Deal Me In Challenge: Poor Yorick by Theodore Sturgeon

Card Drawn:

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."

Hamlet is one of my favorite plays so of course I would be interested in reading a story titled "Poor Yorick" by Theodore Sturgeon who is often recognized as one of the preeminent writers from the Golden Age of science-fiction. Consider my disappointment to discover the only allusion to Shakespeare's famous play is a human skull and the story is not even remotely science-fiction. Theodore Sturgeon was a huge influence on the genre, providing inspiration for many writers such as Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut, two authors whom I hold in great esteem. Vonnegut even named one of his most famous characters after Theodore Sturgeon: Kilgore Trout (Kilgore = Theodore, Trout = Sturgeon. Get it?). Yet, after reading some of his other novels, short stories (some have already been reviewed on this blog) and now this story, he is one of those distinguished authors that has failed to really impress me. He is a writer of big ideas and I acknowledge his impact but his writing tends to come across as bland, unpolished; lacking a certain kind of poetic energy and finesse. He started off writing for the pulp-magazine market and "Poor Yorick" is one of his early stories so perhaps that might explain why it feels so insipid, bogged down by clunky prose and silly plot contrivances. 

On a more positive note, the story actually begins with a great opening sentence: "If you don't want to read an unpleasant story, we are even. Because I didn't want to write it either." A pithy and tongue-in-cheek remark that sets the tone. Good stuff. Indeed, the narrator is correct about this being an unpleasant story but for all the wrong reasons. June is a stereotypical blonde girl and her boyfriend is fighting overseas in some unnamed war. The story takes a morbid turn when he sends her a skull in the mail as a token of his love. June is thrilled and even uses it to play pranks on people. She thinks that the skull belongs to a Japanese solider because of its smaller size. Sturgeon's blatant racism is on full display. We also find out that her brother is fighting alongside the boyfriend in the same war. Later on she invites a friend over who also happens to be the family dentist (coincidence?) and he notices that the skull's teeth has two distinct fillings...the horror!  The "twist ending" is utterly ridiculous and Sturgeon gives the reader no reason to care about the outcome.