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Bloom-Craft-Paper.Pdf 1 Savannah Bradley English 206 Prof. Randall Kenan March 11th, 2019 BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY: AMY BLOOM Amy Bloom (b. June 18th, 1953) is an American author and psychotherapist; The New Yorker has ​ ​ said of her prose that she “...gets more meaning into individual sentences than most authors manage in whole books” (“California Lectures”. After growing up in both Brooklyn and Long Island under the roof of her journalist parents, she began writing in junior high, and then trained at the Smith College School for Social Work. Before delving into psychotherapy, Bloom worked at an abortion hotline, a school for autistic children, and later studied acting (Stockwell). Bloom had been practicing psychotherapy in addition to her writing career for over 20 years, as of 2011 (“California Lectures”); after retiring from the practice, she later taught at Yale University. In reference to her written work, Bloom has written articles in periodicals including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, among ​ ​ ​ ​ other outlets. Her short fiction has been featured in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize ​ Stories and several other anthologies, and has won a National Magazine Award (“Amy Bloom”). ​ Her first collection of short stories, entitled Come to Me: Stories, deals with the intricacies of ​ ​ relationships- whether platonic, familial, or romantic- and focuses primarily on women’s roles within said relationships. She has been nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for the collection itself (Stockwell). Her body of work is varied; while she has released a menagerie of novels (Love Invents Us, 1997; Away, 2007; Lucky Us, 2014; White Houses, 2018) and short ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ story collections (Come to Me: Stories, 1993; A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories, 2000; ​ ​ ​ ​ The Story, 2006; Where the God of Love Hangs Out, 2009), she has also released children’s books (Little ​ ​ ​ ​ Sweet Potato, 2012) and has written for television as well (State of Mind, 2007) (“Wesleyan University”). ​ ​ ​ 2 As of 2019, she lives in Connecticut as Wesleyan University’s Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing (“Amy Bloom”). BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Stockwell, Anne. “About Amy Bloom.” Ploughshares at Emerson College. Emerson College, ​ ​ Fall 2004. Web 9 Mar. 2019. <https://www.pshares.org/issues/fall-2004/about-amy-bloom> ​ ​ 2. “Amy Bloom: in Conversation with Pam Houston.” California Lectures, 2011. Web 9 Mar. 2019. ​ ​ <http://www.californialectures.org/bloom.html> ​ ​ 3. “Amy B. Bloom.” Wesleyan University Faculty. Wesleyan University, 2018. Web 9 Mar. 2019. ​ ​ <https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/abloom/profile.html> 4. “About: Amy Bloom.” Amy Bloom, 2019. Web 9 Mar. 2019. ​ ​ <http://www.amybloom.com/about/> 1 Savannah Bradley English 2016 Prof. Randall Kenan March 11th, 2019 AMY BLOOM’S COME TO ME: STORIES — SUMMARIES ​ ​ In “Love is Not a Pie,” the narrator, Ellen, dissects the intricacies of her mother’s relationship(s)- and her own- after running into Mr. DeCuervo, a family friend, at her mother’s funeral. A frame narrative, Ellen looks back at the adolescent summers she spent vacationing with her family (her mother Lila, an eccentric artist; her father Danny, a loving yet submissive man; and her sister, Lizzie) in addition to Mr. DeCuervo and his daughter, Gisela. A brief flirtation erupts when Lila and Mr. DeCuervo dance after dinner one night, and Ellen’s suspicions about the nature of their relationship are confirmed after she gets up in the middle of the night and finds the two embracing. As the summer progresses, Ellen grows antagonistic at her mother, x. However, the crossness is cut short after a storm shuts off the power in their cabin, and after fixing it, Ellen gets a bout of stomach cramps, attempting to wake her parents; when doing so, she sees her mother, father, and Mr. DeCuervo all nestled together in the same bed, asleep. In the present day, Ellen and Lizzie discuss their parents, and Lizzie admits to knowing that the three were possibly polyamorous, with her mother formerly saying “People think that it can’t be that way, but it can. You just have to find the right people.” Inspired by this, Ellen looks interior, and decides to break off her engagement with a cerebral, upper-crust man named John, deciding that love does not have to be “normal” to be emotionally valid. In “Sleepwalking,” Julia, the widow of a musician, struggles with raising her young son, Buster, and her stepson, Lionel Jr., also referred to as “Lion,” while clashing against the moral standards of her mother-in-law, Ruth. After Julia, Buster, and Lionel Jr. all sleep in the same bed- not wanting to be alone in grief- sexual tension between Julia and Lionel Jr. arises as she marks the similarities between him and his father, then, later, accidentally sees him naked in the shower. One night, the two have sex, and while 2 Julia is overcome with an immediate sense of guilt and remorse, Lionel Jr. does not regret what has happened. Julia decides that the best option for the both of them is sending him away to school, as she “couldn’t be trusted to take care of him,” and Lionel Jr., enraged by her decision, stays out all night. Waiting for him, Julia thinks about Buster’s birth and what Lionel Sr. would have said of his son’s behavior. Lionel Jr. comes back bloodied and bruised after getting into a minor car accident, then begs to stay; Julia acquiesces, but after weeks go by, Ruth makes note of Lionel Jr.’s increasingly distant and coarse behavior towards his stepmother. Later, Julia finds a note on the kitchen counter written by him, explaining that he has left to go to Paris, and she makes note of the similarities between his and his father’s handwriting. In “Only You,” Marie, a woman disillusioned with her marriage- and unhappily surfacing towards middle age- finds consolation in a friendship with her hairdresser, Alvin. After he gets sick, Marie brings him bread and soup, and the two become closer as he allows her to assist him at his shop, where she begins to appreciate all forms of beauty, including her own, much to her husband Henry’s indifference. After Alvin and Henry meet, Marie is stung by the fact that Alvin does not act the same way he usually does to her- affectionate, emotionally open, warm- with her husband in the room. Later, Alvin and Marie both attend a hair styling conference in Miami, where the two have a ball; in the hotel room, Alvin asks if he can wear Marie’s clothes, saying he wants to feel closer to her. She agrees, with him putting on makeup in addition to a wig, and Marie is struck by his beauty, as is Alvin by her’s. Alvin proclaims he wants to feel even closer to her, and the two proceed to have sex in the hotel room, further making note of one another’s beauty. Savannah Bradley English 206 Professor Kenan March 9th, 2018 Transcendence and Trespassers: On Come to Me: Stories ​ ​ ​ In Amy Bloom’s “Sleepwalking,” Julia, the narrator, states that when a lifeguard has to save a drowning, panicky swimmer, what swimmers don’t realize is that they have to let their rescuer save them, and, through this, sometimes lifeguards are forced to knock the swimmer out in order to bring them back to shore. Bloom’s characters are primarily watchers, heedful observers, and in Come to Me: Stories, they ​ ​ are often dealt a death blow in an effort to finally heighten, lower, or transcend their limits. Additionally, in Come to Me, these characters’ limits are chiefly related to, if not all related to, their relationships- ​ ​ whether platonic, familial, or romantic. In reference to the latter, Bloom’s characters often correlate desire with transcendence, resulting in adultery, incest, or perhaps, simply, pain, but Bloom does not write in voyeuristic terms; her language is lush, yet sensible, focusing more on how her characters step back and think about their relationship(s) as a whole, rather than centering on their roles in them. Perhaps the starkest example of this quote-unquote “death blow” as a tool for characterization is in the collection’s first story, “Love is Not a Pie,” which centers on a daughter’s reminiscence on her parents’ polyamorous relationship, in direct juxtaposition with her engagement to a man, John, in what she considers a socially “normal” pairing. After the narrator, Ellen, goes to her mother’s funeral and has her suspicions confirmed about the nature of her parents’ relationship- in her youth, she had seen her mother and another man embracing, then, later, the man and her parents sleeping in the same bed- this is seen as her moral crossroads, where she considers her mother’s view of relationships (“Love is not a pie, honey. I love you and Ellen differently because you are different people, wonderful people, but not all the Bradley 2 same. And so who I am with each of you is different, unique to us. I don’t choose between you…” “People think that it can’t be that way, but it can. You just have to find the right people,” p. 19). After learning of her mother’s views from her sister, Lizzie, she decides to call John and break off the engagement, deciding that love should not be a categorical, black-and-white phenomenon, and finds vindication in what she has done when John initially reacts by claiming that they have already ordered wedding invitations. After this, Ellen acquiesces that she might never understand the intricacies of her mother and her relationships, but love is too important to confine to a singular view of marriage.
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