24.doc

24. Short fiction of  E. A. Poe, S. Crane,  S. Anderson, W. Faulkner, E. Hemingway, K. A. Porter, F. O’Connor, T. Olsen, J.C. Oates, A. Tan.

Edgar Alan Poe – Romanticism – had genious when he was healthy, ambitious, with an enormous capacity for work. Poe invented the detective story. He claimed that the chief aim of the story writer should be to create an effect upon the reader’s mind and feelings. He wrote:
Tales of Grotesque and Arabesque – two volume work of short stories. It included The Fall of the House of Usher – an account about a man visiting his friend and strange events happening in the house finally causing its fall.
Roderick Usher – the owner of the said house
Madeline – Roderick’s twin sister
unnamed narrator – arrives at Roderick’s
Ernest Hemingway – American writer and journalist of the 20th century. Because he began as a writer of short stories, Baker believes Hemingway learned to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth." Hemingway referred to his style as the iceberg theory: in his writing the facts float above water; the supporting structure and symbolism operate out-of-sight. He wrote
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place – a short story about a blind alcoholic, loneliness, “nada” motive
the old man
the waiters (younger and older)
barman
Mary Flannery O'Connor - was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist of the 20th century. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. O'Connor's writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith, and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. She wrote:
A Good Man is Hard to Find – a family heading to Florida has an accident and meets Misfit, who orders to kill everyone
The Grandmother- Bailey's mother that throughout the story insists that the family should go to Tennessee.
Bailey-Atlanta resident with a wife and three children.
Bailey’s wife - Quiet woman who spends her time feeding or holding her baby.
John Wesley, June Star- Bailey’s demanding, self-centered children
Red Sammy Butts-Restaurant operator who agrees with Bailey’s mother that the world is in a state of decline.
Red Sammy’s Wife- Waitress in Red Sammy’s restaurant.
The Misfit-Dangerous escaped prisoner who comes across Bailey and his family on a dirt road.
Hiram, Bobby Lee-Young men who escaped from prison with The Misfit.
Pitty Sing-Pet cat of Bailey’s mother.
Sherwood Anderson - American author, poet, playwright, essayist, and newspaper editor, wrote Winesburg, Ohio (1919), "The Book of the Grotesque". A collection of excellent examples of the short story genre and set in small town America, the stories are loosely connected by journalist George Willard writing of the sometimes "grotesque" sides of the human condition including poverty, marginalisation, love and romance. Many of Anderson's contributions to American Literature reflect his own struggles between the material and spiritual worlds as husband, father, author, and businessman and also cover issues as wide-ranging from labour conditions to marriage.
The Book of the Grotesque – an old man who has difficulties to look through window has a carpenter to fix his bed. After having a dream with grotesque figures he decided to write a book about them.
an old writer
a carpenter
STEPHEN CRANE – NATURALIST. Wrote poems and realistic novels, an impressionist (used vivid, stunning and disorienting colors), looked at critical and violent situations with the king of anatomy look. His style was ful of images of unheard violence and distortion. Wrote

1.1.              "MAGGIE: A GIRL OF THE STREETS" – about brutal and naturist account of prostitution in modern urban setting.

1.2.              THE OPEN BOAT - the actions and emotions of four men facing death at sea.

•              The Correspondent -  A reporter and the central character of the story. The correspondent is presumably young and able-bodied, given that he shares rowing duties with the oiler

•              The Captain -  The captain of the ship, injured when the ship floods

•              The Cook -  The ship’s cook, who maintains a positive, even naïve, outlook on the men’s rescue

•              The Oiler (Billie) -  The only refugee from the ship to die in the final attempt at reaching land. Before the ship sank, the oiler worked a double watch in the engine room, and he is most likely to be exhausted in the dinghy

WILLIAM FAULKNER – MODERNIST, his work formed the basis of his reputation and led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize at age 52. Wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. Faulkner is considered one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States. Wrote:

2.1.              A ROSE FOR EMILY

•              Emily Grierson, Homer Barron, Judge Stevens , Mr. Grierson (Emily’s father), Tobe (Emily’s servant), Colonel Sartoris (Absolved Emily from any taxes)

TILLIE OLSEN was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists. Tillie Olsen is internationally known and honored for her powerful, brilliantly crafted, poetic writing depicting the lives of working-class people, women and people of color with respect, profound understanding and deep love. Wrote:

3.1.              "I STAND HERE IRONING" a short story. The story is told from a mother's first person point of view. The narrator, a now remarried mother of several children, remembers the way she parented her first child, Emily. Her thoughts, and the story, are about what she would have done differently while parenting Emily if she had been more experienced and had better options. A mother is informed that her daughter is in trouble. While she irons, the mother works through her response to the summons, and has flashbacks to her daughter's childhood. She remembers that Emily's father left her when she was only eight months old.
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim. She is known for her penetrating insight; her work deals with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil.

Ship of Fools ,1962, novel ; tells the tale of a group of disparate characters sailing from Mexico to Europe aboard a German freighter and passenger ship. It is an allegory that traces the rise of Nazism and looks metaphorically at the progress of the world on its "voyage to eternity". Mixed bag of passengers, Germans, Americans, Spaniards, Gypsies, and Mexicans represent a microcosmos of peoples, whose life are characterized by jealousy, cruelty, hatred, love, and duplicity. In the first part the reader becomes acquainted with the various characters. The second part contains the torment of the passengers in steerage, their attempts to love and their struggle for detachment. In part three a bacchanalian fiesta brings out all the hidden fears and guilts. Porter explores the origin of human evil through the allegorical use of characters, who represent various national and moral types.

Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? is a frequently anthologized short story written by Joyce Carol Oates. The main character of Oates's story is Connie, a beautiful but self-absorbed 15-year-old girl, who is at odds with her mother--once a beauty herself--and with her dutiful, "steady", and homely older sister. Without her parents' knowledge, she spends most of her evenings picking up boys at a Big Boy restaurant, and one evening captures the attention of a stranger in a gold convertible covered with cryptic writing. While her parents are away at her aunt's barbecue, two men pull up in front of her house and call Connie out. She recognizes the driver, Arnold Friend, as the man from the drive-in restaurant, and is initially charmed by the smooth-talking, charismatic stranger in his fashionable tight jeans and white T-shirt. He tells Connie he is eighteen and has come to take her for a ride in his car with his sidekick Ellie. Connie slowly realizes that he is actually much

older, and grows afraid. As Connie refuses to go with him, he becomes more forceful and threatening, saying that he will harm her family (while at the same time appealing to Connie's vanity, saying that she is too good for them), until Connie is compelled to leave with him and do what he demands of her. The story ends as Connie leaves her front porch; her eventual fate is left ambiguous.

This story is seen by many as one of Oates's best and in the words of scholar G. F. Waller, it is "one of the masterpieces of the genre." Oates's realism often garners such praise; critics and readers alike have commended the presentation of the story's central character, Connie, as a typical teenager who may be disliked, pitied, or even identified with.Critics also praise the story for its evocative language, its use of symbols, and an ambiguous conclusion which allows for several interpretations of the story's meaning. In 1988, a film version of the story was released entitled Smooth Talk.

Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages. In 1993, the book was adapted into a commercially successful film.

The Joy Luck Club (1989) is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, California who start a club known as "the Joy Luck Club," playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods. The book is structured somewhat like a mahjong game, with four parts divided into four sections to create sixteen chapters. The three mothers and four daughters (one mother, Suyuan Woo, dies before the novel opens) share stories about their lives in the form of vignettes. Each part is preceded by a parable relating to the game.

Amy Tan wrote The Kitchen God’s Wife about her mother, Daisy. Most of Winnie’s story in the novel is drawn from Daisy’s life, including the difficult life and marriage she left behind in pre-communist China. The presentation of Winnie’s story, as she tells her story to Pearl, is reminiscent of the oral tradition. Tan, like Pearl, had never given much thought to her mother’s life in China, and she was amazed at what she learned.

When Tan started on her second novel, she wanted to avoid rehashing material and ideas from her successful first novel, The Joy Luck Club. She sequestered herself with soothing music and incense, realizing that solitude was her surest path to the next novel. Although she tried numerous times to write about something different, the story in The Kitchen God’s Wife cried out to be told, and Tan realized that the pursuit of diversity was not a good reason to write about one topic over another. Her mother’s eagerness to have her story fictionalized was also a major influence.

And so, The Kitchen God’s Wife shares certain themes with The Joy Luck Club. Both The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife portray strained relationships between immigrant mothers and their American daughters. The theme of alienation also appears in both works. Despite its similarities to the first novel, the second novel won applause from Tan’s readers and critics. Her novels contain a multitude of stories that converge into a cohesive work, and Tan is admired for her ability to move from the past to the present in her storytelling.