I can’t remember where I heard it but I know someone or some radio show or some essay told me that one of the most overused story/scene-setting devices in modern literary fiction (or at least the modern literary fiction that gets rejected from writing contests and such) is the mention of the buzzing sounds of cicadas.
Supposedly that means the author is lazy and can’t think of any other sound of the south. I think it says more about the northerners that get to live in peaceful silence. I can’t walk outside without feeling like a gang of bloodthirsty vampires are flying toward me (pick any murder scene from The Lost Boys). I’m not just coming up with the vampire thing out of nowhere, some of these buggers have red googley eyes.
I also heard the other day a tale about how the clicks can tell you how hot it is going to be so that would explain why the bugs around here are clicking at cacophonous 150 times a second, because it is that hot.
And now that I am done complaining about the heat and the noise around here, I am going to retreat until I can come up with another topic.
It won’t be too long, school is back in session and my first class is tonight. I’m looking at the class list and the middle names alone have more buzz than six trees full of cicadas.
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