DOCSLIB.ORG

William Giraldi Next Stop Abbottland: the Stories of Lee K. Abbott

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
William Giraldi Next Stop Abbottland: the Stories of Lee K. Abbott William Giraldi Next Stop Abbottland: The Stories of Lee K. Abbott he best fiction writers and dramatists construct worlds with such expertise T of purpose and innovation that it’s impossible to confuse those worlds with any others. Samuel Beckett’s environment might resemble no place on earth, but we return to it again and again because it matches precisely our interior landscape. What makes Beckett—and others such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor—impossible to confuse with another writer is original- ity of purpose, or vision. A fiction writer’s purpose does not lie in his theme, since the only theme available to him is the plight of Homo sapiens; this is what Henry Fielding meant when he wrote in Tom Jones that man, not God, “is the highest subject.” Whether the plight of our species is viewed through the colored glass of class, race, sex, or religion is really beside the point, because all literature is about either the defeat or the triumph of the human spirit. A writer’s particular purpose reveals itself through the manner in which he or she processes those opposites and lays bare the heart in conflict. Since pur- pose cannot be revealed through theme, it must be revealed through style—a condition the poets share. Syntax and diction, and how they contribute to characterization, are the marks of a story writer’s purpose. Whereas a poet’s mode is in most cases primarily lyrical, a fiction writ- er’s is narrative: he has a story to tell, a story about men and women strug- gling against the grate of existence, against all things known and unknown. No struggle, no story; we are not interested in hearing about a purely happy day. Our American short story writers practice a form perfectly suited to this struggle: most of our lives are not perennial travesties but rather an accumula- tion of a hundred separate events marked by bliss and pain. These episodes may [ 69 ] 70 the georgia review last an hour, a day, a week, a month—or twenty pages for the story writer. A novelist concerns himself with a life, a story writer with the most meaningful chapters from that life. When Lee K. Abbott arrived on the scene in 1980 with his story collection The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, American short fiction was about to get a makeover courtesy of the so-called minimalists: early Raymond Carver via Gordon Lish, the scoured sentences of Richard Bausch, and the Richard Ford of Rock Springs. Later, Amy Hempel and Frederick Barthelme would carry on the mode of minimalism, which Hempel preferred to call miniaturist. I have no quarrel with the term minimalist because it was always meant to denote style instead of substance, though Hemingway, the most minimal of them all—what is his iceberg theory if not a call to minimalism?—never had to contend with such a label. Borrowed from modern art, this label came to apply to American short fiction partly in reaction to the excess of the Reagan eighties, those unashamed glory days of capitalism and the Star Wars program. John Barth was at the head of a pack who applied the term with unadulterated praise, especially in his 1986 essay “A Few Words about Minimalism.” With the cold war winding down, there was still much talk of plutonium and mutual annihilation, and some of what Carver, Bausch, and Ford aimed to achieve was a reemphasis on the little American heart in the little American home. John Cheever’s and John Updike’s emphases were similarly fixed, though always in a style that suggests the intel- lectual and rhapsodic. The minimalists favored a more mainlined approach to emotional truths, unencumbered by the acrobatics of the Updike syntax. Lee K. Abbott would have nothing of this. The Heart Never Fits Its Want- ing is an orgy of style, one that performs the magic trick of being at once ine- briated and exact—his narrators akin to world-class drinkers who can down a fifth of Jim Beam and still stand straight. Abbott has often been compared to Cheever, but this is a mystery to me because their sensibilities as story writers are wholly apart, the classes of their characters at nearly opposite ends of the social spectrum. Most of Abbott’s narratives serve his language, and though this is typi- cally the crime of a beginning writer who wants to demonstrate his vocabulary and what he recently learned in philosophy class—usually about Nietzsche—in early Abbott the inversion is the point: without language our stories don’t exist. Like a genuine poet, Abbott wants to create a new mode of communication, william giraldi 71 and if that communication is zany and reckless then so is the human heart. Less is not more; more is more, replete with abstractions, metaphysics, and mayhem: Death. Say the word a dozen times and you’ll see that it will mean as little to you as gibberish in French or what machines speak. Sung as we used to sing about what we thought was love in those days, it will no more touch you than trouble among South Pole penguins or quar- rel across town; it will seem to you now as it seemed to me then—a condition fetched up to disturb the small minds we celebrate. Imitative form is a fallacy in certain instances, the mode of lazy pens and impoverished imaginations: the writer’s main character withholds information from her husband, and so the writer withholds information from the reader; the character’s thoughts are a muddled mess, and so too is the writing. A fic- tion writer who would make such defenses is not worth listening to in the first place, yet for Abbott the feverish pace of his sentences, the alliteration and unorthodox syntax, are successful corollaries to the motives and inner bedlam of his characters. Originality of character begets originality of language. Abbott is a generous writer seemingly incapable of error, and so imitative form aug- ments the energy of his narratives, which are revelatory and fun. Remember when reading was fun? This is from the story “Love Is the Crooked Thing,” told by an aging football player, Burl Purteet, who has just met the woman he will marry: Time moved on as it will in my world, and in August I went into another Baldwin-Wallace training camp, that beef of me much older, my knees held fast by gizmos of stainless steel and miracle fabric; and I thought little about Ms. DuFoys until that afternoon, during two- a-days, when three from the Blue squad, including a lunatic rookie who desired to be the new edition of yours truly, sought to batter old Burl’s kidneys and shiver his thinking parts so that Number 56 would go down in a pile the size of an economy sedan. Exaggeration is the machine of the comic, and Abbott, for all his seri- ousness and squalor, is primarily a comedic writer who delights in the folly that is man. In the Southwest of The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, Abbott’s women say things like “I’m a journalist. I specialize in grief and overcoming,” and his men announce, “I’m bear and snake. I live apart from grace.” His New 72 the georgia review Mexican isolatos have no trouble approaching unknown women on the street and declaring, “I love you. Here, feel my face,” and then afterward pondering their lot: “I could hear the genetic chit-chat of my hormones.” At a party, one of Abbott’s men spots the woman of his fantasies and declares, “My heart shot to my neck like a squirrel, all claws and climbing.” And then comes this sad observation: “In my part of the world, people suffer horribly from love.” Ditto in ours. Many of Abbott’s people speak alike, and their speech has little corre- spondence to our actual world, but that’s because they live in this awkward wasteland Abbott has constructed for them. And, oddly enough, they are com- fortable there: his people are altogether themselves and wouldn’t be capable of recognizing a different realm if they suddenly found themselves in one. Abbott’s plots unfold in an eerie, dreamlike haze of booze, narcotics, and disap- pointment—“I had eight thoughts, then eighty, several of which had to do with drinking and the truths you find doing it.” And yet never does one suspect that Abbott is penning anything other than grainy realism, except that he molds his planet as would an insane god and then rules over it with just as much mad- ness. Writing is one of the only methods a person has of approaching godliness: in the beginning was the word. In “Love and the Hurt of It,” one of Abbott’s funniest stories, the protago- nist Dallas has a Casanova effect on females—all females, prepubescent and postmenstrual alike. Groups of them pounce on him like ravenous Bacchae wherever he travels; old girlfriends break his bones, bruise him, and make him bleed. Dallas is at once lovable, dopey, and, like all of Abbott’s people, metaphysically minded. Is this permissible? Are fiction writers who are ostensibly realists—that is, those who have no stock in the supernatural, the fabulist, or the satiri- cal—allowed to compose a world of characters in situations whose nexus to our own is untenable or shaky at best? I hope so, or else we’ll have to trash half of the serious American fiction ever written, starting with most of Mark Twain and moving on into Yoknapatawpha County.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Iceberg and Its Minimalist Implications in Raymond Carver's Fiction
    Sinking the Titanic: The Iceberg and its Minimalist Implications In Raymond Carver's Fiction Senior Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For a Degree Bachelor of Arts with A Major in Literature at The University of North Carolina at Asheville Spring 2006 By John Mozley Thesis Reader Deborah James Thesis Advisor Cynn Chadwick Mozley 1 When Raymond Carver died in 1988 of lung cancer, Robert Gotlieb, the then editor of The New Yorker, stated, "America just lost the writer it could least afford to lose" (Max 36). In Carver's mere twenty-year publishing career, he garnered such titles as "the American Chekhov" (London Times), "the most imitated American writer since Hemingway" (Nesset 2), and "as successful as a short story writer in America can be" (Meyer 239). Carver's stories won the O. Henry Award three consecutive years, he was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977 for Will You Please Be Quiet Please?. won two NBA awards for fiction, received a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as the "Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters" (Saltzman 3), and his collection of stories, Cathedral was nominated for both National Book Critics Circle award and a Pulitzer Prize (Saltzman 3). Born in Oregon in 1938, Carver grew up in Yakima, Washington where his father worked in the sawmill. At twenty years old, Carver was married to his high school sweetheart, Maryanne, and had two children (Saltzman 1). Plagued by debt and escalating alcoholism, the Carvers moved to California where Raymond "worked a series of low-paying jobs, including deliveryman, gas station attendant and hospital janitor, while his wife waited tables and sold door to door" (1), his jobs also included "sawmill worker.
    [Show full text]
  • 74 Three Phases of Literary Minimalism
    International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research ISSN: 2455-2070; Impact Factor: RJIF 5.22 www.socialresearchjournals.com Volume 2; Issue 12; December 2016; Page No. 74-76 Three phases of literary minimalism Shazia Khatoon Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India Abstract Literary Minimalism elaborates new method of writing a text that advocates ordinary stuff, simple writing, and common life. It is away from all complex writing of the past that is based on action rather than reflection. It uses a method which eliminates nonessential details of a text and creates a new way of writing identify as Neo-realist, K-mart realism, and Dirty realism. Such writings are characterized by visual quality hence, focuses on visualising the story. This paper discusses the development of three phases of Literary Minimalism. Keywords: minimalism, realism, ordinary stuff, and common man etc. Introduction strong point to a story” (Darzikola 1) [11]. According to him an Minimalism emerges as a movement between 1960s-80s amateurish writer damages a story by omitting vital though it is influenced by the postmodern writing like neo- information without any mark. Whereas, if there is skilled realism, metafiction, and by several other art forms such as writer practices omission, it will strengthen a story as they Painting, Architecture, Music but basically it makes its ground invite readers to apply their own ideas. Moreover, writer also through the writings of Earnest Hemingway. Minimalism provides life experiences and moral values to the work, divides into three phases as first phase of literary Minimalism potentially resulting in deeper and more meaning of the text.
    [Show full text]
  • DOHERTY-DISSERTATION-2015.Pdf (733.0Kb)
    State-Funded Fictions: The NEA and the Making of American Literature After 1965 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Doherty, Margaret. 2015. State-Funded Fictions: The NEA and the Making of American Literature After 1965. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467197 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA State-Funded Fictions: The NEA and the Making of American Literature After 1965 A dissertation presented by Margaret O’Connor Doherty to The Department of English In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of English Harvard University Cambridge, MA May 2015 © 2015 Margaret O’Connor Doherty All rights reserved Dissertation Advisor: Professor Louis Menand Margaret O’Connor Doherty State-Funded Fictions: The NEA and the Making of American Literature After 1965 Abstract This dissertation studies the effects of a patronage institution, the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Program, on American literary production in the postwar era. Though American writers had long cultivated informal relationships with government patrons, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reflected a new investment in the aesthetic life of the nation. By awarding grants to citizens without independent resources for work yet to be produced, it changed both the demographics of authorship and the idea of the “professional” writer.
    [Show full text]
  • From the Postmodern to the Pre-Modern: More Recent Changes in Literature, Art and Theory
    ISSN 0258–0802. LITERATÛRA 2007 49(5) FROM THE POSTMODERN TO THE PRE-MODERN: MORE RECENT CHANGES IN LITERATURE, ART AND THEORY Herbert Grabes Proffesor, Justus-Liebig-Universität That literature, art and theory have changed accident, then, I might add, that the very term considerably since the early and more spectacular ‘postmodernism’ should have entered phase of postmodernity in the nineteen-sixties and awareness via Charles Jencks’s lucubrations seventies is too obvious to be overlooked. These on contemporary architecture, an essentially changes raise questions regarding their actual extent visual domain. Too great was the contrast and quality, their presumable causes and their already between the stylish late modernist Colour discernible consequences – three aspects to which Field paintings of American Abstract I will be directing your attention in the following Expressionism and the new presentation of remarks. banal objects of everyday use, such as Jasper First, then, the extent and quality of the Johns’s “Two Beer Cans” (1960) or Andy changes that can be observed in the domains Warhol’s “Brillo Box” (1964) as well as the of literature, art and theory: in order to let you foregrounding of the nature of such objects share my observations, I will have to draw at as mass products of consumer culture in least a rough sketch of the situation then and Warhol’s famously iconic “200 Campbell now: that is, of the state of play in the Soup Cans” (1962). What soon came to be nineteen-sixties and seventies as against the called “Pop Art” further included the situation obtaining from the nineteen-eighties integration of the sexy images of advertising, onwards.
    [Show full text]
  • AMERICAN LITERARY MINIMALISM by ROBERT CHARLES
    AMERICAN LITERARY MINIMALISM by ROBERT CHARLES CLARK (Under the Direction of James Nagel) ABSTRACT American Literary Minimalism stands as an important yet misunderstood stylistic movement. It is an extension of aesthetics established by a diverse group of authors active in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that includes Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound. Works within the tradition reflect several qualities: the prose is “spare” and “clean”; important plot details are often omitted or left out; practitioners tend to excise material during the editing process; and stories tend to be about “common people” as opposed to the powerful and aristocratic. While these descriptors and the many others that have been posited over the years are in some ways helpful, the mode remains poorly defined. The core idea that differentiates American Minimalism from other movements is that prose and poetry should be extremely efficient, allusive, and implicative. The language in this type of fiction tends to be simple and direct. Narrators do not often use ornate adjectives and rarely offer effusive descriptions of scenery or extensive detail about characters’ backgrounds. Because authors tend to use few words, each is invested with a heightened sense of interpretive significance. Allusion and implication by omission are often employed as a means to compensate for limited exposition, to add depth to stories that on the surface may seem superficial or incomplete. Despite being scattered among eleven decades, American Minimalists share a common aesthetic. They were not so much enamored with the idea that “less is more” but that it is possible to write compact prose that still achieves depth of setting, characterization, and plot without including long passages of exposition.
    [Show full text]
  • Girls of Easy Virtue
    The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2011 Girls of Easy Virtue Elizabeth Anne Wagner University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Wagner, Elizabeth Anne, "Girls of Easy Virtue" (2011). Dissertations. 991. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/991 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi GIRLS OF EASY VIRTUE by Elizabeth Anne Wagner Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2011 ABSTRACT GIRLS OF EASY VIRTUE by Elizabeth Anne Wagner August 2011 This is a collection of four stories I have written during my time in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. ii COPYRIGHT BY ELIZABETH ANNE WAGNER 2011 The University of Southern Mississippi GIRLS OF EASY VIRTUE by Elizabeth Anne Wagner A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: __Steven Barthelme___________________ Director __Angela Ball________________________ _Julia Johnson________________________ _Monika Gehlawat____________________ _Martina Sciolino_____________________ _Susan A Siltanen_____________________ Dean of the Graduate School August 2011 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Steven Barthelme, Frederick Barthelme, Rie Fortenberry, Melanie Barthelme, Julia Johnson, and Angela Ball.
    [Show full text]
  • Double Coding: Some Characteristic Differences Between Modernism
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 296 916 SO 019 046 AUTHOR McCracken, Tim TITLE Double Coding: Some Characteristic Difference:; between Modernism and Postmodernism and the Implications for Honors Education. PUB DATE 18 May 87 NOTE 15p.; Paper presented at the Conference of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (Austin, TX, May 18: 1387). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) Reports - Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/9C01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Comparative Analysis; Culture; Curriculum Development; *Educational Philosophy; *Educational Theories; Higher Education; *"onors Curriculum; Models; *Modernism; Student Cdaracteristics IDENTIFIERS Cultural Change; *Postmodernism; *Social Constructivism ABSTRACT Significant differences occur between the philosophies of the academic curriculum, the professors, and the students. Currently, curriculums tend to be predominately modern, while students prefer postmodern education theories. Academic institutions can respond to this cultural change by establishing integrated and interdisciplinary honors programs. This paper examines: (1) selected characteristics of modern curriculums; (2) selected characteristics of postmodern students; and (3) the use of the social construction model to synthesize western cultural changes. Specific applications of this model in the Union County College (Cranford, New Jersey) Honors Program are described in terms of: (1) curriculum design;(2) courses; (3) faculty participation; and (4) student, faculty, and course materials interactions. An appendix
    [Show full text]
  • 'Corresponding Territory' Space in The
    'Corresponding Territory' Space in the Poetry and Fiction of Raymond Carver Andrew Munzer Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of York English September 2013 1 Abstract This thesis advances the case for the presentation and uses of space and place in the fiction, poetry and essays of Raymond Carver. Revisiting the literary and cultural texts connecting with his work, an investigation of a range of works across his career suggests specific modes of writing that contributed to his distinctive and influential style. The structural elements of the short story tradition and cultural and social histories of architecture are considered together, to suggest ways in which Carver’s work speaks to both a domestic experience of space, and literary tradition before him. Visual charts are suggested in the analysis of a fictional mode that suppresses chronological linearity in favour of the multi-directional forms of lived space. In this investigation, new material from the publication of Carver’s unedited second collection, Beginners (2009) is introduced into the critical debate. In light of this, the stories more clearly demonstrate Carver’s actively collaborative mode, before and after that period. The thesis has particular focus on the explorations of self, space and form in Gordon Lish’s fiction and Tess Gallagher’s poetry: key intertexts for both the editing debate and Carver’s writing itself. This thesis also seeks to further the corrective rebalancing of critical attention towards Carver’s poetry, as part of his cohesive body of work. It also suggests the ways in which the poems particularly demonstrate modes that are active in all of Carver’s writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Answer Me That
    The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Fall 12-2009 Answer Me That Catherine Davis University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Fiction Commons, and the Nonfiction Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Catherine, "Answer Me That" (2009). Dissertations. 1074. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1074 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi ANSWER ME THAT by Catherine Davis A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2009 COPYRIGHT BY CATHERINE DAVIS 2009 The University of Southern Mississippi ANSWER ME THAT by Catherine Davis Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2009 ABSTRACT ANSWER ME THAT by Catherine Davis December 2009 This is a collection of five works of short fiction and one creative non-fiction essay. 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation director, Steven Barthelme, and my other committee members, Frederick Barthelme, Julia Johnson, Dr. Angela Ball, Dr. Kenneth Watson, and Dr. Charles Sumner for their advice and support regarding my work. I give special thanks to Steven Barthelme and Frederick Barthelme as my primary teachers and guides, for hundreds of hours of their workshop time, and for the compelling inspiration of their own work.
    [Show full text]
  • Less Is More: American Short Story Minimalism in Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver and Frederick Barthelme Thesis
    Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Less is More: American Short Story Minimalism in Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver and Frederick Barthelme Thesis How to cite: Greaney, Philip John (2006). Less is More: American Short Story Minimalism in Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver and Frederick Barthelme. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2006 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.0000e8d3 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk N) S-T-K-1C---T-E: tý Less is More American Short Story Minimalism in Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver and Frederick Barthelme Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophyfor the OpenUniversity in the discipline of Literature, September 2005 by Philip John Greaney, B. A., M. A. A-uTH-o(z- ijc> ? -s gos 4-fc,cD 2CC ph-rF oi; ý SjeV-ýk%SýC>W 2, ) ocl EX12 THE OPEN UNIVERSITY RESEARCH SCHOOL Library Authorisation Form Pleasereturn this form to theResearch School with the two.bound copies of your thesisto be depositedwith the UniversityLibrary. All candidatesshould complete parts one and two of the form. Part threeonly appliesto PhD candidates. Part One: CandidatesDetails ký! t 4.97! ýP; tJ6 -1 Name: ..
    [Show full text]
  • PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Past Winners & Finalists 1981-2015
    PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Past Winners & Finalists 1981-2015 2015 – Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life Jeffery Renard Allen, Song of the Shank Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation 2014 – Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves Daniel Alarcón, At Night We Walk In Circles Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell Joan Silber, Fools Valerie Trueblood, Search Party: Stories of Rescue 2013 – Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club Amelia Gray, Threats Laird Hunt, Kind One T. Geronimo Johnson, Hold It ’Til It Hurts Thomas Mallon, Watergate 2012 - Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic Russell Banks, Lost Memory of Skin Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance Steven Millhauser, We Others: New and Selected Stories 2011 - Deborah Eisenberg, The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Good Squad Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule Eric Puchner, Model Home Brad Watson, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives 1 2010 - Sherman Alexie, War Dances Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna Lorraine Lopéz, Homicide Survivors Picnic Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor 2009 - Joseph O'Neill, Netherland Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Ms. Hempel Chronicles Susan Choi, A Person of Interest Richard Price, Lush Life Ron Rash, Serena 2008 - Kate Christensen, The Great Man Annie Dillard, The Maytrees David Leavitt, The Indian Clerk T.M. McNally, The Gateway: Stories Ron Rash, Chemistry and Other Stories 2007 - Philip Roth, Everyman Charles D’Ambrosio, The Dead Fish Museum Deborah Eisenberg, Twilight of the Superheroes Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel Edward P.
    [Show full text]
  • Minimalism and the Aesthetic of Shame by Maxwell Radwin a Thesis
    Minimalism and the Aesthetic of Shame by Maxwell Radwin A thesis presented for the B. A. degree with Honors in The Department of English University of Michigan Winter 2015 © 2015 Maxwell Radwin For Dick Tobin, Kevin Brown and Kelly Williams Acknowledgments I would like to first thank my advisor, Professor Kerry Larson. At the start of this process, his incredible wealth of knowledge was able to hone my broad interests into a subject worth pursuing and arguing for. Throughout the year, the high standard he held me to, as well as his patience and insight, shaped that argument into something that made, I believe, a real contribution to our understanding of the literature. By the end of this process, however, I found myself most thankful to him for being a strong exemplar of the kind of thinker I hope to be one day. Thanks to Professor Gillian White for encouraging me to apply to honors, as well as for being the stern, urgent voice throughout the year when I needed it most. Thanks to Professor Sean Silver for reading countless drafts early on, spit-balling raw ideas and most importantly, for revealing to me the process of converting those raw ideas into higher academic thought. Thanks to the cohort for the edits and suggestions. I enjoyed struggling with you, growing with you and succeeding with you. Thanks to my parents for instilling in me the ambition to take on a project like this, and the intellectual curiosity to enjoy it. I must also thank them for taking an interest in my interests.
    [Show full text]