Week 10

                                            Madeleine Vonfoester's "Mother of the Tree"

    Good day and welcome back, class.  Hope all is well with you.

It is week 10, the penultimate in the course!  Today we will review a story by George Saunders, and perhaps we will do so in the group format used previously.  Saunders is considered a contemporary master of the short story and very articulate on the matter of his artistic process (see the links below).

George Saunders on how to write a better story (video):  https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/419391/george-saunders-on-story/

(Essay:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/04/what-writers-really-do-when-they-write

There is an element of the macabre in his work, mixing uncomfortably with the day-to-day ordinary.  The haunted house motif introduced early in "Puppy" seems to me to embody this point of view on human consciousness, a bit spooky.  His characters want happiness, comfort, peace of mind–but live in a branded, material world riven by disorienting, challenging forces and ironies of all sorts. What separates and connects the haves and have nots?  For example, what do Marie and Callie have in common?  How does their  meeting illuminate the limits to their knowing one another? What is the difference between growing up on a farm and "near a farm"? we might ask Callie.  Within the ordinary abides a sinister something, like the proverbial corn fields that will be harvested.


Short Essay Final week 11.

Week 9

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The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.

–Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

   Poe explored the extremes of ratiocination, and of madness, responding in part to the desire of readers for the darkly romantic in literature.  He deplored the mysticism of the American Transcendentalist tradition, putting physical rot, disease, and gore front and center.  His narrator-protagonists often declaim their honesty and basic decency in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, seemingly glorying in the recall of their descent into hellish madness and cruelty.  And we readers love the horror tale, as contemporary Stephen King reminds us, for it assures us we occupy a more or less sane and good middle ground.  There is a kind of humility, it seems to me, in the work of Poe and Hawthorne, in being so strongly connected to the evils that assail us in our weakness, our dependencies, addictions, hypocrisy, and sheer ignorance and folly. The black veil taken by Father Hooper in Hawthorne's story is a symbol of the haunted aspect of human consciousness, and a sign that even the most godly, cannot escape the proverbial dark. But through it, and beside it, shines the light.  The intersection of opposites plays a strong role in romantic art.

So to Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), one of my favorite short story writers, for her homely details and refusal to play to expectations, and for bringing the voices of the past to life through the vernacular of African Americans of the early 20th century.


Homework:  Read "Puppy," by George Saunders. Work on final project, due week 10 or 11.

Week 8

Shane

Good afternoon!  Hope all is well.

    To recap last week, we spoke about the personal project for the class and the variety of ways you can fulfill the assignment:  a dramatic performance of a scene from a story or a recitation of some story compatible with the oral tradition, a short fiction in writing, a film or photo short, an illustrated children's story, an analytic essay on one or more of the stories read in class or otherwise appropriate.  I can read drafts or give guidance on any choice you make.

"Three Shots," by Ernest Hemingway, is the first in a series of linked stories published in 1925 as a collection called In Out Time.  The protagonist is a young boy named Nick, camping out on a lake in northern Michigan.  When his father and uncle depart for a night of fishing he is left alone in his tent, in the woods, and confronts his fears, of the dark, and of death, and his own shame at feeling fear and appearing cowardly.  These themes Hemingway addressed throughout his work, and reflect his life.  Showing courage and grace under pressure appear, in some sense, the measure of a man, and his protagonist will try to prove himself, in an unforgiving world, equal to its demands.

"The Tunnel," by Doris Lessing, is another initiation story in which an English boy must literally and symbolically confront death, as he attempts to swim through a treacherously long and narrow sea tunnel, a feat that shows his physical and psychological fortitude under great duress.  He has seen the boys along this southern coast, where he is vacationing with solicitous mother, effortlessly dive into the sea and disappear for minutes on end before reemerging on the far side of some rocks, and he emulates them.  It is a test, a trial on the road to manhood, the description of which constitutes the climax of the story.

"The Bitch," by the French writer Colette, describes a sergeant's fond arrival at the Paris apartment of his mistress.  He is on leave and looking forward to their reunion. He finds only her maid, Lucie, and the faithful Briard sheep dog, Vorace, he has left in his mistress's  care. As the story unfolds, over a matter of several hours on into the evening of that day, we begin to sense that the maid's account of the mistress's whereabouts are suspect. Jeanine is a "little too young and often too gay," the sergeant thinks to himself.  Later he will look at some of the articles near where he lies on the couch, and eye a photo– dated on the back in an unknown hand– of Jeanine looking "charming" in a "short skirt."  Meanwhile, Vorace's devotion is wonderfully depicted.  In the climax,  Vorace leads him to a cottage with beguiling "rosy light" and insists he enter the gate and approach the door, but the master retreats, and in the end, walks quietly away with his dog, returns to the apartment, packs his things, and leaves, taking Vorace, whose "beautiful soul" he will guard more carefully.

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Today we will review "The Black Cat," by Edgar Allan Poe, and "The Minister's Black Veil," by Nathaniel Hawthorne.


Readings for next week:  "Sweat," by Zora Neale Hurston. Last response of 250 words (6).

Week 7

                                                        photo credit:  Sally Mann


Good afternoon, everyone.  Hope all is well:)

  To recap last week's class, the two stories read–"Breakfast," by John Steinbeck, and "The Portable Phonograph," by Walter Van Tilburg Clark– illustrate something of the existential condition of human life, its joys and satisfactions, high achievements, and ever-present dangers and anxieties, all, I dare say, born of the complexities of our physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual life in connection with others and the earth itself.  Strangers meet under the open sky and suspicion and wariness give way before open hospitality and generosity.  Steinbeck's narrator says of the scene he encounters:  "This thing fills me with pleasure. I don't know why, I can see it in the smallest detail."   As dawn is breaking over the eastern mountains, he a solitary traveler, on foot, cold and hungry, comes upon a family whose campsite provides warmth and welcome, food, company, and a sustaining memory of the goodness we may find in honest, hard-working, humble people, the proverbial salt of the earth. He departs at the end, having declined their offer to "maybe get [him] on" picking cotton, but he takes with him "some element of great beauty" that refreshes him and serves as a theme of his story.  Such encounters, however brief, may become in memory pillars of hope and wisdom, a wonderful page in the book of our lives.

Likewise, Clark's story is about a ragged group of cold, hungry, frail, and sick men who meet in a small earthen cave carved out of the bank of a stream to read from some leather-bound classics of literature and listen to classical recordings. The acme of human achievement is symbolized in these works, which have here been salvaged from the wholesale destruction of war.  Amid the remains, the bomb craters, blasted trees, and weeds, life hangs on.  The men gathered together are survivors brought together by the shared hardship of life, and their nostalgia for what was, which they can no longer take for granted. They listen to the music in a trance of exquisite memories and feelings. The protagonist, whose collection of art is sacrosanct in this setting, jealously guards it from the possibly predatory regard of his fellows.  In the conclusion, he retires to his makeshift bed, watching the doorway of his hovel and clutching "the comfortable piece of lead pipe." Is he merely paranoid?  Perhaps. Certainly, he will defend his possessions in hand-to-hand combat, if need be.


Essay 4 is due today, a little piece on the role of setting in a story of your choosing from the reading list.

Reading for next week:  "The Black Cat," by Edgar Allen Poe, and "The Minister's Black Veil," by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Short response 5.

Week 6

Library at Ancient Ephesus 

Good afternoon, students.  Hope you are feeling loved this Valentine's Day in whatever way life affords!

   The quiz question last dealt with how we identify or define the central character, the protagonist, that is.  Usually, the sheer attention given to one character over all others makes the matter simple. Still, it helps to apply certain tests.  What is the central conflict of the story?  and who faces it most directly? that is, for whom is there more at stake in the issue?  We meet in "The Found Boat"  a group of two girls and three boys, all in the "flood" of changes that come with adolescence and the sexual awakenings of puberty.  Of the five, only Eva's consciousness is directly open to us by means of a third-person narrator that reveals what she is thinking and imagining.  She has an adventurous, bold mind and spirit, in keeping with her name, which recalls the first woman in biblical myth.  We learn of her attraction to Clayton, whose storied name recalls that of Adam, first man, formed of clay by God.  Clayton is a leader among the boys, rather silently so, and the man of his home (his father dead), and Eva likes him.  The group's journey out of town in the boat on the flooded Wawanash sets the stage for the climactic encounter in which Eva reveals her naked self to Clayton. It is modern version of an ancient encounter that each of us enacts if we seek intimacy of the kind involving sex. Which is where life begins, we need not be reminded, and a holy place, therefore. Every society will "interpret" the archetypal scene in its fashion, but in the end, seems to me, there is the natural fact, of human desire.

  On to "Breakfast," by John Steinbeck, and "The Portable Phonograph," by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, two stories featuring solitaries and vast landscapes opening onto the mysteries of our nature and relationship to each other.

Atom Bomb

Homework Readings and Writing:  Read "The Bitch," by Colette,  "Three Shots," by Ernest Hemingway, and "Through the Tunnel," by Doris Lessing.

In an essay of 400-450 words describe how the element of setting literally and symbolically conveys a story's themes.  Choose a story read in class over the past several weeks.

Week 5

George Condo

Abstracted Figures, 2011

Acrylic, charcoal and pastel on linen

68 x 66 inches

Good afternoon, class. 

    I read and enjoyed your responses to last week's "Son of Satan," some of which I'll transcribe here (edited for brevity, grammar, spelling):  

• The story sounds real to me, like something we might hear anywhere, the news, social media, from friends. Violence is one of the worst things that will effect your kids [. . .]
• Kids pick on other kids that they believe can't help themselves.
• The ending didn't make much sense because it sort of just, ends, [. . . ]
• Many children tend to follow the leader, or one they aspire to [ . . .] a critique of the herd-like nature of humanity.
• [. . . ] the epitome of the pack mentality that is common among the disenfranchised youth of this country. It shines a light on how easily a simple grievance can escalate into something more severe [. . . .] many young men lack the ability to force the consequences of their actions, blinded by their desire to live up to false notions and reputations shared and encouraged by their peers.
• The jury and executioner are one in the same. The sound leader was punishing his friend for lying, something he had done several times. [Later, father and son] threaten each other's life, showing that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
• Morality and ethics come into play to show that people's behaviors and actions have consequences.
• Cruel.

In a an essay by the novelist Stephen King, famous horror story writer, he says the following:  

"I think we are all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better–and maybe not all that much better, after all. We've all known people who sometimes squelch their faces into horrible grimaces when they believe no one is watching, people who have some hysterical fear–of snakes, the dark, the tight place, the long drop . . . and, of course, those final worms that are waiting so patiently underground.

"When we pay our four or five bucks [. . .] in a theater showing a horror movie, we are daring the nightmare.

"[. . . ] To show that we can, that we are not afraid, that we can ride the rollercoaster[ . . .] the special province of the young.

"The fun comes from seeing others menaced–sometimes killed. 

    The socially constructive emotions draw positive reinforcement; we want civilization–"love, friendship, loyalty, kindness."  Indeed, we do.

Emma Wynn's "Bones" features an archetypal figure known in the literature of folklore and myth as the crone or hag.  She is an embodiment of the horror we attach to old age, and death.

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Darkness, irrational fear, cruelty–they exist, and bedevil us.  Art, at times, serves to show us the whole "ugly" picture.  Which brings me to the readings list.  We have not got to all that I have posted, but we will push on. Today we will cover "The Found Boat," and perhaps "The Last Leaf," by O. Henry, a story about the life of artists in early 20th century New York, Greenwich Village.

I will give in handout form "The Portable Phonograph," a post-apocalyptic story in which the phonograph, which,  of course,  plays music, symbolizes all the grace and civility and beauty to which humans aspire. 

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Week 4

                                                       

        The groves were God's first temples.  ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"

Good afternoon.  I hope that you are all well today, feeling good  . . . about life and, oh, I dunno, your place in the world.  

    I want to here suggest an option for your writing, whether in response work or as alternative to the short fiction assigned #3, which is due next week.  It involves exploring the meaning of a word that has some significance in your life, your intentions and behavior or in spiritual practice, perhaps.   I use the phrase spiritual practice in no particular religious sense but loosely to refer to the many ways we attempt to bring ourselves in to harmony with the world, the people we share our lives with, and nature.  An  essay approach might involve defining the word you have chosen in an extended fashion (by multiple means and examples) and bringing it to bear on one or more stories read. You might employ a simple definition of the word's most common meaning in use, or the secondary or tertiary meaning, as listed in a dictionary entry.  The development of the essay will proceed with personal narration, description, and/or illustration of the meaning the word has in your life, and in the lives of others– story characters.  The following is a list of abstract words (i.e. they cannot be physically seen or touched as say an apple or a diamond or a tree can) that you might choose from:  

Attention

Beauty

Compassion

Devotion

Faith

Grace

Justice

Peace

Reverance

Silence

Wonder

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I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)   by  Emily Dickinson  (1830 - 1886)

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –  
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –  
To an admiring Bog!

In the poem above, Emily Dickinson addresses a theme we went round and round last week in our review of "Joy," by Anton Chekhov:  the need for recognition and status. It began somewhere, I think with my saying stories often focus on "outsiders" or people who feel themselves to be.  We spend a lot of time learning to get comfortable with ourselves and making unwonted comparisons, when each might do better to embrace and cultivate their unique difference. In this world, we need a healthy ego, and humility, too; that is, to be humble (of the earth or ground, from the Latin humus). We must honor our connection to the divine, our individual uniqueness, cultivate and celebrate all that is born in us; and do so in full recognition of the unique gifts others bring to the world, each of us sprung from the same humus. 

If we don't watch it in class, I recommend highly the following TED talk:  "The Art of Being Yourself," by Caroline McHugh. I think you will each find something remarkable in this elegant address of a topic that bedevils many.

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So here's a question:  what meaning have the setting elements of ocean, river, trees, hedges, and garden in the little love story "Up in the Tree"?  If you read this post before class today, you have some lead time.

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As indicated above, we have yet to review "Up in the Tree" and so we'll begin there today, after some followup of the murder mystery "Continuity of Parks," which I called a metafiction (a story about story and about reading, the imaginative experience that it is); and "Popular Mechanics," a dark, minimalist piece written from a third-person objective point of view (POV) that shows in ironic fashion an infant torn asunder by quarreling parents who, on the verge of separation, are each determined to claim it.  The title of the story, I pointed out, makes dual reference to what is common in domestic relationships, and a magazine of the same name that may help us to see the male role in the story more trenchantly. In depicting the father's use of violent physical force to wrest the child from the mother's arms, the story moves from crisis into climax and an abrupt conclusion. Amid Baby's cries and a pot crashing to the floor–he will take possession from her!  Ah! what fools these mortals be (to quote Shakespeare).

We may do the group work on the readings assigned for this week, instead of "Powder," as the syllabus records, which will allow for more time to review your writing projects.   

Readings for next week:  "The Found Boat," by Alice Munro. You will have to download the PDF after googling the title (I was prevented from simply copying the link, for some reason). Here is a link to some background on the author:  http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/read-14-short-stories-from-nobel-prize-winning-writer-alice-munro-free-online.html

*Don't forget to write the short fiction or alternate piece.