Week 9

Labor Day Holiday



Maureen Gallace

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Week 8

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      T oday we will look at the style of Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), whose work is characterized by poetic, figurative embellishments and the vernacular voicings of her characters. We leave the spare style of Ernest Hemingway, which we examined last week in the story "Hills Like White Elephants," with its focus on an "American" male and his (presumably) European girlfriend, as they sit for drinks while waiting for the arrival of a train, and obliquely discuss the matter of a "simple" operation that will take care of what will otherwise be a game-changer to their relationship.  In the story, the particular operation goes unnamed, but from hints we can assume a surgical abortion, a procedure illegal at the time the story was set and published, the 1920s.  Much lies below, is subtextual, in the work of Hemingway and requires the reader use his or her wits and imagination to suss it all out. We have to read, look and listen closely.  This is alway...
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Week 2

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                                                          A 19th Century                                                    The Hudson River Valley, 19th Century      W elcome back.  Hope you have been well since last we met.   I post the picture above to reference the importance of the Hudson River and surrounding valleys and mountains on into New England to the sensibilities of artists during the 1800s. Click on the captioned title for an article about the work of preservationists in this area and some talk of the romantic sense of the divine in nature that is so much a part of the American experience, then and now.  Rip Van Winkle's humble farmstead is situated somewhat like ...
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Week 7

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Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961),  at 18 H ow do 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? Let's take "Hills Like White Elephants,"    by Ernest Hemingway, and "Popular Mechanics, " by Raymond Carver, as examples, for they are difficult cases that may give rise to different interpretations and answers and show how questions such as who is the central character can serve to make us read more attentively, even if no easy answer is forthcoming. Much of what makes these two stories interesting is the style they exhibit, which has been given a name:  minimalism.  Hemingway began his career as a journalist, and the economy of news reports shaped his style.  Often t...
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