I had to sit with this one a little before I knew quite what I wanted to say about it. I didn't know much about the author beforehand, so I was influenced to some extent by the foreward and afterward, but my own gut feeling after reading these was that the thing they did best was defy every structural expectation I've been trained to have. I am that smartass who will say a line in a movie before the characters do, even when I haven't seen it, because I know what they're going to say, and I know what they're going to say because every structural and storytelling convention says they have to say it. (Also, in many cases, lazy writing, but I digress.) The stories in Don't Pay Bad for Bad do not conform to any of these expectations. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I'm not sure I know, but I liked that I did not know these stories on any level, and I liked that I could never tell you where they were going.

The foreward and the afterward bring up interesting discussions about translation and culture and what are essential elements when relating a story. (The book is not actually in translation, but I've categorized it that way because of this discussion, and because in their original form these stories are essentially a translation by the author, or maybe more a transliteration, which is the interesting part of it.) What things are "lost in translation", and who says what the correct way to tell a story is, anyway? ( )