Cynthia's comments
Cynthia's comments from the Constant Reader group.
Note: Cynthia is no longer a member of this group.
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Sherry, You will certainly enjoy Anchee Min's seminar in Key West; she was the speaker last year at a literary festival for high school students that I am involved with. I really love her nonfiction. Her prose in Red A zalea (written when she was first learning English) is raw and honest. When she was here, our English department at the high school led a community discussion on this book, in which we compared her prose to a Matisse painting.
spoiler
I do see this as a story about the mother, and it's heartbreaking to me. The daughter has come to understand her, as the story she is telling is brought to the present with her learning about her mother's near-suicide. Lahiri is masterful. This story's in her new collection (reviewed by the NYTimes today).
I do agree one of the strengths of this story is in the telling--it is voice-driven and really humorous. I sometimes think one has to look hard in contemporary short fiction to find the distinct voice.
That ignorant part was something we didn't feature too well and Debra Ann told her so, being since Debra Ann was brought up that way; that is, brought up to cuss grown folks out and not think twice about it.
Certainly the characters are bigger than real on the page, almost like characters on the stage. But I do think they are universal. I enjoyed watching the hierarchy of the small southern town, with the women's fashions and the culture of the city-fied visitor, the Papa's standing in the town : being since he was sort of like the vice-president.... And, of course, that quiet desperation that gets found out more easily in small towns compared to urban living.
Also universal is the Miss Marion/ "fallen angel" who comes and goes and becomes important to a child: when the curtain comes down and you wonder were you really there.
Something else I thought really worked was the dramatic language Sonny Buck starts to try on after meeting Miss Marion (that might seem overwrought out of this context):
Of course, some folks will say I never existed, but just somebody’s crazy imagination gone wild.
This story is a gem. I absolutely loved it. I was so surprised when I discovered his age on the bio link.
I enjoyed the calm voice and setting. The book seemed like a long short story--just as ON CHESIL BEACH did.(that's a good thing for me) I ultimately was a tad disappointed in HORSES because it had received so much critical success that I expected a lot of it.
I have read this book a few times through the years and find it beautifully funny. I think Garcia Marquez is the most gifted living writer today and love the way he can take a right turn in the middle of a sentence. To me, I don't know where the "true" love is in this story, but I know the author loves love and the ridiculousness of human beings.
Concerning the conclusion, Barb: I don't know what happens to Alton, which is the beauty of it. Perhaps, Marsha, the grieving starts right there for a man whose wife left because of the clinical/statistical way he is approaching life and its losses. Very touching, the human contact he needs from getting a haircut as he moves through life in his small community.
Which leads me to my soapbox: no cliches here in the character of Alton and the rest, SO often seen in stories set in this part of the country (where I grew up, in fact). If I'm not mistaken, this story appeared in Shenandoah, which is published in western Virginia.
Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and, suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that can not bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armor, we might say.
Jose Saramago in BLINDNESS
liquid butterflies... I do like that! Parts of this story reminded me of what can be done well in flash fiction (which I read a lot of) or prose poetry (which I would like to know more about) -- the good pieces often are dense symbolism with word play; this works so well when written in 500 words.
This story set me up to expect plot and visualizing action over several pages then wore me out.
It's like trying to wrap your brain around an optics problem in physics class. Such a surreal tone to her word choices. Somehow, I thought the piece was too illogical,too loose (I don't mean too ambiguous) to have full effect on the reader. Did anyone else have a misconception at the beginning of the piece about the whether the narrator was male or female?
What does Coover mean in the introduction when he calls this "comic"?
Your comments on Munro reminded me to recommend W.H. Auden's interesting essay "Reading", which is reprinted in Narrative Magazine this issue. Here's the link, but you have to sign in (free) to read the entire piece:http://narrativemagazine.com/content/htm...
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I just got around to seeing it now. My husband and I were amazed at Julian Schnabel's direction! An honest portrayal of Bauby's book narrative. As much as I love the Coen brothers, I think Schnabel should win the Oscar for directing.
the New Yorker website usually has the week's short story. Hereonline.http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/01/28/080128fi_fiction_erdrich
Ruth, concerning the conclusion: The book is told from the point of view of the father, then switches to the son. Could it be the conclusion is just the hope of the dying father?Absolutely loved the final few paragraphs-- "humming with mystery" as I remember--I'm typing from memory.
the mother...Yes, I agree, Kyle, the balance is missing. (I'm certainly not saying this is a flaw in the writing of the novel, however.) The feminine is essentially missing in the world he has painted.
As I mentioned, McCarthy says, beautifully, the sun is a mother who is grieving; and the shopping cart is their only hearth.
From what I've read so far, looks like Doris Lessing will balance things out for us soon. :)
I see The Road as a death narrative of a parent, with HOPE. (Certainly not science fiction, imo.) That hope, I agree, is missing in Blood Meridian.
I was struck by the constant greyscape of the prose (I saw the book in black and white):
“The blackness he woke to on those night was sightless. A black to hurt your ears...”
“The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop.” “The grey city..” The FIRE would be the only color in the book; finally, a man in a YELLOW jacket takes the boy in the conclusion. The dust jacket, black, but with the title THE ROAD in orange. (In No Country for Old Men, Bell also sees his father build a fire for him in the dream at the end.)
What a thoughtful discussion. I agree this book will become a classic.The prose is beautiful.
By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.
Yes, true, unaware, almost by definition, and I wondered about that. (I remember wondering about that memoir? published a few years back, supposedly written by a woman in decline--Flowers for Algernon-like, which didn't make sense at all, thought some publisher knew this would sell...)
But what you say reminds me why I thought AWAY was so complicated: there was a vague question left for me (and some other people I saw it with) that this was possibly a passive act of anger on Fiona's part toward her husband stemming from something else happening to her. That it was more allegorical and not realism. Or I'm reading way too much into it?
I'm glad to see Julie Christie on this list; AWAY FROM HER will get more attention now. I thought the director really gave the audience a cinematic feel for a layered Alice Munro short story. (I did think Christie's hair stayed too beautiful for an Alzheimer character who should not be able to tend it. As I remember, this is the way Munro wrote Fiona, however, in "The Bear Went Over the Mountain.")
Hi everybody. I really love literary fiction and films. I'm a retired internist and have an interest in medical humanities/illness narratives in literature. I spend a lot of my time organizing writing workshops for teenagers for a neat nonprofit that brings writers into the classroom. I've had a couple of short fiction/poetry publications, but find it too difficult.
I hope to spend more time discussing/reading challenging works this year, and especially anticipate Atwood, DeLillo, and Lessing on the list coming up.
