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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 15, 2023 0:32:18 GMT
The Quiet Little Woman by Louisa May Alcott
The introduction to The Quiet Little Woman (no spoilers) explains that, in Alcott's time, five young sisters, inspired by Ms. Alcott’s books, started a small magazine out of their home in Massachusetts. With the help of a printer, they achieved a modest circulation.
In support and for free, Ms. Alcott penned the three stories in this Christmas collection for the girl's magazine. Eventually, overwhelmed, the girls sold off their subscription list, but one believes Ms. Alcott's involvement was the highlight of the experience for the sisters.
The three tales are simple, quick reads about acts of kindness at Christmas. The titular one The Quiet Little Woman introduces us to Patty, an orphan girl with a slight handicap who longs to be adopted even though the orphanage has been kind to her.
She isn't adopted, but as an early teen, Patty is taken in as a servant by a family - this being the fate of many of the older orphan girls. Patty is a kind and quiet servant who works diligently and thoughtfully for the family.
The family is not mean, but sees Patty only as a servant, which hurts this forlorn girl longing for real affection. Will the family's maiden aunt, who notices something in Patty that the rest of the family misses, be able to change Patty's lonely Christmas and life?
The second story, Tilly's Christmas, is obvious, but it makes you feel good. Tilly's family, just Tilly and her mom, is too poor to have any Christmas gifts. Mom and daughter, though, find the Christmas spirit in caring for a wounded bird, until something special happens.
In the quirkiest of the three stories, Rosa, a horse, confirms the "legend" that, in memory of the animals in the manager at the birth of Christ, animals are endowed with speech for one hour at midnight on Christmas day.
Once you make that leap, you meet Rosa, a bit vain but kind horse who started life racing until a nefarious racetrack injury led to her being sold several times in succession. She became a saddle horse, a war horse, a carriage horse and is, now, a pet.
Told by Rosa, it's life from a horse's perspective. Rosa experiences life's ups and downs as humans do. It's charming, whimsical and even a little sad - Rosa didn't get the credit she deserved for her military courage - but it's also the offbeat gem of the three stories.
You do not read The Quiet Little Woman to be challenged; you read it to experience a little Christmas joy in pleasant stories that take you back over a century in time. Plus, its origin story as a gift from Alcott to a few dedicated fans has a little bit of its own Christmas magic.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 15, 2023 2:14:35 GMT
Such interesting material to read. I think the one about Rosa the horse would be good as a made for TV project, perhaps animated.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 15, 2023 11:35:54 GMT
Such interesting material to read. I think the one about Rosa the horse would be good as a made for TV project, perhaps animated. That's a good idea - that could work really well.
I just watched two "shorts" on TCM recently, "The Bakery Girl of Monceau" and "Return to Glennascaul," and thought "Rosa" would work that way, but an animated project would be better.
To be honest, the Alcott stories are good, not great, but still, since it's Alcott, I was surprised they aren't better known.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 26, 2023 11:12:03 GMT
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig first published posthumously in 1982, but written sometime in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s
In The Post-Office Girl, Austrian writer Stefan Zweig spins an engaging and, ultimately, noirish tale about a young woman, Christine, whose family was wiped out financially in World War I. This is not a war story, though, but a tale about that young woman's post-war struggles.
Once part of a middle-class Austrian family with a small business, the war destroyed the family's business and directly or indirectly took almost all of Christine's relatives.
Christine now lives with her infirmed mother. She also has an aunt who lives in America. A distant uncle secures Christine a position as the village's postal clerk, which provides just barely enough for her and her mother to get by.
With her tiny salary, a sick mother and no marriage prospects in her poor village, Christine, a happy child before the war, has become a sad, scared and introverted adult of twenty-eight. She drags herself to and from work each day with no hope for the future.
Then the American aunt, who married a rich industrialist, invites her for a two-week vacation to a luxury Alpine resort. Scared to go and embarrassed about her obvious poverty, she shows up, literally, a trembling woman, but then the aunt takes to reinventing her.
Sparing no expense, Christine is given or lent a stunning wardrobe, is coiffed by professionals and is "introduced" as the aunt's socially respectable cousin. For eight days, Christine lives life in a swirl of luxury and respectability she never even imagined existed.
It's the Dorothy in Oz moment, that is, for reasons best left for the reader to discover, all ended after eight glorious days as Christine is unceremoniously sent back to her provincial village with a few extra dollars and soul-crushing memories of a better life.
Christine returns to learn her mother died while she was away. Now embittered by it all, she becomes a tyrant at work, wielding her small office power with meanness. A chance meeting with a disaffected former soldier, Ferdinand, sets Christine on a path into noir land.
Ferdinand, an Austrian, has one of those Russian-like stories of hardship and struggle. Drafted in WWI, he was soon a prisoner of war, abused and nearly starved. He just missed being released in a prisoner exchange only to spend four more years starving in Siberia.
Once home, and with a permanent injury to one hand, the Austrian bureaucracy denies him a pension or aid. He has no money to return to his studies as an architect and all the jobs he gets are temporary and for small pay. He is an angry man.
With his articulate anti-capitalism and anti-government screeds, you'd think he'd be a communist, but what he really is, in his mind, is a nihilist. Most, though, would see him as a criminal.
With the war having shattered both their lives and poverty a daily struggle, Christine and Ferdinand form an unhealthy bond that fuels their grievances. They believe there is no honest way out of poverty for them, but others around them have rebuilt their post-war lives.
In an open-ended climax, no spoilers coming, Ferdinand tries to talk Christine into robbing the post office's safe. Will this once middle-class girl, whose life now has so little hope, agree to Ferdinand's detailed, but insane plan?
Author Zweig, writing well before film noir was a thing, penned a tale so full of human despair and of forces far beyond an individual's control that, in the 1940s, it wouldn't have taken much to turn his novel into an American film noir movie.
Zweig's story, though, is set in post-WWI Austria. It's clear his characters have suffered, but they have also made poor choices. History and even some of Zweig's own supporting characters argue the country's post-war story is more complex than Ferdinand asserts.
In The Post-Office Girl, Zweig writes engagingly about a long-since-past time and place. He brings his characters to life with sharply defined personalities and clear and understandable motivations. For us today, it's a moving bit of time travel with a surprising touch of noir.
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Post by topbilled on Dec 26, 2023 12:39:14 GMT
Your review on The Post Office Girl is so vivid, even without plot spoilers, one really gets a sense of what the book is about and what it includes. The author's name was familiar to me, and I realized he'd also written the novella for Letter from an Unknown Woman published in 1922.
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 26, 2023 12:55:49 GMT
Your review on The Post Office Girl is so vivid, even without plot spoilers, one really gets a sense of what the book is about and what it includes. The author's name was familiar to me, and I realized he'd also written the novella for Letter from an Unknown Woman published in 1922. Thank you. Over the past year or so, my goal in my book and movie reviews has been to do just what you noticed - engage the reader, but not give away any big spoilers. This way, I hope, people will want to read my reviews but not worry that I'll tell them the climax or big surprises. It took me awhile to find a way to do that, but I feel like I'm getting the hang of it now.
You are spot on that Zweig wrote "Letter from an Unknown Woman." I only "discovered" him as a writer when we watched the movie "Letter from an Unknown Woman" on Sunday Live!. That led me to read the novella, which, I enjoyed so much, led me to "The Post Office Girl."
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 6, 2024 23:52:25 GMT
The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien originally published in 1960
Nothing "perfectly" captures the past, but a contemporaneous book from a period will almost always get you closer to that time than a modern period novel. The former is the value of Edna O'Brien's debut novel The Country Girls. Plus it's a good story.
Unless you grew up in an Irish country village in the 1950s, The Country Girls will be the closest thing you'll get to having that experience as seen through the eyes, as the book opens, of one fourteen-year-old girl, Kate.
Kate just lost her mother to a boating accident, which leaves her with her alcoholic and, when drunk, abusive father, plus their middle-aged farm hand, Hickey. Kate's mother clearly kept the household functioning, so now without her, it's falling apart.
O'Brien has an eye for detail. She brings the farm with its chickens, cows, slamming doors and broken bathroom to life. Knowing how the sun hits, the rain falls and the dust tracks lets you intimately experience Kate's family's farm.
The village, with its small shops and quirky owners comes alive too. You can smell the beer in the small hotel's bar where the village workers gather at night and you can feel the eyes of the always leery woman in the notions store watching Kate as picks up and puts things down.
Kate's best friend/frenemy, Baba, is the anti-Kate in many ways. Kate's responsible and reserved; Baba is irresponsible and loud. These two grew up together, fight, make up, play, argue and experience life.
You wonder why Kate stays friends with Baba who can often be mean to her, but Kate seems to intuit that Baba pushes her out of her shell in a way she needs even if the result isn't always good. Plus, Baba is one of those kids other kids just want as a friend.
When the two girls are shipped off to a nearby convent their friendship grows stronger by necessity. Fortunately, the convent is not the brutal place we, today, know some in Ireland were, but with its severe nuns, unpleasant food and strict discipline, it's no joy either.
After a few years the girls intentionally get expelled. It's a good move on their part, especially since their parents seem to take it in stride (you keep fearing they'll be physically punished, but thankfully they never are). Now old enough, they leave together for Dublin.
It's the perennial story of teenagers from "the country" wanting to experience the freedom of a life they've read about in magazines and newspapers, heard about from others and on the radio and, most importantly, have seen in movies.
Baba goes to college and Kate gets a job in a grocery store, which is, ironically, how real life often works as Kate would appreciate college and Baba doesn't. Kate enjoys reading classic literature, while books are toxic to Baba.
The fun, though, is seeing the girls struggle but enjoy their city life, which includes sharing a room in an off-beat boarding house owned by a quirky German couple and having some horrible dates, sometimes, with married men.
That is pretty much the story in this coming-of-age novel, other than a completely inappropriate relationship Kate has with a married middle-aged man. It started when she was fourteen. They don't have sex, but it is still insanely wrong, even in its day.
The book works, despite its simple plot, because author O'Brien lets you see a time and place through the eyes and mind of a teenage girl in 1950s Ireland. Kate is a pensive and smart kid, but still she has silly and wild ideas and zig-zagging emotions like any teenager.
The Country Girls is the first in a trilogy. At the time of its release, owing to its frank discussion of sex and, possibly, its less-than-flattering take on religion, the book was controversial. It was banned by the Irish censorship board (whatever that really means).
Its value today is its ability to time travel you to Ireland in the 1950s with its keen observations of that period and place. Plus, it's an easy read that has you turning the pages to find out what's going to happen next to Kate and Baba.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Jan 8, 2024 2:27:52 GMT
When, oh when, are they going to award our dear Edna the Nobel Prize for Literature? She turned 93 in December; we're running out of time.
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Post by kims on Jan 15, 2024 2:41:02 GMT
CHILD OF HITLER by Alphons Heck. Wow! He was trained as a Hitler Youth, actively fought in WWII, and after the war goes to Nuremberg to hear the trials. Honest telling of his ingrained values and coming to terms with the propaganda he accepted as truth like a generation of German children. His gradual understanding of how his generation was used and manipulated led him to go on the lecture tour with a Jewish woman who survived a concentration camp. Incredible his honesty. At one lecture he was asked if he would have killed the Jewish woman at his side. He confesses he would have done what he was ordered. How do you reveal the darkest part of yourself and expose yourself to the angry reaction of an audience?
Highly recommend this book, especially to anyone questioning the Holocaust. He relates his feeling and mindset when as a youth the teacher holds Heck's friend to ridicule because the friend is Jewish and Heck's gradual distancing from his friend. What strength it takes to change everything you were taught and accept new values.
WOW!!
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 16, 2024 22:46:30 GMT
The P.R. Girls by Bernard Glemser published in 1972
All but forgotten today, author Bernard Glemser was a popular writer from the 1950s through the 1970s of witty page-turners that captured their era with smart insight and verve. His novels aren't literature, but entertaining reads that provide a window into the period's culture.
In The P.R. Girls, Glemser takes us to Hong Kong in the early 1970s and the fictional Hong Kong Monarch, the flagship in a chain of world-wide ultra-luxury hotels. This was a time when luxury hotels were an important link in the social, political and media nexus.
Susan Marriner, a smart, young and pretty public relations professional just transferred to the Hong Kong Monarch finds herself being promoted to head of the department at the hotel after her boss is fired for clashing with the hotel's new Teutonic general manager.
Presented here, public relations professionals - or "girls" in the vernacular of the era - are almost all smart, young and pretty women as the job is demanding, hence the smart, but also requires them to represent the hotel at public events, hence the young and pretty.
Today, we try not to allow this, but it was just accepted at the time that "P. R." roles would be mainly filled by smart, young and pretty girls. If this makes you furious, don't read the book, but if you do read it, you'll see that these women are respected for their intelligence.
Sue Marriner is initially in over her head as she not only has to learn, on the fly, how to do her boss' job in an insanely large, complicated and busy hotel, but she has to acclimate herself to the local conventions.
Glemser, who clearly knows Hong Kong and the East, does an outstanding job capturing the culture. We learn about "bar girls," poor local girls whose parents sell them to bar owners in a quasi indentured-servant arrangement that, sadly, turns the girls into prostitutes.
The importance of family, even distant cousins, in Eastern culture, is front and center as large families have "tentacles" that reach in many directions. "Face saving," too, is integretal as publically dressing down an employee is a deeply offensive act.
Crowded Hong Kong, under British rule at the time, is shown to be a vibrant city with an international flavor that combines a free-wheeling capitalism with a culture where graft and nepotism are so deeply ingrained they are simply part of doing business.
When Miss Marriner (women are Miss or Mrs. in this era) takes business trips to Singapore, Manilla and other major Asian cities, Glemser gives us a brief look at each region's culture and idiosyncrasies.
The story, though, is still about a girl and a hotel, as Marriner tries to get up to speed, while dignitaries come and go and VIP guests complain about everything from a snake in the room to the hair salon being all booked up.
Royals show up expecting VIP-plus service as the press hounds the P.R. department for information it can't give out, especially about a mob boss supposedly hiding incognito at the hotel - the Hong Kong Monarch is a wild place.
Marriner also has to deal with her immediate boss, the smart and handsome number two man in the hotel, Alex Dunbar, and his boss, the aforementioned Teutonic and dictatorial general manager, Leo Ludwig.
Both of them are jockeying for more power and career advancement, as those at the top of any company or division almost always are. It's a brutal game of politics and manipulation that makes these prestigious and well-paying jobs seem quite unappealing.
Hong Kong in the 1970s was also a time and place where business and personal relationships were regularly tangled up as we see Marriner start dating her boss and, later, canoodling a bit with the big boss.
All the "girls" in public relations have their dating success stories and disappointments as marriage was the goal for many, but not all. Even those set on marriage are shown as competent professionals. The past is never as black and white as we paint it today.
There is an overarching plot about Marriner's career and love life as they get tangled up with the business of the hotel and, as noted, her two bosses.
The book, though, is at its most engaging when Marriner explores the region or solves a P.R. crisis with her small staff of whip-smart "girls." Marriner's love "triangle," with her bosses, which probably helped the book sell, feels a bit too obviously constructed.
Popular page-turners like The P.R. Girls are valuable cultural windows into the past. No one thing - newspapers, movies or novels of an era, nor history books - fully captures or "explains" a period, but well-researched novels, like The P.R. Girls, get you a little bit closer.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 29, 2024 22:15:39 GMT
The Stories of John Cheever published in 1978At nearly seven-hundred pages and with nearly seventy short stories, The Stories of John Cheever avers he was a prolific writer in the middle of the twentieth century. It helps that he was writing at a time when there was still a profitable market for short stories.Cheever is like a F. Scott Fitzgerald for the middle and upper-middle classes when America was predominantly a white Christian country or, to be more specific, when that was where its cultural focus often was.He wrote about things he knows in these stories, which is why they are mainly set in New York City, its suburbs or the northeast, all places where WASPs and WASP wannabes worked, lived, played and competed for social status.His families are traditional with a working husband, homemaking and committee-joining wife and a few kids who serve mainly as props for the parents' struggles and ambitions.Recurring themes include living beyond one's means, not really liking one's neighbors, cheating on one's spouse - that comes up a lot for a supposedly "wholesome" era - alcoholism, and being disappointed, in middle age, with how your life turned out.The businessman who looks successful, has a corporate job, a home in the suburbs, two-point-five kids and a nice car is usually the set up for a man about to lose his job, be overwhelmed with bills or to find his secretary too attractive to remain faithful to his wife.Cheevers often takes his stories to some dark places as the post-coitus discarded secretary doesn't always stay discarded or the man facing bankruptcy might take to burglarizing his neighbors' houses.Like all good writers, Cheevers has an eye for detail as he recounts the competitive nature of middle-class kids' birthday parties - I'll see your clown blowing up balloons, with a full marionette play - or the anxiety of the commuter in the train-station bar watching the clock.Cheevers shows that the quote about battles in academia also applies to village councils in the suburbs deciding small zoning rules: "competition is so vicious because the stakes are so small." Suburbia often sounds like the Battle of Anzio in Cheever's world.While the turf is similar, each story brings its own perspective, message or reveal. One marriage fails from boredom, while another seemingly on the way out is saved when a crisis reminds the husband and wife of what is really at stake.All of this is out of favor now because it focuses mainly on white, Christian middle-class traditional families, which is one of the few things our culture doesn't provide a safe space for today. But that was Cheever's world and he wrote about what he knew.The value of The Stories of John Cheever is his talented writing, which captured a period in America that existed whether today's cultural elites like it or not. They are smart snippets of the era with some timeless observations that make them still engaging reads.N.B. Three out of four of my grandparents would be the "immigrants" or "foreigners" that float by as servants, day laborers or merchants in the shadows of Cheever's world. Yet I still somehow manage to find his writing relevant and engaging.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Feb 1, 2024 18:12:55 GMT
The Stories of John Cheever published in 1978At nearly seven-hundred pages and with nearly seventy short stories, The Stories of John Cheever avers he was a prolific writer in the middle of the twentieth century. It helps that he was writing at a time when there was still a profitable market for short stories.Cheever is like a F. Scott Fitzgerald for the middle and upper-middle classes when America was predominantly a white Christian country or, to be more specific, when that was where its cultural focus often was.He wrote about things he knows in these stories, which is why they are mainly set in New York City, its suburbs or the northeast, all places where WASPs and WASP wannabes worked, lived, played and competed for social status.His families are traditional with a working husband, homemaking and committee-joining wife and a few kids who serve mainly as props for the parents' struggles and ambitions.Recurring themes include living beyond one's means, not really liking one's neighbors, cheating on one's spouse - that comes up a lot for a supposedly "wholesome" era - alcoholism, and being disappointed, in middle age, with how your life turned out.The businessman who looks successful, has a corporate job, a home in the suburbs, two-point-five kids and a nice car is usually the set up for a man about to lose his job, be overwhelmed with bills or to find his secretary too attractive to remain faithful to his wife.Cheevers often takes his stories to some dark places as the post-coitus discarded secretary doesn't always stay discarded or the man facing bankruptcy might take to burglarizing his neighbors' houses.Like all good writers, Cheevers has an eye for detail as he recounts the competitive nature of middle-class kids' birthday parties - I'll see your clown blowing up balloons, with a full marionette play - or the anxiety of the commuter in the train-station bar watching the clock.Cheevers shows that the quote about battles in academia also applies to village councils in the suburbs deciding small zoning rules: "competition is so vicious because the stakes are so small." Suburbia often sounds like the Battle of Anzio in Cheever's world.While the turf is similar, each story brings its own perspective, message or reveal. One marriage fails from boredom, while another seemingly on the way out is saved when a crisis reminds the husband and wife of what is really at stake.All of this is out of favor now because it focuses mainly on white, Christian middle-class traditional families, which is one of the few things our culture doesn't provide a safe space for today. But that was Cheever's world and he wrote about what he knew.The value of The Stories of John Cheever is his talented writing, which captured a period in America that existed whether today's cultural elites like it or not. They are smart snippets of the era with some timeless observations that make them still engaging reads.N.B. Three out of four of my grandparents would be the "immigrants" or "foreigners" that float by as servants, day laborers or merchants in the shadows of Cheever's world. Yet I still somehow manage to find his writing relevant and engaging. Thanks, FadingFast.
I lament the modern unpopularity of the short story. In a uniquely American genre, Cheever has a unique but relatable voice. I like him middle of the road -- more than Updike, not as much as Carver.
In any Creative Writing 101 class, students are taught to "write what they know." Through the years, Cheever has been punished for this. That is not to say he was always popular in his day. In fact, he did suffer for his association with The New Yorker. Still, there is no doubt that he had the gift of vision.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 1, 2024 18:53:50 GMT
The Stories of John Cheever published in 1978At nearly seven-hundred pages and with nearly seventy short stories, The Stories of John Cheever avers he was a prolific writer in the middle of the twentieth century. It helps that he was writing at a time when there was still a profitable market for short stories.Cheever is like a F. Scott Fitzgerald for the middle and upper-middle classes when America was predominantly a white Christian country or, to be more specific, when that was where its cultural focus often was.He wrote about things he knows in these stories, which is why they are mainly set in New York City, its suburbs or the northeast, all places where WASPs and WASP wannabes worked, lived, played and competed for social status.His families are traditional with a working husband, homemaking and committee-joining wife and a few kids who serve mainly as props for the parents' struggles and ambitions.Recurring themes include living beyond one's means, not really liking one's neighbors, cheating on one's spouse - that comes up a lot for a supposedly "wholesome" era - alcoholism, and being disappointed, in middle age, with how your life turned out.The businessman who looks successful, has a corporate job, a home in the suburbs, two-point-five kids and a nice car is usually the set up for a man about to lose his job, be overwhelmed with bills or to find his secretary too attractive to remain faithful to his wife.Cheevers often takes his stories to some dark places as the post-coitus discarded secretary doesn't always stay discarded or the man facing bankruptcy might take to burglarizing his neighbors' houses.Like all good writers, Cheevers has an eye for detail as he recounts the competitive nature of middle-class kids' birthday parties - I'll see your clown blowing up balloons, with a full marionette play - or the anxiety of the commuter in the train-station bar watching the clock.Cheevers shows that the quote about battles in academia also applies to village councils in the suburbs deciding small zoning rules: "competition is so vicious because the stakes are so small." Suburbia often sounds like the Battle of Anzio in Cheever's world.While the turf is similar, each story brings its own perspective, message or reveal. One marriage fails from boredom, while another seemingly on the way out is saved when a crisis reminds the husband and wife of what is really at stake.All of this is out of favor now because it focuses mainly on white, Christian middle-class traditional families, which is one of the few things our culture doesn't provide a safe space for today. But that was Cheever's world and he wrote about what he knew.The value of The Stories of John Cheever is his talented writing, which captured a period in America that existed whether today's cultural elites like it or not. They are smart snippets of the era with some timeless observations that make them still engaging reads.N.B. Three out of four of my grandparents would be the "immigrants" or "foreigners" that float by as servants, day laborers or merchants in the shadows of Cheever's world. Yet I still somehow manage to find his writing relevant and engaging. Thanks, FadingFast.
I lament the modern unpopularity of the short story. In a uniquely American genre, Cheever has a unique but relatable voice. I like him middle of the road -- more than Updike, not as much as Carver.
In any Creative Writing 101 class, students are taught to "write what they know." Through the years, Cheever has been punished for this. That is not to say he was always popular in his day. In fact, he did suffer for his association with The New Yorker. Still, there is no doubt that he had the gift of vision.
I agree. It's hard to image how popular short stories were in (give or take) the first half of the twentieth century in America. It allowed Fitzgerald to both pay for Zelda's care and have enough left over to drink himself to death . It was my, and most kids growing up in the '70s, introduction to some of the greatest writers ever.
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Post by BunnyWhit on Feb 1, 2024 20:37:26 GMT
Thanks, FadingFast.
I lament the modern unpopularity of the short story. In a uniquely American genre, Cheever has a unique but relatable voice. I like him middle of the road -- more than Updike, not as much as Carver.
In any Creative Writing 101 class, students are taught to "write what they know." Through the years, Cheever has been punished for this. That is not to say he was always popular in his day. In fact, he did suffer for his association with The New Yorker. Still, there is no doubt that he had the gift of vision.
I agree. It's hard to image how popular short stories were in (give or take) the first half of the twentieth century in America. It allowed Fitzgerald to both pay for Zelda's care and have enough left over to drink himself to death . It was my, and most kids growing up in the '70s, introduction to some of the greatest writers ever. Absolutely. I wanted so badly to be a writer of short stories. The notion of writing novels didn't seem....novel....to me. Anybody can do that, right?
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Post by kims on Feb 15, 2024 6:51:46 GMT
AUDIENCE-OLOGY by Kevin Goetz. Insights about how filmmakers use audience research. Best is the stories of films you know and how the final edit was reached. Easy reading. Interesting to learn the original ending of THELMA AND LOUISE and why it was changed. How PARANORMAL, made originally for $15K to go directly to DVD, became theatrical release grossing the big bucks.
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