarter of the way through Susan Yim\u2019s \u201cHi _______, do you have a small minute to talk about your extended warranty?\u201d, the piece retitles itself. The new, far more representative, title is \u201cWhat are your most recent thoughts on life as it is in the present moment: a survey.\u201d (A note on genre: this doesn\u2019t really fit any of the categories, so I\u2019ll refer to it simply as a \u201cpiece.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHi _______\u2026\u201d takes the form of a customer survey, much like the vaguely addressed, blander-than-cardboard ones infesting everyone\u2019s mailbox and inbox. But this survey is a handwritten splash of color, and its questions are a little different than what the title might lead you to expect. One offers up an array of geometric patterns and asks, \u201cWhich one is life? NOTE: There is<\/span> a correct answer.\u201d Other questions flow vertically up and down the page, and at times, some (but not all) of the letters in a sentence invert or turn sideways. This barrage of subverted expectations turns an annoying little constant of 21st-century life into something chaotic and unsettling.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of Yim\u2019s piece, the speaker\u2019s voice alternates between intrusive, absurd, poetic, crude, existential, and increasingly frantic. At the same time, Yim also evokes the chilly, authoritative voice of a more traditional questionnaire. These opposing tones often clash with each other or change places suddenly, as in this question: \u201cFollow a line or don\u2019t<\/span> \/ Doesn\u2019t really matter in the grand scheme of things, right?\u201d The resulting effect captures the contradictions and whiplash of our collective \u201cmost recent thoughts on life as it is in the present moment.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read \u201cHi _______, do you have a small minute to talk about your extended warranty?\u201d online at https:\/\/www.havehashad.com\/hadposts\/a-questionnaire<\/a>. Yim has also posted several people\u2019s responses, including her own, on Twitter. Her handle is @fearthenorms<\/a>. HAD<\/em> (https:\/\/www.havehashad.com<\/a>) posts something short and delightfully odd every day.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. He spends his free time reading and writing things that aren’t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction and photography have appeared in Rune Bear<\/em> and Heart of Flesh <\/em>magazines, as well as Green Blotter<\/em>\u2019s 2021 issue. You can find him on Twitter at @IsaacFo80415188<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reviewed by Isaac Fox About a quarter of the way through Susan Yim\u2019s \u201cHi _______, do you have a small minute to talk about your extended warranty?\u201d, the piece retitles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-isaac-fox","tag-literary-magazine-review","tag-micro-review","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}