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 19th century author Nathaniel Hawthorne, and one 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 as, well, a bit spooky.  His characters are aspirational; they want happiness, harmony, comfort, peace of mind regarding themselves and their family, but they live in a somewhat chaotic world of forces just beyond control, and in a branded, material world that seems absurd in so many ways. The past keeps flooding in for Marie and Callie, and sounding alarms. Ironies of all sorts emerge. What separates and connects these women? What do Marie and Callie have in common?  How does their  meeting illuminate the limits to their knowing one another, and how does the puppy's fate reflect these limits? What is the difference between growing up on a farm and "near a farm" we might ask of Callie.   The high corn fields through which Marie drives with her two children as the story begins, and to which the helpless puppy will be abandoned at its end, have something to tell us here about being human.


Short Essay Final week 11 on Saunder's discussion of what makes for a good story.

Note:  Remember, please and pretty please, to fill out the class IDEA survey sent you by email.




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