V. S. Pritchett Open Mike

Here you can comment about Pritchett's story, compare it with the stories we've read earlier, ask questions and even answer them!

Writers writing

Here are some photos of Hemingway and Faulkner writing.

Hemingway in Africa, probably in the 1950s:


Hemingway at the desk, maybe at one of his houses in Florida or in Cuba:



And here is Faulkner, in 1954!

Carver Open Mike

A few people in the class said this story was not as exciting as the previous stories we've read. Maybe the shorter version would have been better? The problem is that the shorter version is even darker, more pessimistic, than the longer original version that we are reading. And maybe a warm sunny afternoon is not the best time to study a difficult story in a foreign language, is it?

Anyway, any thoughts about this story?

Cutting Carver

Here is a link to the story as Raymond Carver wrote it. This is the longer version that we are reading.

Here is a link to the story as it was edited and cut.

You can actually see the way the story is changing here, sentence by sentence. It's a good example of editing and re-writing and correcting. In the process, the story's title was also changed from "Beginners" to "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."

Here is "the story of the story," The New Yorker's telling of how Carver's story was cut up.

And here is Carver in 1984:

"Coming In with Their Hands Up"

Joseph Epstein's story, "Coming In with Their Hands Up," is quite different from the Hemingway and Faulkner stories that we've read. First of all, it's quite obvious, straightforward, and sincere. In the beginning, we get a nice little trick, when the narrator describes how he is listening to two people standing in line and talking about this fellow Allen Bernstein. And then suddenly we get a surprise: "I'm Allen Bernstein." It's a nice trick, and it also tells us something important about the narrator. His reaction after listening to other people talking about him is not surprise, as it would be for most of us. He is calm and self-satisfied. We have a sense that he is accustomed to being talked about, maybe even that he is famous in some way.

After this opening, the narrator tells us the story of his career. The tone is straightforward because the narrator's main concern is with making money. He is hungry for success; he wants to be rich. Maybe this is just like us? And then he tells us about the people he gets to know in his job as a divorce lawyer. We can see that he doesn't really enjoy his job, especially when he tells us the story of the woman who wants to divorce her husband because he looks funny when he is not wearing his glasses.

Surprisingly, the narrator doesn't tell us about his own feelings of guilt here, even though he sees that the woman is wrong to want a divorce. He simply says, "I was able to get her just about everything she wanted... Poor Howard, I assume, recovered..." But isn't this assumption a little too easy? Isn't the narrator thinking that the husband is all right because this helps him not to feel guilty? Isn't he trying to hide the fact--from himself, or from us, or both--that he has just helped a woman to take a lot of money away from a man for no good reason?

I think we skipped an important paragraph at the bottom of page 225 where the narrator's character really comes out. At the top of the next page we read: "There's only one point, winning, which means getting your clients what they want, and making them pay you well for it." There is only one point, one goal, one purpose: to win. But where is the sense of right and wrong, where is the moral sense? For this guy, it seems to be absent.

And then, suddenly, immediately after describing his rather empty philosophy of life, the narrator tells us about how he got married. He is aware that it is ironic for him, as a divorce lawyer, to marry. And he says that he keeps his wedding private and quiet, because it would be "bad for business" if a lot of people found out about it. But he is not very much bothered by this contradiction, this conflict, between what he does in his job and what he expects at home.

And then, suddenly, we get a bomb of a surprise in the last couple of paragraphs of the story. Bernstein decides to divorce his wife... because he loves her. I finished the class last week proposing that we have a good example of poetic justice here. "Poetic justice" is just a fancy term for a story which shows that justice exists, that people get what they deserve. And the justice here is that this fellow, who has done so much to help other people break up their marriages, cannot keep his own marriage. But some other people that have read this story may have a different opinion. They may say that it is wrong for this guy to leave his wife the way he does. It seems that she wants to stay married because this is more important for her than having children--but Bernstein assumes that he knows what is good for her better than she knows it herself. What do you people think?

Hemingway and Faulkner

At first, it seems that Hemingway and Faulkner are entirely on opposite sides. Hemingway's style is simple and direct, and he uses almost no adjectives. Faulkner's style is ornate, complicated, with many long adjectives. Further, Hemingway simply gives you the story, without making you think about how the story is told. His presentation is impersonal, cold, distant--like the eye of a movie camera. But Faulkner tells you the story using a narrator, and the narrator brings his own questions and complications to the story. For example, in "A Rose for Emily," we saw that the narrator doesn't really give us the facts of what happened in a clear, logical way. Instead, he begins at the end, with Emily's death, and then gives us a lot of memories that seem unconnected to each other, and then finishes, again, with the end, with Emily's death.

With Faulkner, we have to think about how the speaker remembers what he is talking about. We also have to wonder about whether he knows the central fact of the story, which is Emily's poisoning of H.B. This guy who is telling the story--is he really so stupid that he doesn't understand the meaning of the facts that he tells us? Or is he actually trying to hide the truth, by not speaking about it? And why hide it? Because the act of murder for love is so terrible? Because he knew Emily or H.B. personally? We don't know any of this, and we cannot know it; the story gives us no information here.

The story also gives us no information about Emily's feelings and motives, the reason why she killed H.B. From the ending, from the last shocking line, "we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair," we may think that Emily regrets killing H.B., because she lies down next to his dead body, she lies down on the same bed with a skeleton. But is that really what she must feel, regret? Or is she still in love with him, still obsessed, still crazy, in the same way that she was crazy when she decided to kill him? Maybe she is so crazy that it makes no difference whether he is alive or dead? We simply don't know.

And here is where Faulkner is similar to Hemingway. In Hemingway also, when we step back from the bare facts of the story and consider "the big picture," we are aware that we do not know as much as we would like to know, we don't know as much as we really need to know. For example, in "The Hills Like White Elephants," what do we know about the history of these two lovers? How long have they been together? Are they happy together, or do they fight a lot? Is the man married to someone else, maybe? Is the girl trying to marry him because he has a lot of money, or is the girl simply too young, foolish and lost? We meet these people for only five minutes. Can we judge them from those five minutes? And what about the man? We saw in the story that the girl is really unhappy about having an abortion. We sense that she doesn't want to kill her baby. And the man is cold, insensitive. He doesn't see her suffering. Or is he maybe only pretending that he doesn't see it? Maybe he is also suffering, inside himself, but trying to appear tough on the outside? And maybe the narrator of "A Rose for Emily" is like that as well--suffering on the inside, but pretending to be confused on the outside?

Both of these stories are dense, both of them are packed with information. But in the end, despite giving us so many facts, these stories leave us with a sense that we need to know a lot more. When we finish these stories, we are shocked at our own ignorance. How is it possible that this is all that we will ever know? How is it that we will never know more? This is a very modern feeling.

We might say that in both of these stories, at the center we find an empty space. However, I don't think that these stories are trying to cheat us, pretending to give us something and then not delivering. Instead, they are telling us something--that life is something mysterious and puzzling. And that seems true, doesn't it?

The drama of Emily step by step

I hope--and I think you also do--that this will be the last big thing I will write here about A Rose for Emily, the most difficult story we will ever read!

On Tuesday let's spend some more time discussing this story. I am sure many of you want to ask, "Why did Faulkner make this so difficult, so much like a puzzle?"

Now, let's review what happened here, in order:


-Emily's father dies; she is thirty years old

-the next summer, Homer Barron comes to town

-Emily starts going out with Barron

-people start saying, "Poor Emily."

-more than a year later, Emily buys rat poison

-Homer Barron disappears

-there is a bad smell for two weeks

-Emily's door is closed from now on; she does not go out for six months; one day in 1894 Colonel Sartoris remits her taxes

-Emily dies and is buried the next day

-The townspeople break down the door upstairs and discover the skeleton (the bones) of a long-dead man

Why doesn't Emily need to pay taxes?

First I have to say that A Rose for Emily is really the hardest story that we are going to read during this whole semester. Nothing else will be this hard. Why did I give you this hard story immediately at the beginning of the semester? I don't know. But everything else is much easier from here on.

Many people are asking this question--is there really a connection between Emily's killing of the Yankee and her being allowed not to pay taxes? Let's go through this slowly.

1. Here we have a story which is only 12 pages. In such a short story, everything has to connect to everything else. Everything is important. Everything that is here has a reason to be here. So what is the importance of the remitting of Emily's taxes (her being allowed not to pay taxes)? This is one of the first things we learn about Emily, that she doesn't pay taxes. What is this fact doing here? Does it simply show us that Emily is special, different from others? And why does the narrator (the person who is telling the story) mention this fact twice--on page 119-120 near the beginning, and then again on page 128?

2. Let's look slowly at what it actually says about Emily's taxes being remitted. A lot of people are saying, "Well, she didn't have to pay taxes after her father died, but Homer Barron died two years later, therefore these two things can't be connected." But what does the story say? Emily doesn't have to pay taxes

"from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris... remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity."

Does this mean that when Emily's father died--at the time when he died--because he died--Col. Sartoris decided that Emily doesn't have to pay taxes? No, it means that at some time Col. Sartoris decided that Emily doesn't have to pay taxes, and that she doesn't have to pay them from the time that her father died. The important words here are, "the dispensation dated from..." It means the decision or the privilege took effect from the death of her father. It doesn't say when Sartoris actually said that Emily doesn't have to pay taxes.

The dispensation, the privilege, takes effect with the death of Miss Emily's father. So if Sartoris decides it two years after her father's death, then the town must return to her the taxes she paid for the two years since her father's death. Yes, this is strange. Why not say, "You don't have to pay taxes starting tomorrow?" Because Sartoris has a reason why doesn't have to pay taxes: it's because her father owed money to the town.

Is this the true reason? Well, if it were true, then why didn't Sartoris remit Emily's taxes immediately after her father's death, and not later? It doesn't make sense. Plus, the story tells us that remitting the taxes has nothing to do with Emily's father, that this is not the true reason:

"Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it."

In other words: only someone as old as Sartoris could have made up this reason for Miss Emily not to pay taxes--that her father owed money to the town--and only a woman could be so naive and so foolish that she would believe it.

So immediately on the second page of the story we have this: Miss Emily doesn't have to pay taxes, and Colonel Sartoris gave a false reason for allowing her not to pay taxes.

Sure, Colonel Sartoris could be just letting Emily not pay taxes because she is poor. It says, "Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity." Meaning, Miss Emily is too proud to accept gifts from other people. She would hate it if she saw that someone pitied her. For this reason, Colonel Sartoris has to disguise his real reason, which is pity, from her. But Emily is not the only poor woman in the town, is she? And it seems that all the other poor people have to pay taxes, don't they? What make Emily special? What did she do to get this favor?

And who gives her this favor? What kind of a man is Colonel Sartoris? Look at the very last lines of page 119 and the top of page 120--here you see what kind of a man Colonel Sartoris was. A man who hates blacks... therefore a man who would reward Emily for killing a Yankee, a white man from the North, which fought to free the blacks in the South.

3. Let's not forget the second time the remission of taxes is mentioned, on page 128. Here we find out for sure that Emily's gift or privilege comes after the death of Homer Barron: "She no longer went out at all... meanwhile her taxes had been remitted."

Time and Story in A Rose for Emily

Here we have all the references to time, all the descriptions of time, in Faulkner's story.

1. "When Miss Emily Grierson died..."

2. "Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care... dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris... remitted her taxes."

3. "The next generation" says she has to pay taxes. "On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came..." The town officials come to see her; she defeats them.

4. "Just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart... had deserted her."

5. "A woman complained... the next day [the mayor] received two more complaints... that night the Board of Aldermen met... the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn... After a week or two the smell went away."

6. "She got to be thirty and was still single... When her father died..."

7. "The day after his death... She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days..."

8. "In the summer after her father's death... the construction company came... with a foreman named Homer Barron..."

9. 'Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons... At first we were glad... And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began.'

10. 'Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily"...'

11. 'So the next day we all said, "She will kill herself"... When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said... Then we said... Later we said... Then some of the ladies began to say... at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister to call upon her... The next Sunday they again drove through the streets, and the following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations..."

12. "At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned... Two days later we learned... We were not surprised when Homer Barron was gone... After another week [the relations] departed... Within three days Homer Barron was back in town... the Negro man [admitted] him... at dusk one evening."

13. "And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron... Now and then we would see her at a window... for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew... When we next saw Miss Emily... During the next few years... Up to the day of her death at seventy-four..."

14. "From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty... Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted."

15. "Then the new generation became the backbone of the town... When the town got free postal delivery... Daily, monthly, yearly, we watched the Negro grow grayer... Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later... Now and then we would see her in one of the windows... Thus she passed from generation to generation."

16. "And so she died. Fell ill..."

17. "The Negro met the first of the ladies... He walked through the house and out the back and was not seen again... They held the funeral on the second day..."

18. "Already we knew that there was one room... which no one had seen in forty years. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground..."

19. They break down the door. "For a long time we just stood there... Then we noticed..."

Faulkner: Open Mike

What did you think about "A Rose for Emily"? We did go through it very fast today, a little too fast, but I really wanted to get to the end. And now that we've gotten to the end, you can see that the whole story really depends on that wonderful shocking ending.

Some of you came up after class and told me that the vocabulary is too difficult. Yes, it is, even for me. For example, at the bottom of page 129, we read about "valance curtains." What is that? I don't know. And I'm not going to find out. Because it's not important for the story! You can understand the story perfectly well without knowing this one word, "valance," and it's a word that you will probably never see again--I never saw it before I read this story--so why bother about it? And the same thing with many other words in this story--when I kept reading without explaining the difficult words, that means that you don't need to know them.

What you do need to know about the story is "the big picture," the main ideas, the things that make this story different and special. One of the really big things in "Emily" and in Faulkner generally is the power of the past. We've talked about this a little today...

I will write more later in the week. For now, do comment here about any difficulties or questions or discoveries about this story.

Hemingway: Open Mike

From wikipedia: "An open mike or open mic (or open spots ) is a live show where audience members may perform at the microphone." So, come up here to the stage, everybody, and grab the mike, and tell us something! Here is a chance to get participation points, and shock your classmates with your thoughts!

What did you think about the Hemingway stories we read? Did you like them? Did they make you think after the class was over? Was Hemingway nice and easy to read?

Instructions on using this website

This is our chance to get to know one another better as we enjoy and think about all the stories that we'll be reading together. We all have one big thing in common: we're all studying this thing called British Literature. I think that's a great start already.

First, a short introduction to this blog.

* I will try to post (to write) at least once a week. I will write about things that I and we talked about in class, and about our reading.

* You can also create posts (like this one) yourself. Just send me what you want to write by email, and I will post it with your name.

* It's easy to reply or to add to things that are already here. At the bottom you will see "O comments" or "1 comment" or whatever number of comments we have. Click on that, and a box will open up. Here you can type your comment. Then, under this box, you will see "Select profile..." Choose "Name / URL," and just type your name. Then your wonderful comment will be published, for everyone to see and enjoy!

* If you want to comment anonymously, without your classmates knowing who you are, you can do that too. If you want to write about something very personal, for example. Because literature is so personal, isn't it?

* We will not have a lot of writing homework in this class. I know that often you don't feel like writing, you don't have the inspiration. That's why we have this blog instead. When you get an exciting new thought, or even a question, late at night, write it here! Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Our exciting reading schedule!

Week 1: Hemingway, "The Hills Like White Elephants", "A Very Short Story"

Week 2: William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily"

Week 3: Somerset Maugham, "P & O"

Week 4: Joseph Epstein, "Coming In With Their Hands Up"

Week 5: Raymond Carver, "Beginners"

Week 6: Francine Prose, "Talking Dog"; V. S. Pritchett, "You Make Your Own Life"

Week 7: Jhumpa Lahiri, "The Third and Final Continent"

Week 8: midterm exam!