Help me find a short story from HS English class.

July 4, 2008 1:38 PM

Looking for a short story I read in high school English ages ago. Rough story line: Guy dies. Slowly over time pieces of evidence that he ever lived disappear from the world...

...Finally, many years after his death, the last piece of paper bearing his signature is burned. Now the last trace of his life is gone. Sorry I can't give more detail. Probably read this in about 1980, and that's all that stuck. Thanks for your help!

posted by takenRoad to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

Any idea if it won any awards?

http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/index.html

could be really helpful if you knew it had won an award.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:50 PM on July 4, 2008

It has a slight whiff of Harlan Ellison about it. He wrote a number of stories with a similar theme.
posted by outlier at 2:08 PM on July 4, 2008

I'm almost certain this a philip k dick story. Can't think of the name of it now, but I'm confident that I've read it. Will search some.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 2:52 PM on July 4, 2008

Sounds like PKD to me, or maybe someone writing in his style (think Pohl maybe did that at some point... hm. Off to search. Race you, Jedi :)
posted by Leon at 3:05 PM on July 4, 2008

Sounds like Richard Matheson's "The Disappearing Act". Great story.
posted by amicamentis at 10:14 AM on July 5, 2008

Response by poster: Hi All,

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have the sense that the story I'm trying to find was by a science fiction author. "My" story had already made it into a hard cover anthology of English literature by the time I was in high school in the late 70s.

I'll try to see if I can find Matheson's "The Disappearing Act".

All for now,

takenRoad
posted by takenRoad at 11:16 AM on July 5, 2008