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.

Week 3

 

Alicia Keyes singing "Girl on Fire" Jan.21, 2017

     Thinking about the short stories we read last week–"Desiree's Baby" and "Simon's Papa"–and the ongoing historic struggles of minorities, people of color, and women everywhere to gain social and political legitimacy and equality and their fair share at the table, I was very glad to see multitudes of women march in solidarity for a more just and compassionate society in D.C., New York, and cities around the world on Saturday, January 21, 2017.   Bigotry and hatred, fear and greed are a scourge today as of old and the stories will be told.  The individual "outsider,"  the protagonist beset by a hostile or contrary power, reputation or name sometimes undermined by talk,  is the heart of a great many stories.  In the Hero's Journey the many trials, temptations, and wanderings of the quest lead at last to a great confrontation with "whatever holds the ultimate power" (see handout, "Atonement") and hold the promise of transformation to a new order, one that may reconcile or get beyond warring opposites.  The journey is inward, a psychic aspect of every human life, and outward, traversing the plane of social life.  And the stakes are high for all.

 The eminent American writer James Baldwin wrote, 

We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.”

Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues," on race, addiction, and jazz music, is a wonderful read, by the way, and perhaps we should read it.

    We want to be recognized, validated, legitimated.  The quest may ultimately lead back to ourselves, in discovery that we must be the source and power of salvation we seek.  Edward Snowden makes the point in a recent interview, and he is not the first, that we cannot put too much faith in our elected leaders or inherited authority that does not deal with us in just, transparent ways.  The quest is a literal, material world one and a spiritual one that connects us to everything on the planet, past, present, and future, and if successful (see handout "Return)  we achieve wisdom, and freedom, reconciled to the past and open to the future, firmly planted in the present moment.

  So we move to "Joy," a revealing slice of life story set in late 19th century Russia, written by Anton Chekhov, and the several others presented in handout last week: "Popular Mechanics," by American Raymond Carver, "Continuity of Parks," by Argentina's Julio Cortazar, and "Up in the Tree," by Japanese author Kawabata Yasunari.

Homework:  Read "Girl," a very short story by Jamaica Kincaid, "Son of Satan," Charles Bukowski (handout).  Begin short fiction writing of 400-500 words, titled and double-spaced, and due week 5 in class.

    

Week 2

                                                          A 19th Century Mockup of RVW



    Welcome back, Class.  Hope you have been well since last we met.  I went home that day thinking about Italo Calvino's "Tale of the Cats, " in particular the image of a young girl/woman descending a ladder into a hole in the ground to be, as it turns out, rescued from an intolerable home life by a family of cats.  I know something about cats because I have several and they indeed are fastidious about keepings themselves clean, though I have to clean up their leavings! They are affectionate and loving, which the protagonist in the story must surely delight in.  They are cunning, too, operating by an instinctual stealth, and merciless in their dealings with prey.  We may see this reflected in the plot, particularly the "good" mother cat's means of setting up for destruction the story's two antagonists, step-mother and sister, both of whom are depicted as opposites of the girl and her allies.  Here, as in many fairy tales, a properly protective father is either altogether missing or lacking in his role.  By the end, freed from persecution, the girl marries a "handsome" fellow, which I understand to mean bodes well for her personal happiness, just as personal beauty predisposes us to imagine health and prospects of goodness.

The story reminded me of the symbols we encounter in art and how they contain meaning that may at first escape notice.  That dark hole, the ladder, what fear she must have felt in her descent; perhaps excitement too.  And that ungainly flower, the cauliflower that leads the way.  Two influential figures in the literature of  mythic and symbolic analysis are Carl Jung, an early student of Sigmund Freud, and Joseph Campbell, a scholar of comparative mythology and popularizer of the "Hero's Journey" or monomyth that may be detected in the plots, characters, motifs, and themes of stories everywhere. In his description, the hero or protagonist is called to some action, perhaps an inner prompting, perhaps an outer obligation that will force him/her to go beyond the familiar, to realize a much wider field of play and overcome a great many obstacles and threats, all of which will be instrumental in the formation and strengthening of the innate propensities and character of this individual.  Jung saw the process of individuation as one in which we all strive to reconcile conflicting aspects of our nature, two bring opposites into some kind of workable or harmonious union.  The acorn will become an oak, if it is not prevented or obstructed in some way, as he put it.  The human wants to grow in accord with its potential, but nothing is easy or guaranteed.  Internal issues, hidden fears, shadow elements, lie in wait to ensure that our journey will not be uneventful. He spent his life exploring the human psyche through the images manifest in dreams and in art and stories and culture more broadly.  He saw the salvation of the individual and understanding of the hidden elements of the psyche as essential to society and its salvation.
                         

As regards the symbols of stories, myths and legends, whether of ancient Babylon, Egypt, Greece, India  the Judeo-Christian world, Native America, or the contemporary U.S., Joseph Campbell wrote that they refer “primarily to our inner selves” and not to “outer historical events” (Thou Art That 28), that they are psychological archetypes known to all mythologies.”  Beyond the necessities imposed by our animal nature, he writes, is “another order of living, which the animals do not know, that of awe before the mystery of being, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, that can be the root and branch of the spiritual sense of one’s days” (29).

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Themes in Fiction (and all literature):  

Nature:   perhaps the primary thematic focus, and a wide field of play, for there is no escaping Nature, the ultimate source and end of all things human and non-human.  What is Nature actually, and what is not?  We look at nature through the lens of "Art," an entirely human construct, one which here includes philosophy, religion, history, science and, importantly, language.   We humans are nature’s creatures, however distinct, highly evolved, and seemingly "superior" to other species.  Whether little or much our awareness of the physical universe–Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, and all the world's “creatures great and small,” etcetera– we are defined and bound by our relationship to the natural world, the Cosmos, out of which we emerged, as did all things, some 13 billion years ago, when the Big Bang occurred, according to scientific claims and calculations. The tree of life is an old and apt symbol of this connectedness, mythological and scientific.

       

The Human Experience and Journey (Individual/Society):  We are born, grow to youth and maturity, age, and then die . . . and in this our lives, individually and collectively, reflect the age-old succession of the seasons and organic life.  A continual process of creation and destruction, as the old gives way before the new, and what is past becomes an archive of artifacts, memories and stories, whereby we can trace our origins, and wonder and speculate about the mysteries of Time.  In fact, As William Faulkner wrote, the past is never dead. The vital function that artists perform in creating art works, their evocations and explorations of the material and spiritual realms, of human growth and identity, the conflicts between individuals and societal groups, provide an endless source of insight, inspiration, and wonder.  I am hoping you find it so, at any rate.

Religion/God/ Spirituality:  The course material invites you to consider representations of nature, of the human and what we have made of things, the phenomena,  and the noumena of the world.   What to think of nature, our origins, the Creation,  each other, family, society, culture?  Indeed, we may see nature, including humans and their constructs, an antagonist, an ally, a morally neutral, even amoral force, reflective of forces and processes far beyond our ability to comprehend, in which savagery, destruction, suffering and death stand equally with kindness, creation, joy, and life.  Life comprises a great many conceptual opposites and their reconciliation is a life's work.  The poems and stories illustrate just such work. We think in categories of opposition: life/death; light/dark; good/evil; finite/infinite; material/immaterial; mutable/immutable; temporal/eternal; transcendence/immanence; the One/the Many, holy/unholy.  We have the given and what we make of it verbally or linguistically, conceptually.  Art manifests the human imagination and spirit in its attempt to recreate, name, and understand life.

ART     A definition of  Art,  from Carl Jung's "The Poet":  Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.  The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. . . .

     A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is never unequivocal.  A dream never says:  "You ought," or:   "This is the Truth."  It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and we must draw our own conclusions.

And from Annie Dillard's "About Symbol": All art may be said to be symbolic in this sense:  it is a material mock-up of bright idea.  Any work of art symbolizes the process by which spirit generates matter, or materials generate idea.  Any work of art symbolizes juncture itself, the socking of eternity into time and energy into form.  

                                                                                                                                     Christian Houge

To summarize, we live in time, and in space, and the cycles of nature and stages of life provide rich subject matter for writers reflecting on the experience of living.  Nature, in fact, appears a mirror and a touchstone of the Self and human experience.  We are part of universal nature, and we bring our particular human nature to it, with our griefs, our joys, our forebodings, aspirations, and imaginings.  The Book of Nature informs us to the extent we take the time to read it and to acknowledge how it shapes us. A falling leaf, a sudden snowfall, the stars shining in the blackness of space–these speak to us.  

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Whenever I read "Rip Van Winkle,"  Washington Irving's story set in the Catskills of colonial America, I think of the power of nature to call us out of ourselves and away into the wonders of mountains, woods, trees, rivers, streams, and of how "civilization" was carved from wilderness. The attitude of awe and reverence inspired by earth's landscapes and the healthful vigor and refreshment we experience there come back to me, and I want to go on a long hike just like Rip did.

Two links that give context to the landscape in art:

http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/engl203/overviews/sublime.htm

https://www.britannica.com/art/Hudson-River-school

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I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.   –John Masefield (1878-1967), British poet

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Homework: Read "Joy," by Anton Chekhov and the other works given in class ad write a short response (300 words).

The following questions may serve as a guide and be useful in thinking and writing about a story: 

1.  What does the title indicate? How does it frame or shape our understanding of the story whole?

2.  Who is speaking and why, or to what purpose?  What tone(s) of voice do you hear and where?

3.  What is the situation? What significant actions occur?   What's the conflict or at stake for the speaker or central character?

4. What image(s) do you find most attractive or arresting? Do any–person, place or thing–appear symbolic?  What associations are thus called forth?

5. Which words, phrases, lines or images present difficulties of interpretation?

6. What is the climax of the story and its apparent theme(s)?

The Panther                        Rainer Maria Rilke ( 1875-1926 )

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else.  It seems to him there are

a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts, quietly.  An image enters in,

rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

Week 1

 Girl Reading, by Edward Vuillard

Welcome.  You have found your way  to the "Short Story" course blog, where we begin our study of the short story genre with a brief historical overview. No doubt, humans have been telling stories for millennia, around the world and as far back as records exist.  Not necessarily as art forms, of course, though the artful storyteller and story certainly existed, we must surmise, long before writing was invented, just as the ancient cave paintings in various sites attest to the conceptual capacities of early humans.The first stories might have been told, it seems fair to think, around the communal fire and for the same reason we attend to stories today (though not often fireside!). They entertain and teach us, involve us in an experience of sound and rhythm, word play, imagination, and community that deepens our sense of life.

Perhaps you were given a religious education, read the Bible.  Then you perhaps remember the famous parable of The Prodigal Son from the New Testament, and the history of Cain and Abel from the Old Testament.  Certainly, the garden, Eden, and Adam and Eve are familiar names.  Perhaps you have read of Sheherazade and The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of ancient Oriental tales; and remember, having studied them in high school, some of the characters from Geoffrey Chaucer's medieval Canterbury Tales.   I would bet you know some of the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans, stories of Zeus the sky and thunder God and his many children–Athena and Apollo and Helen of Troy among them.  My head swims with half-remembered figures and parapets and towers and palaces and burning plains and I've yet to mention the beloved figures of the fairytale, Cinderella and Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty and so many more.  All can be traced to the oral tradition despite their now familiar literary forms and all have fed the modern short story form, as have the non-fiction genres of biography, essay, journal, and travel writing.  In fact the form of the folktale and fairytale has been kept alive by modern writers, as far back as Hans Christian Anderson and Oscar Wilde in the 19th century (who unlike the Grimm brothers did not collect their stories from the field but invented them, the so-called literary form). I read one recently by Italo Calvino that I will share here, "The Tale of the Cats," from his Italian Folktales (1956), a collection reviewed here by science fiction writer Ursula LeGuin.

See here for a web presentation of some of the many precursors to the modern short story, which dates from the 19th century and owes its form in part to the commercial predominance of newspapers and magazines in publishing, particularly here in America, during a time of great transformations and dislocations.

The sketches and tales of Washington Irving were the first in America to ignite the interest of European readers and he the first to make a living as a writer of short stories. If you will, we can read "Rip Van Winkle," which is probably his best known piece (vying with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which story you probably know from the Tim Burton film). In the 19th century, Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Edgar A. Poe, Herman Melville, and other American writers helped develop the art of the form, along with European masters such as Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, and Leo Tolstoy. We have only so much time in the class and now we in the 21st century have quite a treasury of stories, as even though the genre is not a popular form (very few periodicals publishing fiction, low pay, competition from other media, notably films), there are contemporary masters and niche markets for the committed such as in academia.

The Basic Elements:  Character–Setting– Plot–Narrative Point of View–Theme–Symbol

The aims of the storyteller dovetail with the structure of the story.  Each of the elements will be inextricable from the others in terms of the collective expression, but we can look at the separate elements to see how they shape our impressions and convey various ideas. As readers and students of the form that is just what we will be doing in class, in discussions and in writing and other ways of responding, across a variety of story examples that evoke sometimes similar and other times wholly different associations. I will include here another link to a story by the contemporary writer Annie Proulx, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, who writes wonderfully of the American West (you may have seen the film Brokeback Mountain, which was based on a short story of hers).  The story is called "The Blood Bay."

More to come!


Homework Selections to read:  "Simon's Papa," by Guy de Maupassant
                                                    "Desiree's Baby," by Kate Chopin

Response Assignment of 300 words:  Your responses should be edited for brevity and focus but come right out of the impressions, thoughts, associations and questions you have in reading one or more of the stories assigned.  You do not have to explain the story in detail or summarize in academic fashion in the way one finds at many online sources, though that ability to summarize succinctly will stand you in good stead and be useful if you are asked to do so or must in the course of an essay to orient readers.  I do want you to include titles and authors, properly punctuated and the occasional direct quotation to ground your comments and show precisely where you have been engaged.