Amy Hempel use of language...

...I found it really interesting. The story reminded me in a lot of ways of a Chuck Palahniuk piece, with a narrator who loves to start sentences with "That" and who loves to over use "and"s and who punctuates her narration with random, semi-factual pondering. In particular, it reminds me of a line from Invisible Monsters where the narrator says something along the lines of, "Game shows exist to make us feel good about the tiny tidbits of useless info that are all that remain of our educations," a line I've always liked.
One big difference is that Palahniuk always leaves you guessing as to whether the little tidbits he shares have any truth to them. With this story, Hempel makes it clear right away that her tidbits are not to be taken as facts. (By describing the moon as banana shaped). Other facts are absolutely absurd, but simultaneously strangely familiar and impossible-to-fact-check enough to actually be true (like Dylan's mom inventing white out, a monkey signing to its dead progeny, both have that certain sound... like something that could be true but likely isn't) but by including this fact about the moon, she removes all doubt from the situation. Everyone knows the moon's a sphere, period. I'm still puzzlng over the effect of this descision to use blatantly false trivia...
Another aspect of Hempel's use of language I wanted to draw attention to is its sound. Phrases like, "She yanked off her mask and threw it on the floor. She kicked at the blankets and moved to the door," are peppered throughout the story. They were a big part of what made the story enjoyable to me. And they're more than just ear-porn, too, the sound helps to influence meaning. I mean, maybe its a little obvious, what with the end rhyme and all, but these are two lines from a poem tactically transplanted into this shortstory. Realizing that draws the readers attention to the rhythm, and although I've already forgotten the names of the different metrical patterns we looked at in class, I'm pretty sure I recognize this as the one that gallups--a perfect match in language for the scene that the narrator would have witnessed: a patient who hasn't used her legs in a long time attempt to storm angrily out of a room.
There's plenty of other examples of her style matching her substance, and I'd love to talk about them, but I think this post is probably longwinded enough as it is.