This document provides instructions for a paper assignment on juxtaposing two short stories. Students must choose one of four paper topics, analyze two stories based on that topic, and write a 5-6 page paper comparing and contrasting the stories. The document outlines the format requirements, includes sample paper topics and analysis questions, and provides general writing guidelines.
How to Read and Understand an Expository EssayThe Initial Read.docxadampcarr67227
How to Read and Understand an Expository Essay
The Initial Reading
Read the first paragraph (or section for a longer essay). Then, read the conclusion. Identify what seem to be key concepts introduced in the opening of the essay and those concepts that have been emphasized or that have emerged in the conclusion.
Scan any headings or subheadings for a sense of progression of the development of key points.
With a pen in hand, begin reading the essay from the beginning, marking in your notes or on the printed page the main ideas as you see them appearing.
From your list of main ideas, annotated in the margins of each paragraph and copied to a separate page or note card, try to reconstruct mentally the main ideas of each paragraph.
Identify key passages that you may wish to use as direct quotations, paraphrases, summaries, or allusions in the drafts of an essay.
Subsequent Readings/Reviews
Always begin by reviewing first your notes and note cards on which you have copied the annotations of main ideas from each paragraph.
Turn to the text of the essay only when you fail to remember the exact reference made in the annotations of main ideas.
Identify the Mode of Development
Is the purpose of the essay to inform, persuade, entertain, or to explore?
What is the conclusion of any argument the author may be developing?
As an informational work, is the author's voice prominent or muted?
Be sure that you understand the writer's viewpoint and purpose:
Is the writer trying to explain his or her own opinion? Trying to attack another's position? Trying to examine two sides of an issue without judgment?
Is the writer being persuasive or just commenting on or describing a unique, funny, or interesting aspect of life and what it 'says about us'?
As a piece of entertainment, what specific literary humorous devices does the author employ? (See burlesque, hyperbole, understatement, other figures of speech.)
As an exploratory work, what is the focus of the inquiry? What is the author's relationship to that focus? Is s/he supportive, hostile, indifferent? What?
Analysis of the Author
Explain the author's attitude toward the subject of the essay. Is s/he sympathetic to the thesis, issue, or key concepts?
Explore on the Internet and/or other electronic or print media any information you can find about the author and the essay. Explain how this external information better helps to understand the essay.
Explain what seems to be the author's motivation in writing the essay and what s/he hopes to accomplish with the composition.
Identify any other factors in the author's biography or notes that seem relevant to the purpose of the composition.
Some Major Essayists
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
St. John de Crevecœur (1725–1813)
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
James Madison (1751–1836)
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Frederic.
Literary AnalysisWhat distinguishes literature from other forms o.docxSHIVA101531
Literary Analysis
“What distinguishes literature from other forms of knowledge is that it cannot be understood unless we understand what it means to be human.” (J. Bronowski)
There are many ways to interpret, analyze, and evaluate literature. Perhaps you’ve already been asked to make an observation or take a position about a work of literature (whether a poem, short story, novel, play, or film) and examine such elements as plot, characters, theme, setting, conflict, structure, point of view, imagery, or symbolism. When you are asked by a teacher to write an interpretation, a critique, or a literary analysis, you are being asked to figure out what is going on in a work of literature. Much more complicated than merely summarizing a piece or writing a personal reaction to it, literary analysis requires that you read between the lines of a text and discover something meaningful there. Why does a specific image recur throughout a poem? How does a novel relate to a social issue facing the author at the time it was written? Do you recognize a pattern or perceive a problem with a character’s behavior in a play? How is the role of women significant in a movie? Answers to all of these questions can be determined only through critical thinking and the synthesis of your ideas.
· An interpretation—explains a text’s overall meaning or significance, explaining your reasoning for this interpretation with supporting evidence from the text.
· A critique—also called a critical response or a review, it provides your personal judgment about a text, supported by reasons and references to the work of art and often secondary sources.· A formal analysis—different from a critique in that examines a work of art by breaking it down into various elements to discover how the parts interrelate to create meaning of effect.
· A cultural analysis—examines a work of art by relating it to the historical, social, cultural, or political situations in which it was written to show how the author was influenced by personal experiences, events, prevailing attitudes, or contemporary values.
How can I persuade readers that my view or interpretation is reasonable?
First, be sure that your view or interpretation asserts a debatable claim.
For instance, if you were to say that “Antigone is a play about a young woman who questions authority,” you wouldn’t be saying much beyond a summary. But if you said that, “Antigone’s punishment is well-deserved because she violates the laws of the king,” that is debatable. Another student could just as easily argue that Antigone’s punishment is not well-deserved and that she should be commended for respecting the higher laws of the gods over the laws of the king.
Because you are essentially arguing that your perspective is a valid one, you have to support it effectively with reasons, evidence from the piece (direct references to specific quotations, lines, passages, scenes, etc.), and—if required—secondary sources (articles and bo ...
The Movie TROY AssignmentHIS 101 Summer 2020Americans lov.docxdennisa15
The Movie TROY Assignment
HIS 101 Summer 2020
Americans love our history. From time to time, people like to alter or even make up stories in our past. One of the best descriptions of “altering the past” can be viewed in many of Hollywood’s historical films. While directors have the ability to keep films historically accurate, they typically enjoy adding drama or action when necessary. Historians also struggle with stories passed down through generations with no credible evidence (i.e. letters or documents) to support these stories.
For this assignment, you are required to use the film (TROY) and explain its accuracies and inaccuracies in a two-page paper. One-half of a page should be a summary of the movie. The remaining portion of your paper should focus on a minimum of two accuracies and two inaccuracies. Each accuracy and inaccuracy you discuss should have a legitimate source to prove the validity of your point. You can focus on the film as a whole or select a specific character or place described in the film, as long as the person or place actually exists or existed during that time. As an example, you could argue that in the movie Forest Gump, Tom Hanks (as Forest Gump) inaccurately portrays Paul “Bear” Bryant coaching the Alabama football team. After that statement, you would need to further explain the inaccuracies and incorporate (using actual evidence) what he actually did during this time in history. Remember that if you take information from any source word-for-word, it must be quoted and a footnote must be provided.
Prior to working on your paper, you must have your film selection approved! Selections must be submitted via email no later than Sunday, July 5 at 11:59 pm.
This is a two-page, double-spaced paper in 12-point font. The font must be Calibri or Times New Roman, not Comic Sans MS or Wingdings with one-inch margins on all sides. You are required to have a cover page with the title of your movie, your name and the date. This paper must be turned in by Sunday, July 12 at 11:59 pm on Canvas! There are no exceptions!
Citations and Bibliography
Any direct quote (three or more consecutive words) from any book, article, website or source must be placed in quotation marks and cited with a footnote or endnote with the specific page range. If you paraphrase a source, you should also cite it with a footnote or endnote and its corresponding page numbers.
Citations must follow the Turabian style, located below.
Please note that there are different styles of citing books, articles and websites for footnotes and bibliography.
Plagiarism will result in a failing grade. It is your responsibility to understand plagiarism and how to avoid it. If you are unsure, ask me and I will help you.
This paper is worth 15% of your final grade.
Sample footnotes
This list includes some of the more basic entries for notes. It does not cover every type of note. If you are unsure, consult Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of.
Similar to Art of literature eng 262 karlis paper # 1 p (20)
(APA 6th Edition Formatting and Style Guide)
Office of Graduate Studies
Alcorn State University
Engaging Possibilities, Pursuing Excellence
REVISED May 23, 2018
THESIS MANUAL
Graduates
2
COPYRIGHT PRIVILEGES
BELONG TO
OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES
ALCORN STATE UNIVERSITY, LORMAN, MS
Reproduction for distribution of this THESIS MANUAL requires the written permission of the
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs or Graduate Studies Administrator.
FOREWORD
Alcorn State University Office of Graduate Studies requires that all students comply with the
specifications given in this document in the publication of a thesis or non-thesis research project.
Graduate students, under faculty guidance, are expected to produce scholarly work either in the
form of a thesis or a scholarly research project.
The thesis (master or specialist) should document the student's research study and maintain a
degree of intensity.
The purpose of this manual is to assist the graduate student and the graduate thesis advisory
committee in each department with the instructions contained herein. This is the official
approved manual by the Graduate Division.
Formatting questions not addressed in these guidelines should be directed to the Graduate School
staff in the Walter Washington Administration Building, Suite 519 or by phone at
601.877.6122 or via email: [email protected] or in person.
The Graduate Studies
Thesis Advisory Committee
(Revised Spring 2018)
mailto:[email protected]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 3
SELECTION AND APPOINTMENT OF THESIS ADVISORY COMMITTEE ......................... 4
1. Early Topic Selection ......................................................................................................... 4
2. Selection of Thesis Chair ......................................................................................................... 4
3. Selection of Thesis Committee Members .......................................................................... 4
4. Appointment of Thesis Advisory Committee Form .......................................................... 4
5. Invitation to Prospective Committee Members ................................................................. 5
6. TAC Committee Selection ................................................................................................. 5
CHOICE OF SUBJECT .................................................................................................................... 5
PROPOSAL DEFENSE AND SUBMISSION OF PROPOSAL TO IRB ..................................... 5
PARTS OF THE MANUSCRIPT: PRELIMINARY PAGES ..................................................... 8
1. Title Page .
(a) Thrasymachus’ (the sophist’s) definition of Justice or Right o.docxAASTHA76
(a) Thrasymachus’ (the sophist’s) definition of Justice or Right or Right Doing/Living is “The Interest of the Stronger (Might makes Right).” How does Socrates refute this definition? (cite just
one
of his arguments) [cf:
The Republic
, 30-40, Unit 1 Lecture Video]
(b) According to Socrates, what is the true definition of Justice or Right? [cf:
The Republic
, 141-42, Unit 2 Lecture Video]
(c) And why therefore is the Just life far preferable to the Unjust life (142-43)?
(a) The Allegory of the CAVE (the main metaphor of western philosophy) is an illustration of the Divided LINE.
Characterize
the Two Worlds, and the move/ascent from one to the other (exiting the CAVE, crossing the Divided LINE)—which is alone the true meaning of Education and the only way to become Just, Right, and Immortal. [cf:
The Republic
, 227-232, Unit 3 Lecture Video]
(b) How do the philosophical Studies of
Arithmetic
(number) and
Dialectic
take you above the Divided Line and out of the changing sense-world of illusion (the CAVE) into Reality and make you use your Reason (pure thought) instead of your senses? [cf:
The Republic
, 235-37, 240-42, 250-55. Unit 4 Lecture Video (transcript)]
Give a summary of the
Proof of the Force
(Why there is the “Universe,” “Man,” “God,” “History,” etc)? Start with, “Can there be
nothing
?” [cf: TJH 78-95, Unit 2 Lecture Video]
NIETZSCHE is the crucial Jedi philosopher who provides the “bridge” between negative and positive Postmodernity by focusing on a certain “Problem” and the “
Solution
” to it.
(a) Discuss
2
of the following items (
1
pertaining to the Problem,
1
pertaining to the
.
(Glossary of Telemedicine and eHealth)· Teleconsultation Cons.docxAASTHA76
(Glossary of Telemedicine and eHealth)
· Teleconsultation: Consultation between a provider and specialist at distance using either store and forward telemedicine or real time videoconferencing.
· Telehealth and Telemedicine: Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients' health status. Closely associated with telemedicine is the term "telehealth," which is often used to encompass a broader definition of remote healthcare that does not always involve clinical services. Videoconferencing, transmission of still images, e-health including patient portals, remote monitoring of vital signs, continuing medical education and nursing call centers are all considered part of telemedicine and telehealth. Telemedicine is not a separate medical specialty. Products and services related to telemedicine are often part of a larger investment by health care institutions in either information technology or the delivery of clinical care. Even in the reimbursement fee structure, there is usually no distinction made between services provided on site and those provided through telemedicine and often no separate coding required for billing of remote services. Telemedicine encompasses different types of programs and services provided for the patient. Each component involves different providers and consumers.
· TeleICU: TeleICU is a collaborative, interprofessional model focusing on the care of critically ill patients using telehealth technologies.
· Telemonitoring: The process of using audio, video, and other telecommunications and electronic information processing technologies to monitor the health status of a patient from a distance.
· Telemonitoring: The process of using audio, video, and other telecommunications and electronic information processing technologies to monitor the health status of a patient from a distance.
· Clinical Decision Support System (CCDS): Systems (usually electronically based and interactive) that provide clinicians, staff, patients, and other individuals with knowledge and person-specific information, intelligently filtered and presented at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care. (http://healthit.ahrq.gov/images/jun09cdsreview/09_0069_ef.html)
· e-Prescribing: The electronic generation, transmission and filling of a medical prescription, as opposed to traditional paper and faxed prescriptions. E-prescribing allows for qualified healthcare personnel to transmit a new prescription or renewal authorization to a community or mail-order pharmacy.
· Home Health Care and Remote Monitoring Systems: Care provided to individuals and families in their place of residence for promoting, maintaining, or restoring health or for minimizing the effects of disability and illness, including terminal illness. In the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey and Medicare claims and enrollment data, home health care refers to home visits by professionals including nu.
(Assmt 1; Week 3 paper) Using ecree Doing the paper and s.docxAASTHA76
(Assmt 1; Week 3 paper): Using ecree Doing the paper and submitting it (two pages here)
Have this sheet handy as well as the sheet called FORMAT SAMPLE PAPER for Assignment 1.
1. Go to the Week 3 unit and find the blue link ASSIGNMENT 1: DEALING WITH DIVERSITY…. Click on it.
2. You will see instructions on the screen and at the top “Assignment 1: ecree”. Click on that to enter ecree.
3. You will see some summary of the assignment instructions at the top of the screen—scroll down to see the three long, blank, rectangular boxes. You will be typing into those. Remember—do not worry about a title page or double spacing. Start composing your paragraphs. It will start as a rough draft.
4. As you start typing your introduction—notice on the right that comments start developing and also video links. Also on the right you will it say “Saved a Few seconds ago”. It is saving as you go. At first the comments are red (unfavorable). The more you do, usually the more green (favorable) comments start to appear. You can also keep revising.
5. When you hit the enter key it takes you to the next paragraph box—and sometimes it creates a new paragraph box for you.
6. Doing your Sources list in ecree—Your sources do have to be listed at the end. The FORMAT SAMPLE paper illustrates what they might look like. But, putting them in ecree gracefully can be a challenge.
a. Perhaps the best way is this: Have the last regular paragraph of your essay (Part 4) be in the box labeled “Conclusion”. Once that paragraph is written—in whole or in part, do this: Click on the word “Conclusion” to form a following paragraph box marked by three dots. Keep doing that and put each source in its own “three-dot” box. In other words, after your Conclusion paragraph—the heading “Sources” gets its own paragraph box at the end, followed by separate paragraph boxes for each source entry.
b. If the approach labeled “a” above is not working out, don’t worry about the external labels of those last paragraph boxes---just be sure to have a concluding paragraph (your Part 4) followed by paragraphs for the Sources header and each source entry. In grading, I will be able to figure it out. I will be lenient on how you organize that last part, as long as you have that last paragraph and a clear Sources list.
------------------------------------
UPLOAD OPTION: You can type your paper or a good rough draft of it into MS-Word as a file. Have it organized and laid out like the FORMAT SAMPLE paper. Then Upload it to ecree. Once you upload, take a little time and edit what uploaded so that it looks like what you intended and fits the 4-part organization of the assignment.
-----------------------
7. Click “Submit” on lower right only when absolutely ready. Once you submit, it will get graded.
Have fun! (see next page for a few notes and comments on ecree)
---------.
(Image retrieved at httpswww.google.comsearchhl=en&biw=122.docxAASTHA76
(Image retrieved at https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1229&bih=568&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=fmYIW9W3G6jH5gLn7IHYAQ&q=analysis&oq=analysis&gs_l=img.3..0i67k1l2j0l5j0i67k1l2j0.967865.968569.0.969181.7.4.0.0.0.0.457.682.1j1j4-1.3.0....0...1c.1.64.img..5.2.622...0i7i30k1.0.rL9KcsvXM1U#imgrc=LU1vXlB6e2doDM: / )
ESOL 052 (Essay #__)
Steps:
1. Discuss the readings, videos, and photographs in the Truth and Lies module on Bb.
2. Select a significant/controversial photograph to analyze. (The photograph does not have to be from Bb.)
3. Choose one of the following essay questions:
a. What truth does this photograph reveal?
b. What lie does this photograph promote?
c. Why/How did people deliberately misuse this photograph and distort its true meaning?
d. Why was this photograph misinterpreted by so many people?
e. Why do so many people have different reactions to this photograph?
f. ___________________________________________________________________________?
(Students may create their own visual analysis essay question as long as it is pre-approved by the instructor.)
4. Use the OPTIC chart to brainstorm and take notes on your photograph.
5. Use a pre-writing strategy (outline, graphic organizer, etc.) to organize your ideas.
6. Using correct MLA format, write a 3-5 page essay.
7. Type a Works Cited page. (Use citationmachine.net, easybib.com, etc. to format your info.)
8. Peer and self-edit during the writing process (Bb Wiki, in/outside class).
9. Get feedback from your peers and an instructor during the writing process.
(Note: Students who visit the Writing Center and show me proof get 2 additional days to work on the assignment.)
10. Proofread/edit/revise during the writing process.
11. Put your pre-writing, essay, and Works Cited page in 1 Word document and upload it on Bb by midnight on ______. (If a student submits an essay without pre-writing or without a Works Cited page, he/she will receive a zero. If a student submits an assignment late, he/she will receive a zero. If a student plagiarizes, he/she will receive a zero.)
Purpose: Students will be able to use their reading, writing, critical thinking, and research skills to conduct a visual analysis that explores the theme of Truth and Lies.
Tone: The tone of this assignment should be formal and academic.
Language: The diction and syntax of this assignment should be formal and academic. Students should not use second person pronouns (you/your), contractions, abbreviations, slang, or any type of casual language. Students should refer to the diction and syntax guidelines in the writing packet.
Audience: The audience of this assignment is the student’s peers and instructor.
Format: MLA style (double spaced, 1 in. margins, Times New Roman 12 font, pagination, heading, title, tab for each paragraph, in-text citations, Works Cited page, hanging indents, etc.)
Requirements:
In order for a student to earn a minimum passing grade of 70% on this assignment, h.
(Dis) Placing Culture and Cultural Space Chapter 4.docxAASTHA76
(Dis) Placing Culture and Cultural Space
Chapter 4
+
Chapter Objectives
Describe the relationships among culture, place, cultural space, and identity in the context of globalization.
Explain how people use communicative practices to construct, maintain, negotiate, and hybridize cultural spaces.
Explain how cultures are simultaneously placed and displaced in the global context leading to segregated, contested and hybrid cultural spaces.
Describe the practice of bifocal vision to highlight the linkages between “here” and “there” as well as the connections between present and past.
+
Introduction
Explore the cultural and intercultural communication dimensions of place, space and location. We will examine:
The dynamic process of placing and displacing cultural space in the context of globalization.
How people use communicative practices to construct, maintain, negotiate, and hybridize cultural spaces
How segregated, contested, and hybrid cultural spaces are both shaped by the legacy of colonialism and the context of globalization.
How Hip hop culture illustrates the cultural and intercultural dimensions of place, space, and location in the context of globalization
+
Placing Culture and Cultural Space
Culture, by definition, is rooted in place with a reciprocal relationship between people and place
Culture:
“Place tilled” in Middle English
Colere : “to inhabit, care for, till, worship” in Latin
In the context of globalization, what is the relationship between culture and place?
Culture is both placed and displaced
+
Cultural Space
The communicative practices that construct meanings in, through and about particular places
Cultural space shapes verbal and nonverbal communicative practices
i.e. Classrooms, dance club, library.
Cultural spaces are constructed through the communicative practices developed and lived by people in particular places
Communicative practices include:
The languages, accents, slang, dress, artifacts, architectural design, the behaviors and patterns of interaction, the stories, the discourses and histories
How is the cultural space of your home, neighborhood, city, and state constructed through communicative practices?
+
Place, Cultural Space and Identity
Place, Culture, Identity and Difference
What’s the relationship between place and identity?
Avowed identity:
The way we see, label and make meaning about ourselves and
Ascribed identity:
The way others view, name and describe us and our group
Examples of how avowed and ascribed identities may conflict?
How is place related to standpoint and power?
Locations of enunciation:
Sites or positions from which to speak.
A platform from which to voice a perspective and be heard and/or silenced.
+
Displacing Culture and Cultural Space
(Dis) placed culture and cultural space:
A notion that captures the complex, contradictory and contested nature of cultural space and the relationship between culture and place that has emerged in the context o.
(1) Define the time value of money. Do you believe that the ave.docxAASTHA76
(1) Define the time value of money. Do you believe that the average person considers the time value of money when they make investment decisions? Please explain.
(2) Distinguish between ordinary annuities and annuities due. Also, distinguish between the future value of an annuity and the present value of an annuity.
.
(chapter taken from Learning Power)From Social Class and t.docxAASTHA76
(chapter taken from Learning Power)
From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work
JEAN ANYON
It's no surprise that schools in wealthy communities are better than those in poor communities, or that they better prepare their students for
desirable jobs. It may be shocking, however, to learn how vast the differences in schools are - not so much in resources as in teaching methods
and philosophies of education. Jean Anyon observed five elementary schools over the course of a full school year and concluded that fifth-
graders of different economic backgrounds are already being prepared to occupy particular rungs on the social ladder. In a sense, some whole
schools are on the vocational education track, while others are geared to produce future doctors, lawyers, and business leaders. Anyon's main
audience is professional educators, so you may find her style and vocabulary challenging, but, once you've read her descriptions of specific
classroom activities, the more analytic parts of the essay should prove easier to understand. Anyon is chairperson of the Department of
Education at Rutgers University, Newark; This essay first appeared in Journal of Education in 1980.
Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our
own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes. Bowles and
Gintis1 for example, have argued that students in different social-class backgrounds are rewarded for classroom behaviors that correspond to
personality traits allegedly rewarded in the different occupational strata--the working classes for docility and obedience, the managerial classes
for initiative and personal assertiveness. Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michael W. Apple focusing on school knowledge, have argued
that knowledge and skills leading to social power and regard (medical, legal, managerial) are made available to the advantaged social groups but
are withheld from the working classes to whom a more "practical" curriculum is offered (manual skills, clerical knowledge). While there has
been considerable argumentation of these points regarding education in England, France, and North America, there has been little or no attempt
to investigate these ideas empirically in elementary or secondary schools and classrooms in this country.3
This article offers tentative empirical support (and qualification) of the above arguments by providing illustrative examples of differences in
student work in classrooms in contrasting social class communities. The examples were gathered as part of an ethnographical4 study of
curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices in five elementary schools. The article attempts a theoretical contribution as well and
assesses student work in the light of a theoretical approach to social-class analysis.. . It will be suggested that there is a "hidden.
(Accessible at httpswww.hatchforgood.orgexplore102nonpro.docxAASTHA76
(Accessible at https://www.hatchforgood.org/explore/102/nonprofit-photography-ethics-and-approaches)
Nonprofit Photography: Ethics
and Approaches
Best practices and tips on ethics and approaches in
humanitarian photography for social impact.
The first moon landing. The Vietnamese ‘napalm girl’, running naked and in agony. The World
Trade Centers falling.
As we know, photography carries the power to inspire, educate, horrify and compel its viewers to
take action. Images evoke strong and often public emotions, as people frequently formulate their
opinions, judgments and behaviors in response to visual stimuli. Because of this, photography
can wield substantial control over public perception and discourse.
Moreover, photography in our digital age permits us to deliver complex information about
remote conditions which can be rapidly distributed and effortlessly processed by the viewer.
Recently, we’ve witnessed the profound impact of photography coupled with social media:
together, they have fueled political movements and brought down a corrupt government.
Photography can - and has - changed the course of history.
Ethical Considerations
Those who commission and create photography of marginalized populations to further an
organizations’ mission possess a tremendous responsibility. Careful ethical consideration should
be given to all aspects of the photography supply chain: its planning, creation, and distribution.
When planning a photography campaign, it is important to examine the motives for creating
particular images and their potential impact. Not only must a faithful, comprehensive visual
depiction of the subjects be created to avoid causing misconception, but more importantly, the
subjects’ dignity must be preserved. Words and images that elicit an emotional response by their
sheer shock value (e.g. starving, skeletal children covered in flies) are harmful because they
exploit the subjects’ condition in order to generate sympathy for increasing charitable donations
or support for a given cause. In addition to violating privacy and human rights, this so-called
'poverty porn’ is harmful to those it is trying to aid because it evokes the idea that the
marginalized are helpless and incapable of helping themselves, thereby cultivating a culture of
paternalism. Poverty porn is also detrimental because it is degrading, dishonoring and robs
people of their dignity. While it is important to illustrate the challenges of a population, one must
always strive to tell stories in a way that honors the subjects’ circumstances, and (ideally)
illustrates hope for their plight.
Legal issues
Legal issues are more clear cut when images are created or used in stable countries where legal
precedent for photography use has been established. Image use and creation becomes far more
murky and problematic in countries in which law and order is vague or even nonexistent.
Even though images created for no.
(a) The current ratio of a company is 61 and its acid-test ratio .docxAASTHA76
(a) The current ratio of a company is 6:1 and its acid-test ratio is 1:1. If the inventories and prepaid items amount to $445,500, what is the amount of current liabilities?
Current Liabilities
$
89100
(b) A company had an average inventory last year of $113,000 and its inventory turnover was 6. If sales volume and unit cost remain the same this year as last and inventory turnover is 7 this year, what will average inventory have to be during the current year? (Round answer to 0 decimal places, e.g. 125.)
Average Inventory
$
96857
(c) A company has current assets of $88,800 (of which $35,960 is inventory and prepaid items) and current liabilities of $35,960. What is the current ratio? What is the acid-test ratio? If the company borrows $12,970 cash from a bank on a 120-day loan, what will its current ratio be? What will the acid-test ratio be? (Round answers to 2 decimal places, e.g. 2.50.)
Current Ratio
2.47
:1
Acid Test Ratio
:1
New Current Ratio
:1
New Acid Test Ratio
:1
(d) A company has current assets of $586,700 and current liabilities of $200,100. The board of directors declares a cash dividend of $173,700. What is the current ratio after the declaration but before payment? What is the current ratio after the payment of the dividend? (Round answers to 2 decimal places, e.g. 2.50.)
Current ratio after the declaration but before payment
:1
Current ratio after the payment of the dividend
:1
The following data is given:
December 31,
2015
2014
Cash
$66,000
$52,000
Accounts receivable (net)
90,000
60,000
Inventories
90,000
105,000
Plant assets (net)
380,500
320,000
Accounts payable
54,500
41,500
Salaries and wages payable
11,500
5,000
Bonds payable
70,500
70,000
8% Preferred stock, $40 par
100,000
100,000
Common stock, $10 par
120,000
90,000
Paid-in capital in excess of par
80,000
70,000
Retained earnings
190,000
160,500
Net credit sales
930,000
Cost of goods sold
735,000
Net income
81,000
Compute the following ratios: (Round answers to 2 decimal places e.g. 15.25.)
(a)
Acid-test ratio at 12/31/15
: 1
(b)
Accounts receivable turnover in 2015
times
(c)
Inventory turnover in 2015
times
(d)
Profit margin on sales in 2015
%
(e)
Return on common stock equity in 2015
%
(f)
Book value per share of common stock at 12/31/15
$
Exercise 24-4
As loan analyst for Utrillo Bank, you have been presented the following information.
Toulouse Co.
Lautrec Co.
Assets
Cash
$113,900
$311,200
Receivables
227,200
302,700
Inventories
571,200
510,700
Total current assets
912,300
1,124,600
Other assets
506,000
619,800
Total assets
$1,418,300
$1,744,400
Liabilities and Stockholders’ Equity
Current liabilities
$291,300
$350,400
Long-term liabilities
390,800
506,000
Capital stock and retained earnings
736,200
888,000
Total liabilities and stockholders’ equity
$1.
(1) How does quantum cryptography eliminate the problem of eaves.docxAASTHA76
(1) How does quantum cryptography eliminate the problem of eavesdropping in traditional cryptography?
(2) What are the limitations or problems associated with quantum cryptography?
(3) What features or activities will affect both the current and future developments of cryptography?
Use of proper APA formatting and citations. If supporting evidence from outside resources is used those must be properly cited.
References
.
#transformation
10
Event
Trends
for 2019
10 Event Trends for 2019
C O P Y R I G H T
All rights reserved. No part of this report may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means whatsoever (including presentations, short
summaries, blog posts, printed magazines, use
of images in social media posts) without express
written permission from the author, except in the
case of brief quotations (50 words maximum and
for a maximum of 2 quotations) embodied in critical
articles and reviews, and with clear reference to
the original source, including a link to the original
source at https://www.eventmanagerblog.com/10-
event-trends/. Please refer all pertinent questions
to the publisher.
page 2
https://www.eventmanagerblog.com/10-event-trends/
https://www.eventmanagerblog.com/10-event-trends/
10 Event Trends for 2019
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION page 5
TRANSFORMATION 8
10. PASSIVE ENGAGEMENT 10
9. CONTENT DESIGN 13
8. SEATING MATTERS 16
7. JOMO - THE JOY OF MISSING OUT 19
6. BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY 21
5. CAT SPONSORSHIP 23
4. SLOW TICKETING 25
3. READY TO BLOCKCHAIN 27
2. MARKETING BUDGETS SHIFTING MORE TO EVENTS 28
1. MORE THAN PLANNERS 30
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 31
CMP CREDITS 32
CREDITS AND THANKS 32
DISCLAIMER 32
page 3
INTERACTIVITY
AT THE HEART OF YOUR MEETINGS
Liven up your presentations!
EVENIUM
ConnexMe
San Francisco/Paris [email protected]
AD
https://eventmb.com/2PvIw1f
10 Event Trends for 2019
I am very glad to welcome you to the 8th edition of our annual
event trends. This is going to be a different one.
One element that made our event trends stand out from
the thousands of reports and articles on the topic is that we
don’t care about pleasing companies, pundits, suppliers, star
planners and the likes. Our only focus is you, the reader, to
help you navigate through very uncertain times.
This is why I decided to bring back this report, by far the most
popular in the industry, to its roots. 10 trends that will actually
materialize between now and November 2019, when we will
publish edition number nine.
I feel you have a lot going on, with your events I mean.
F&B, room blocks, sponsorship, marketing security, technology.
I think I failed you in previous editions. I think I gave you too
much. This report will be the most concise and strategic piece
of content you will need for next year.
If you don’t read anything else this year, it’s fine. As long as you
read the next few words.
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION -
Julius Solaris
EventMB Editor
page 5
https://www.eventmanagerblog.com
10 Event Trends for 2019
How did I come up with these trends?
~ As part of this report, we reviewed 350 events. Some of the most successful
worldwide.
~ Last year we started a community with a year-long trend watch. That helped
us to constantly research new things happening in the industry.
~ We have reviewed north of 300 event technology solutions for our repor.
$10 now and $10 when complete Use resources from the required .docxAASTHA76
$10 now and $10 when complete
Use resources from the required readings or the GCU Library to create a 10‐15 slide digital presentation to be shown to your colleagues informing them of specific cultural norms and sociocultural influences affecting student learning at your school.
Choose a culture to research. State the country or countries of origin of your chosen culture and your reason for selecting it.
Include sociocultural influences on learning such as:
Religion
Dress
Cultural Norms
Food
Socialization
Gender Differences
Home Discipline
Education
Native Language
Include presenter’s notes, a title slide, in‐text citations, and a reference slide that contains three to five sources from the required readings or the GCU Library.
.
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
// Function: void parse(char *line, char **argv)
// Purpose : This function takes in a null terminated string pointed to by
// <line>. It also takes in an array of pointers to char <argv>.
// When the function returns, the string pointed to by the
// pointer <line> has ALL of its whitespace characters (space,
// tab, and newline) turned into null characters ('\0'). The
// array of pointers to chars will be modified so that the zeroth
// slot will point to the first non-null character in the string
// pointed to by <line>, the oneth slot will point to the second
// non-null character in the string pointed to by <line>, and so
// on. In other words, each subsequent pointer in argv will point
// to each subsequent "token" (characters separated by white space)
// IN the block of memory stored at the pointer <line>. Since all
// the white space is replaced by '\0', every one of these "tokens"
// pointed to by subsequent entires of argv will be a valid string
// The "last" entry in the argv array will be set to NULL. This
// will mark the end of the tokens in the string.
//
void parse(char *line, char **argv)
{
// We will assume that the input string is NULL terminated. If it
// is not, this code WILL break. The rewriting of whitespace characters
// and the updating of pointers in argv are interleaved. Basically
// we do a while loop that will go until we run out of characters in
// the string (the outer while loop that goes until '\0'). Inside
// that loop, we interleave between rewriting white space (space, tab,
// and newline) with nulls ('\0') AND just skipping over non-whitespace.
// Note that whenever we encounter a non-whitespace character, we record
// that address in the array of address at argv and increment it. When
// we run out of tokens in the string, we make the last entry in the array
// at argv NULL. This marks the end of pointers to tokens. Easy, right?
while (*line != '\0') // outer loop. keep going until the whole string is read
{ // keep moving forward the pointer into the input string until
// we encounter a non-whitespace character. While we're at it,
// turn all those whitespace characters we're seeing into null chars.
while (*line == ' ' || *line == '\t' || *line == '\n' || *line == '\r')
{ *line = '\0';
line++;
}
// If I got this far, I MUST be looking at a non-whitespace character,
// or, the beginning of a token. So, let's record the address of this
// beginning of token to the address I'm pointing at now. (Put it in *argv)
.
$ stated in thousands)Net Assets, Controlling Interest.docxAASTHA76
$ stated in thousands)
Net Assets, Controlling Interest
–
–
Net Assets, Noncontrolling Interest
AUDIT COMMITTEE
of the
Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America
Francis R. McAllister, Chairman
David Biegler Ronald K. Migita
Dennis H. Chookaszian David Moody
Report of Independent Auditors
To the Executive Board of the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America
We have audited the accompanying consolidated financial statements of the National Council of the Boy Scouts
of America and its affiliates (the National Council), which comprise the consolidated statement of financial position
as of December 31, 2016, and the related consolidated statements of revenues, expenses, and other changes in net
assets, of functional expenses and of cash flows for the year then ended.
Management’s Responsibility for the Consolidated Financial Statements
Management is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the consolidated financial statements
in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America; this includes the
design, implementation and maintenance of internal control relevant to the preparation and fair presentation of
consolidated financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.
Auditors’ Responsibility
Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the consolidated financial statements based on our audit. We
conducted our audit in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America.
Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the
consolidated financial statements are free from material misstatement.
An audit involves performing procedures to obtain audit evidence about the amounts and disclosures in the
consolidated financial statements. The procedures selected depend on our judgment, including the assessment of
the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to fraud or error. In making
those risk assessments, we consider internal control relevant to the National Council’s preparation and fair
presentation of the consolidated financial statements in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the
circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the National Council’s
internal control. Accordingly, we express no such opinion. An audit also includes evaluating the appropriateness of
accounting policies used and the reasonableness of significant accounting estimates made by management, as well as
evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial sta.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <unistd.h>
// Change the constant below to change the number of philosophers
// coming to lunch...
// This is a known GOOD solution based on the Arbitrator
// solution
#define PHILOSOPHER_COUNT 20
// Each philosopher is represented by one thread. Each thread independenly
// runs the same "think/start eating/finish eating" program.
pthread_t philosopher[PHILOSOPHER_COUNT];
// Each chopstick gets one mutex. If there are N philosophers, there are
// N chopsticks. That's the whole problem. There's not enough chopsticks
// for all of them to be eating at the same time. If they all cooperate,
// everyone can eat. If they don't... or don't know how.... well....
// philosophers are going to starve.
pthread_mutex_t chopstick[PHILOSOPHER_COUNT];
// The arbitrator solution adds a "waiter" that ensures that only pairs of
// chopsticks are grabbed. Here is the mutex for the waiter ;)
pthread_mutex_t waiter;
void *philosopher_program(int philosopher_number)
{ // In this version of the "philosopher program", the philosopher
// will think and eat forever.
while (1)
{ // Philosophers always think before they eat. They need to
// build up a bit of hunger....
//printf ("Philosopher %d is thinking\n", philosopher_number);
usleep(1);
// That was a lot of thinking.... now hungry... this
// philosopher (who knows his own number) grabs the chopsticks
// to her/his right and left. The chopstick to the left of
// philosopher N is chopstick N. The chopstick to the right
// of philosopher N is chopstick N+1
//printf ("Philosopher %d wants chopsticks\n",philosopher_number);
pthread_mutex_lock(&waiter);
pthread_mutex_lock(&chopstick[philosopher_number]);
pthread_mutex_lock(&chopstick[(philosopher_number+1)%PHILOSOPHER_COUNT]);
pthread_mutex_unlock(&waiter);
// Hurray, if I got this far I'm eating
printf ("Philosopher %d is eating\n",philosopher_number);
//usleep(1); // I spend twice as much time eating as thinking...
// typical....
// I'm done eating. Now put the chopsticks back on the table
//printf ("Philosopher %d finished eating\n",philosopher_number);
pthread_mutex_unlock(&chopstick[philosopher_number]);
pthread_mutex_unlock(&chopstick[(philosopher_number+1)%PHILOSOPHER_COUNT]);
//printf("Philosopher %d has placed chopsticks on the table\n", philosopher_number);
}
return(NULL);
}
int main()
{ int i;
srand(time(NULL));
for(i=0;i<PHILOSOPHER_COUNT;i++)
pthread_mutex_init(&chopstick[i],NULL);
pthread_mutex_init(&waiter,NULL);
for(i=0;i<PH.
#Assessment BriefDiploma of Business Eco.docxAASTHA76
#
Assessment BriefDiploma of Business Economics for Business
Credit points : 6 Prerequisites : None Co-requisites :
Subject Coordinator : Harriet Scott
Deadline : Sunday at the end of week 10 (Turnitin via CANVAS submission). Reflection due week 11 in tutorials.
ASSESSMENT TASK #3: FINAL CASE STUDY REPORT 25%
TASK DESCRIPTION
This assessment is a formal business report on a case study. Case studies will be assigned to students in the Academic and Business Communication subject. Readings on the case study are available on Canvas, in the Economics for Business subject. Students will also write a reflection on learning in tutorial classes in week 11.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
· Demonstrates understanding of microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts
· Applies economic concepts to contemporary issues and events
· Evaluates possible solutions for contemporary economic and business problems
· Communicates economic information in a business report format
INSEARCH CRICOS provider code: 00859D I UTS CRICOS provider code: 00099F INSEARCH Limited is a controlled entity of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), a registered non-self accrediting higher education institution and a pathway provider to UTS.
1. Refer to the case study you are working on for your presentation in Academic and Business Communication. Read the news stories for your case study, found on Canvas.
2. Individually, write a business report that includes the following information:
· Description of the main issue/problem and causes
· Description of the impact on stakeholders
· Analysis of economic concepts relevant to the case study (3-5 concepts)
· Recommendations for alternate solutions to the issue/problem
3. In your week 11 tutorial, write your responses to the reflection questions provided by your tutor, describing your learning experience in this assessment.
Other Requirements Format: Business Report
· Use the Business Report format as taught in BABC001 (refer to CANVAS Help for more information)
· Write TEEL paragraphs (refer to CANVAS Help for more information)
· All work submitted must be written in your own words, using paraphrasing techniques taught in BABC001
· Check Canvas — BECO — Assessments — Final Report page and ‘Writing a report' flyer for more information
Report Presentation: You need to include:
· Cover page as taught in BABC001
· Table of contents - list headings, subheadings and page numbers
· Reference list - all paraphrased/summarised/quoted evidence should include citations; all citations should be detailed in the Reference List
Please ensure your assignment is presented professionally. Suggested structure:
· Cover page
· Table of contents (bold, font size 18)
· Executive summary (bold, font size 18)
· 1.0 Introduction (bold, font size 16)
· 2.0 Main issue (bold, font size 16)
o 2.1 Causes (italics, font size 14)
· 3.0 Stakeholders (bold, font size 16)
o 3.1 Stakeholder 1 (italics, font size 14) o 3.2 Stakeholder 2 (italics, font size 14) o 3.3 Stakeholde.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
// Prototype of FOUR functions, each for a STATE.
// The func in State 1 performs addition of "unsigned numbers" x0 and x1.
int s1_add_uintN(int x0, int x1, bool *c_flg);
// The func in State 2 performs addition of "signed numbers" x0 and x1.
int s2_add_intN(int x0, int x1, bool *v_flg);
// The func in State 3 performs subtraction of "unsigned numbers" x0 and x1.
int s3_sub_uintN(int x0, int x1, bool *c_flg);
// The func in State 3 performs subtraction of "signed numbers" x0 and x1.
int s4_sub_intN(int x0, int x1, bool *v_flg);
// We define the number of bits and the related limits of unsigned and
// and signed numbers.
#define N 5 // number of bits
#define MIN_U 0 // minimum value of unsigned N-bit number
#define MAX_U ((1 << N) - 1) // maximum value of unsigned N-bit number
#define MIN_I (-(1 << (N-1)) ) // minimum value of signed N-bit number
#define MAX_I ((1 << (N-1)) - 1) // maximum value of signed N-bit number
// We use the following three pointers to access data, which can be changed
// when the program pauses. We need to make sure to have the RAM set up
// for these addresses.
int *pIn = (int *)0x20010000U; // the value of In should be -1, 0, or 1.
int *pX0 = (int *)0x20010004U; // X0 and X1 should be N-bit integers.
int *pX1 = (int *)0x20010008U;
int main(void) {
enum progState{State1 = 1, State2, State3, State4};
enum progState cState = State1; // Current State
bool dataReady = false;
bool cFlg, vFlg;
int result;
while (1) {
dataReady = false;
// Check if the data are legitimate
while (!dataReady) {
printf("Halt program here to provide correct update of data\n");
printf("In should be -1, 0, and 1 and ");
printf("X0 and X1 should be N-bit SIGNED integers\n");
if (((-1 <= *pIn) && (*pIn <= 1)) &&
((MIN_I <= *pX0) && (*pX0 <= MAX_I)) &&
((MIN_I <= *pX1) && (*pX1 <= MAX_I))) {
dataReady = true;
}
}
printf("Your input: In = %d, X0 = %d, X1 = %d \n", *pIn, *pX0, *pX1);
switch (cState) {
case State1:
result = s1_add_uintN(*pX0, *pX1, &cFlg);
printf("State = %d, rslt = %d, Cflg = %d\n", cState, result, cFlg);
cState += *pIn;
if (cState < State1) cState += State4;
break;
case State2:
result = s2_add_intN(*pX0, *pX1, &vFlg);
printf("State = %d, rslt = %d, Vflg = %d\n", cState, result, vFlg);
cState += *pIn;
break;
case State3:
case State4:
default:
printf("Error with the program state\n");
}
}
}
int s1_add_uintN(int x0, int x1, bool *c_flg) {
if (x0 < 0) x0 = x0 + MAX_U + 1;
if.
Unit 8 - Information and Communication Technology (Paper I).pdfThiyagu K
This slides describes the basic concepts of ICT, basics of Email, Emerging Technology and Digital Initiatives in Education. This presentations aligns with the UGC Paper I syllabus.
This is a presentation by Dada Robert in a Your Skill Boost masterclass organised by the Excellence Foundation for South Sudan (EFSS) on Saturday, the 25th and Sunday, the 26th of May 2024.
He discussed the concept of quality improvement, emphasizing its applicability to various aspects of life, including personal, project, and program improvements. He defined quality as doing the right thing at the right time in the right way to achieve the best possible results and discussed the concept of the "gap" between what we know and what we do, and how this gap represents the areas we need to improve. He explained the scientific approach to quality improvement, which involves systematic performance analysis, testing and learning, and implementing change ideas. He also highlighted the importance of client focus and a team approach to quality improvement.
How to Split Bills in the Odoo 17 POS ModuleCeline George
Bills have a main role in point of sale procedure. It will help to track sales, handling payments and giving receipts to customers. Bill splitting also has an important role in POS. For example, If some friends come together for dinner and if they want to divide the bill then it is possible by POS bill splitting. This slide will show how to split bills in odoo 17 POS.
The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France. It marked the decline of absolute monarchies, the rise of secular and democratic republics, and the eventual rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. This revolutionary period is crucial in understanding the transition from feudalism to modernity in Europe.
For more information, visit-www.vavaclasses.com
Instructions for Submissions thorugh G- Classroom.pptxJheel Barad
This presentation provides a briefing on how to upload submissions and documents in Google Classroom. It was prepared as part of an orientation for new Sainik School in-service teacher trainees. As a training officer, my goal is to ensure that you are comfortable and proficient with this essential tool for managing assignments and fostering student engagement.
Operation “Blue Star” is the only event in the history of Independent India where the state went into war with its own people. Even after about 40 years it is not clear if it was culmination of states anger over people of the region, a political game of power or start of dictatorial chapter in the democratic setup.
The people of Punjab felt alienated from main stream due to denial of their just demands during a long democratic struggle since independence. As it happen all over the word, it led to militant struggle with great loss of lives of military, police and civilian personnel. Killing of Indira Gandhi and massacre of innocent Sikhs in Delhi and other India cities was also associated with this movement.
Welcome to TechSoup New Member Orientation and Q&A (May 2024).pdfTechSoup
In this webinar you will learn how your organization can access TechSoup's wide variety of product discount and donation programs. From hardware to software, we'll give you a tour of the tools available to help your nonprofit with productivity, collaboration, financial management, donor tracking, security, and more.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...
Art of literature eng 262 karlis paper # 1 p
1. Art of Literature
Eng 262
Karlis
Paper # 1
Paper #1
Juxtaposing Short Stories
Due Date: Sunday, March 7th
Length: 5-6 pages
Format: Format: Double-spaced, 1-inch margins, numbered
pages, 12-point (Times
New Roman, Arial, or Garamond) font.
Header with the following information:
name, course #, my name, date- double spaced
Title centered over text PLEASE REFER to GENERAL PAPER
GUIDELINES
included in WEEK 4
2. Texts: Two short stories from the syllabus (see paper topics
below).
Topics: Juxtaposition: What do these stories have in common?
How are they different?
Analyze these similarities and differences and consider how
each author uses/takes
advantage of literary elements to meet their intent and goals.
Also, you should
consider how the texts you’ve chosen to work with “speak” to
each other in a way
that will help you explore and develop the key concepts in your
essay. Be sure to
use textual evidence to support your ideas, and avoid simple
summarization of
each text.
Choose 1 topic:
1. Both The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and
Fiesta are stories
dealing with cultural influences. These influences can be seen
as either
empowering or constraining, depending upon the situation.
Each protagonist is
seen both in and out of their respective “familiar”
environments. How do
3. Alexie and Díaz use the narrative technique of dialogue to
reflect each
protagonist’s anxiety and/or internal conflict? In addition to
each writer’s use
of dialogue, how do other formal literary elements (setting,
tone, exposition
and so on) evident in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven and Fiesta
tell the reader about what it means to be part of another culture
in America?
2. William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily and Flannery
O’Connor’s A Good Man is
Hard to Find are examples of the Southern Gothic genre, and
can be viewed as
traditional classic tragedy- i.e. an unavoidable fall in the
protagonist’s fortunes.
Juxtaposing these two stories, offer an exploration of each
story’s tragedy:
consider the plot structure of each and, then, each writer’s
artistic intent.
Identify additional formal literary elements that Faulkner and
O’Connor use to
suleumit
Cross-Out
4. supplement both their respective plot structures and the classic
tragic theme.
For example, you may want to consider character as a key
concept. How do
Faulkner and O’Connor flesh-out and make their characters real,
and how do
these characters inform each tragedy? Are these characters
misunderstood and
stereotyped, or do they have a larger, perhaps ironic
significance?
3. Dennis Lehane, when speaking about the writing of Until
Gwen, has stated
I realized that the big question for me was: Why was I writing
in the second
person, which is a very strange point of view to do? Gradually,
I realized
that the story was about a guy's search for his own identity, so
the second
person was a wonderful way to keep his name off the page—
because he
doesn't really know his name. We don't learn his name until he
remembers
Gwen saying it, in the past.
Do you agree that it is the appropriate point of view for this
5. story?
Choose another short story that we have read, identify from
what point of view
it is being told, and state whether or not you think it is the
“appropriate” voice
for the story.
In this way, you can compare and contrast the literary device of
point of view
with respect to how each writer has used it to reflect the
protagonist’s conflict.
In addition to each writer’s use of point of view, what other
formal literary
elements (plot ordering, setting, tone, dialogue, exposition and
so on) are
necessary to the story, and do some of these elements seem
particularly
important of effective with a particular point of view (i.e. 1st or
3rd person)?
4. Analyze Sammy’s character from John Updike’s A&P.
Consider his
background, his attitudes, his values, and his interactions with
the
6. customers and the girls. Compare and contrast his character
with that of the
narrator in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
For example, we
know about the tastes and backgrounds of both of these
characters; how is this
information vital to each story’s development?
Art of Literature
Eng 262
Karlis
Paper # 1
Paper #1
Juxtaposing Short Stories
Due Date: Sunday, March 7th
Length: 5-6 pages
Format: Format: Double-spaced, 1-inch margins, numbered
pages, 12-point (Times
7. New Roman, Arial, or Garamond) font.
Header with the following information:
name, course #, my name, date- double spaced
Title centered over text PLEASE REFER to GENERAL PAPER
GUIDELINES
included in WEEK 4
Texts: Two short stories from the syllabus (see paper topics
below).
Topics: Juxtaposition: What do these stories have in common?
How are they different?
Analyze these similarities and differences and consider how
each author uses/takes
advantage of literary elements to meet their intent and goals.
Also, you should
consider how the texts you’ve chosen to work with “speak” to
each other in a way
that will help you explore and develop the key concepts in your
essay. Be sure to
use textual evidence to support your ideas, and avoid si mple
summarization of
each text.
8. Choose 1 topic:
1. Both The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and
Fiesta are stories
dealing with cultural influences. These influences can be seen
as either
empowering or constraining, depending upon the situation.
Each protagonist is
seen both in and out of their respective “familiar”
environments. How do
Alexie and Díaz use the narrative technique of dialogue to
reflect each
protagonist’s anxiety and/or internal conflict? In addition to
each writer’s use
of dialogue, how do other formal literary elements (setting,
tone, exposition
and so on) evident in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven and Fiesta
tell the reader about what it means to be part of another culture
in America?
2. William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily and Flannery
O’Connor’s A Good Man is
Hard to Find are examples of the Southern Gothic genre, and
can be viewed as
traditional classic tragedy- i.e. an unavoidable fall in the
protagonist’s fortunes.
9. Juxtaposing these two stories, offer an exploration of each
story’s tragedy:
consider the plot structure of each and, then, each writer’s
artistic intent.
Identify additional formal literary elements that Faulkner and
O’Connor use to
supplement both their respective plot structures and the classic
tragic theme.
For example, you may want to consider character as a key
concept. How do
Faulkner and O’Connor flesh-out and make their characters real,
and how do
these characters inform each tragedy? Are these characters
misunderstood and
stereotyped, or do they have a larger, perhaps ironic
significance?
3. Dennis Lehane, when speaking about the writing of Until
Gwen, has stated
I realized that the big question for me was: Why was I writing
in the second
person, which is a very strange point of view to do? Gradually,
I realized
that the story was about a guy's search for his own identity, so
the second
10. person was a wonderful way to keep his name off the page—
because he
doesn't really know his name. We don't learn his name until he
remembers
Gwen saying it, in the past.
Do you agree that it is the appropriate point of view for this
story?
Choose another short story that we have read, identify from
what point of view
it is being told, and state whether or not you think it is the
“appropriate” voice
for the story.
In this way, you can compare and contrast the literary device of
point of view
with respect to how each writer has used it to reflect the
protagonist’s conflict.
In addition to each writer’s use of point of view, what other
formal literary
elements (plot ordering, setting, tone, dialogue, exposition and
so on) are
necessary to the story, and do some of these elements seem
particularly
11. important of effective with a particular point of view (i.e. 1st or
3rd person)?
4. Analyze Sammy’s character from John Updike’s A&P.
Consider his
background, his attitudes, his values, and his interactions with
the
customers and the girls. Compare and contrast his character
with that of the
narrator in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
For example, we
know about the tastes and backgrounds of both of these
characters; how is this
information vital to each story’s development?
General Guidelines
Type your paper on a computer and print it out on standard,
12. white 8.5 x 11-inch paper.
Double-space the text of your paper, and use a legible font (e.g.
Times New Roman). Whatever
font you choose, MLA recommends that the regular and italics
type styles contrast enough that
they are recognizable one from another. The font size should be
12 pt.
Leave only one space after periods or other punctuation marks
(unless otherwise instructed by
your instructor).
Set the margins of your document to 1 inch on all sides.
Indent the first line of paragraphs one half-inch from the left
margin. MLA recommends that you
use the Tab key as opposed to pushing the Space Bar five times.
Create a header that numbers all pages consecutively in the
upper right-hand corner, one-half
inch from the top and flush with the right margin. (Note: Your
instructor may ask that you omit
the number on your first page. Always follow your instructor's
guidelines.)
Use italics throughout your essay for the titles of longer works
and, only when absolutely
necessary, providing emphasis.
13. Formatting the First Page of Your Paper
Do not make a title page for your paper unless specifically
requested.
In the upper left-hand corner of the first page, list your name,
your instructor's name, the course,
and the date. Again, be sure to use double-spaced text.
Double space again and center the title. Do not underline,
italicize, or place your title in
quotation marks; write the title in Title Case (standard
capitalization), not in all capital letters.
Use quotation marks and/or italics when referring to other
works in your title, just as you would
in your text: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as Morality Play;
Human Weariness in "After
Apple Picking"
Double space between the title and the first line of the text.
Create a header in the upper right-hand corner that includes
your last name, followed by a space
with a page number; number all pages consecutively with
Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), one-
half inch from the top and flush with the right margin. (Note:
Your instructor or other readers
14. may ask that you omit last name/page number header on your
first page. Always follow
instructor guidelines.)
A thesis statement:
ells the reader how you will interpret what is significant
about the subject you are discussing
subject itself. The subject, or
topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis
must then offer a way to
understand the war or the novel.
explain
t
paragraph that presents your argument to
15. the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers
and organizes evidence that
will persuade the reader of the grounds of your interpretation.
How to approach formulating a thesis for a juxtaposition
exercise
Formulating a thesis is not the first
thing you do after reading an essay assignment.
collect and organize
evidence, look for possible relationships between stories (such
as surprising contrasts or
similarities), and think about the significance of these
relationships.
thesis,” a basic or main
idea, an argument that you think you can support with evidence
but that may need
adjustment along the way.
Is my thesis strong?
When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask
yourself the following:
16. -reading the question prompt
after constructing a working
thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the
question.
oppose? If your thesis simply
states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s
possible that you are
simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
strong argument. If your thesis
contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be
more specific: why is
something “good”; what specifically makes something
“successful”?
response is, “So what?” then
you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a
larger issue.
wandering? If your thesis and
the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them
has to change. It’s o.k. to
17. change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured
out in the course of writing
your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing
as necessary
first response is “how?” or
“why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance
for the reader. See what
you can add to give the reader a better take on your position
right from the beginning.
EXAMPLES
Suppose you are taking a course on 19th-century America, and
the instructor hands out the
following essay assignment: Compare and contrast the reasons
why the North and South fought
the Civil War. You turn on the computer and type out the
following:
The North and South fought the Civil War for many reasons,
some of which were the same and
some different.
This weak thesis restates the question without providing any
additional information. You will
18. expand on this new information in the body of the essay, but it
is important that the reader know
where you are heading. A reader of this weak thesis might
think, “What reasons? How are they
the same? How are they different?” Ask yourself these same
questions and begin to compare
Northern and Southern attitudes (perhaps you first think, “The
South believed slavery was right,
and the North thought slavery was wrong”). Now, push your
comparison toward an
interpretation—why did one side think slavery was right and the
other side think it was wrong?
You look again at the evidence, and you decide that you are
going to argue that the North
believed slavery was immoral while the South believed it
upheld the Southern way of life. You
write:
While both sides fought the Civil War over the issue of slavery,
the North fought for moral
reasons while the South fought to preserve its own institutions.
Now you have a working thesis! Included in this working thesis
is a reason for the war and some
idea of how the two sides disagreed over this reason. As you
19. write the essay, you will probably
begin to characterize these differences more precisely, and your
working thesis may start to seem
too vague. Maybe you decide that both sides fought for moral
reasons, and that they just focused
on different moral issues. You end up revising the working
thesis into a final thesis that really
captures the argument in your paper:
While both Northerners and Southerners believed they fought
against tyranny and oppression,
Northerners focused on the oppression of slaves while
Southerners defended their own right to
self-government.
Compare this to the original weak thesis. This final thesis
presents a way
of interpreting evidence that illuminates the significance of the
question. Keep in mind that this
is one of many possible interpretations of the Civil War —it is
not the one and only right
answer to the question. There isn’t one right answer; there are
only strong and weak thesis
statements and strong and weak uses of evidence.
Let’s look at another example: Write an analysis of some aspect
20. of Mark Twain’s novel
Huckleberry Finn. You really liked Huckleberry Finn, so write:
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.
Why is this thesis weak? Think about what the reader would
expect from the essay that follows:
you will most likely provide a general, appreciative summary of
Twain’s novel. The question did
not ask you to summarize; it asked you to analyze. You need to
think about why it’s such a great
novel—what do Huck’s adventures tell us about life, about
America, about coming of age, about
race relations, etc.? First, the question asks you to pick an
aspect of the novel that you think is
important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of
storytelling, the contrasting
scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships
between adults and children. Now
you write:
In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between
life on the river and life on the
shore.
21. Here’s a working thesis with potential: you have highlighted an
important aspect of the novel for
investigation; however, it’s still not clear what your analysis
will reveal. Your reader is intrigued,
but is still thinking, “So what? What’s the point of this
contrast? What does it signify?” Perhaps
you are not sure yet, either. That’s fine—begin to work on
comparing scenes from the book and
see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s
actions and reactions. Eventually
you will be able to clarify for yourself, and then for the reader,
why this contrast matters. After
examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you
write:
Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s
Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find
the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must
leave “civilized” society and go
back to nature.
This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a
literary work based on an analysis of its
content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you
must now present evidence from the
novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.
22. Interview excerpts with Dennis Lehane, 2004 with Jessica
Murphy
From the first sentence of your new story "Until Gwen" we are
back on your familiar turf
of ex-cons and past crimes. What is it that attracts you to these
types of characters and to
crime writing in general?
I'm attracted to crime writing because I've always written about
violence. I think I have an
obsession with violence—why we commit violent acts, what it
is in our nature that makes us do
it. I think that's partly what drew me to the noir genre. I also
think I'm inclined toward fiction as
both a reader and a writer. It doesn't have to be crime fiction,
just "fiction of mortal event," as
Cormac McCarthy called it once. I think that's a good term. I
like fiction where things happen.
We also know from that first line that we're going to be reading
23. about a somewhat
untraditional father-son relationship. Were you at all tempted to
pursue this relationship in
greater depth than either the mystery genre or the short-story
form would allow?
Actually, no. The story was originally conceived as a sort of
practice-what-you-preach lesson for
my students. I spend a lot of time talking about Aristotelian
theories of character—that the
character is action—and the idea that the strongest characters
are always revealed through their
actions. It has nothing to do with what they think or what they
say or what other people say about
them. It's really just what they do. So I said to myself, "I think
it's time you put up or shut up.
Write a story in which the character reveals himself exclusively
by what he does." That was the
challenge with "Until Gwen." I couldn't have gone any further
into the relationship between the
narrator and his father.
At the beginning of the story we know that the narrator is
getting out of prison, but we
24. don't know why he was there in the first place. The rest of the
story slowly reveals that
why, with strategically placed details and backstory. While the
revealing detail is important
in all fiction, I would think that divulging that crucial detail —a
new lead for the detective,
or, in this story, a new piece in the puzzle of the narrator's
past—must be perfectly timed
in crime writing. How do you decide when to disclose what?
I wish I could give you a great answer for that, but I can't. You
just write along and see what
happens. When I started the story I just had that first sentence. I
had no idea why the
narrator was in prison, and I had no idea what the hell happened
to Gwen. You don't know. You
just begin to write your way into the story. Gradually, I realized
that the big question for me was:
Why was I writing in the second person, which is a very strange
point of view to do? Gradually,
I realized that the story was about a guy's search for his own
identity, so the second person was a
wonderful way to keep his name off the page—because he
doesn't really know his name. We
25. don't learn his name until he remembers Gwen saying it, in the
past.
In "Until Gwen" the distribution of the clues is really a product
of the story's structure. The
actual timeframe of the story is about six hours, it's just that
day. The characters walk into town,
and they're looking for something. Gradually, through the
looping back of the structure, and the
idea of past being present, we get the crucial revelation. But the
narrator knew it all along. That
was the idea of character revealed purely through action. If I
started having him think on the
page for you, and telling you the story in a conventional way,
then he would have had to reveal
his suspicions about Gwen on page two. By revealing him
purely through what he does, I was
allowed to play around with withholding a major piece of
information.
******
26. Your fiction often includes a character who is haunted by a
dark, traumatic event from the
past. In Mystic River the three main characters are haunted, into
adulthood, by Dave's
abduction. In Shutter Island one of the U.S. Marshals cannot
free his mind from thoughts
of his dead wife. In "Until Gwen" the narrator slowly reveals
the full story behind what
haunts him.
I think the past certainly haunts all of my characters. Carrying
around a nice big wound is just
dramatically interesting.
But I'm really working on that—on trying to get backstory out
of my work as much as I can.
When I teach fiction I tell my students to read poets for
language and to read playwrights for
plot, to just learn how to get the story moving. It doesn't mean
that it has to take off like a bullet,
or you have to have a flying car or a shootout or anything, but
just tell the damn story.
Playwrights know that better than anybody. You've got a bare
stage, somebody walks out, and
27. stuff better start happening or the audience is going to leave. I
teach a lot of David Mamet's
theories. He's got a book, Three Uses of the Knife, that's
absolutely wonderful. One of the things
Mamet says is: no backstory. Playwrights hardly ever have
backstory.
I would guess—and correct me if I'm wrong—that when you
were getting your M.F.A. at
the Florida International University, your classes focused on
authors like Raymond
Carver, Flannery O'Connor, and Chekhov, and that you probably
weren't taking classes
on the crime writing of Raymond Chandler or Patricia
Highsmith. Am I right?
Right.
So how did you come out of an M.F.A. program with a detective
novel?
In the early nineties there was a sort of backlash against the
direction fiction was going. Not all
fiction, but a majority of what I considered bad fiction had
become choir preaching, esoteric
28. fiction written by academics for academics. Every novel was
about a forty-two-year-old
professor having an affair with a student and going through a
midlife crisis. Story had
disappeared. One of the most explosive publishing events when
I was in graduate school was The
Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones. There's nothing about Thom
Jones that's absolutely spectacular
or innovative. He just brought story back. Denis Johnson's
Jesus's Son was another book about
which we said, "Oh my God, this is fiction that's about
something, the blood and guts of it. It's
life going on here."
I think that was the moment when I turned toward noir. A lot of
us who are considered the new
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renaissance writers of noir believed that's where the social
novel was going. We wanted to write
29. about the people nobody was writing about. I've always said
that the best novel hands down of
the 1990s was Clockers. It never got the respect it deserved.
This was what was going on in the
early nineties in America, but nobody was writing about it.
Nobody would touch it with a ten
foot pole because they were writing about thinly disguised
versions of Princeton. Who cares.
This guy was writing about crack. It was America. He was
writing about race. I think that's how I
ended up drifting into this genre—the desire to write about
social issues. So my first novel was
about racism.
*******
"Until Gwen" takes place in West Virginia, but, I have to admit,
I did begin with the
preconceived notion that the story was taking place in Boston.
Do you plan to move away
from becoming a "regional writer?" Do you see yourself—like,
say, a Richard Ford or an
Annie Proulx—picking up and moving to a new area and
infiltrating it until you can sense
30. how the people tick?
That's not my gift.
Is Boston too much in your blood? Is this where most of your
fiction will continue to
reside?
I think most of my fiction will reside in Boston. There might be
exceptions. In my new book, the
ending is not in Boston. It's not finished yet, but I know the last
third of the book will be in
Oklahoma—but that's because of history. The finale of the new
book is the Tulsa race riot of
1921. But it starts in Boston and the meat of the book is the
Boston police strike of 1919.
I love Boston. My books will always be set primarily in Boston
because there's so much to say
about it. My short stories, on the other hand, are usually set in
the South, because I lived there for
eight years and I like to go down there and play with it. Short
stories for me are the one realm
where pleasing the audience is not a consideration.
31. What do you mean?
The late Andre Dubus, who was a friend of mine, wrote a great
article about how he got paid so
little for short stories that he wouldn't change a line on anyone
else's account. If an editor asked
him, he'd simply say, "No, thank you, I'll take the story back."
His theory was that they don't pay
you enough, so you're not in it for the money. You're in it for
the piece and the piece alone, so
you can take it and sell it someplace else.
Might not be quite that easy for people who aren't Andre Dubus.
Exactly. I get that. But with me, it's the same thing. I have no
monetary reason to write short
stories, so I write them for the love of it. I wrote "Until Gwen"
to do that thing with character in
action and to play with second person. I've written stories set in
South Carolina, in Florida. I go
all over the map.
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Do you write a lot of short stories?
No. Probably one a year. But I love the form. I think ultimately
I'm a novelist, but I trained as a
short-story writer for seven years.
How do you translate training in short stories into structuring a
novel and taking on a
much larger endeavor?
That's a tough one. What I discovered was that I was banging
my head against a wall as a short-
story writer. What I only gradually realized, once I had a few
novels under my belt, was that the
novel is just a bigger form, and I do bigger better. I wish I
could do smaller, and I am in awe of
the people who can. I am in awe of the great short-story writers
because I can't do that, except
occasionally, and I don't do it naturally. Whereas a novel, with
its gradual unfurling, its building
up to an epic kind of feel—that's something that comes
naturally to me, so I took to it. I wrote
33. the first draft of my first novel faster than I'd ever written a
short story. The entire novel. I just
blasted through it. It was an awful, awful draft, but it was done,
it was out, and I could play with
it. I think that was a big wake-up moment. Then I went to grad
school, and I went back to writing
short stories, and everybody kept saying, "What are you doing
with that novel?" And I was
saying, "I don't know." Just as I was finishing grad school it
was accepted for publication.
Does being defined as a "regional writer" come with
limitations?
I write about Boston because I love to write about Boston.
Anywhere else I'd be somewhat of a
tourist. I think you can get away with that for thirty pages, but
otherwise I think I'd feel like I'd
get caught at it. I understand Boston instinctively, and I write
about it at novel length because
that's where I'm comfortable.
I also believe in what Bogart said: All you owe them is a great
performance. That's what I owe
the audience. I don't get hung up on what their expectations are,
34. because I think that's silly and
disingenuous. What makes the librarian from Waltham happy is
not going to make the pipe-fitter
from Southie happy. So who's my audience? I just go where the
material takes me, and with my
new book the material's taking me to Tulsa. And I'm not
thinking, Oh dear, will the reader
follow me? Either he will or he won't.
East Buckingham, the fictional city in Mystic River, is clearly
Boston—from comments
about the Sox to Dunkin' Donuts to road rage. What made you
decide to use a fictional
name for the city? And what advantages are there to creating a
city—even one so clearly
pinned to a real area?
It was a decision that accompanied the shift from a first-person
series to a third-person novel.
Once I knew I was going to paint whatever I wanted on my
canvas, then I said, well why not
create a whole place. I control where the post office is and I
don't have to receive silly letters that
say, actually, that street doesn't go that far. We seem to have
35. entered this boring, hyper-realistic
age where people are saying, I don't know if it would happen
that way. Who cares?
With East Buckingham, I had this idea about a park, and I
wanted to put a drive-in screen there. I
actually took two parks—a park where I walk my dogs in
Brighton and what was once the old
Neponset drive-in in Dorchester—and I merged them. From that
moment on I said, I'm going all
the way. I took four neighborhoods—Charlestown, Southie,
Brighton, and Dorchester—and
that's East Buckingham.
Mystic River is so much about gentrification, and if I had set it
in an actual town, what if it didn't
gentrify? Or what if it gentrified faster than I thought, and the
book comes out and it looks
stupid? For example, I got the idea for the book when I was
living in Charlestown. But by the
time the book came out, Charlestown had become completely
gentrified. So I was also playing
around with Southie, which was gentrifying too. I stole a lot of
37. violence. I think I have an
obsession with violence—why we commit violent acts, what it
is in our nature that makes us do
it. I think that's partly what drew me to the noir genre. I also
think I'm inclined toward fiction as
both a reader and a writer. It doesn't have to be crime fiction,
just "fiction of mortal event," as
Cormac McCarthy called it once. I think that's a good term. I
like fiction where things happen.
We also know from that first line that we're going to be reading
about a somewhat
untraditional father-son relationship. Were you at all tempted to
pursue this relationship in
greater depth than either the mystery genre or the short-story
form would allow?
Actually, no. The story was originally conceived as a sort of
practice-what-you-preach lesson for
my students. I spend a lot of time talking about Aristotelian
theories of character—that the
character is action—and the idea that the strongest characters
are always revealed through their
actions. It has nothing to do with what they think or what they
say or what other people say about
38. them. It's really just what they do. So I said to myself, "I think
it's time you put up or shut up.
Write a story in which the character reveals himself exclusively
by what he does." That was the
challenge with "Until Gwen." I couldn't have gone any further
into the relationship between the
narrator and his father.
At the beginning of the story we know that the narrator is
getting out of prison, but we
don't know why he was there in the first place. The rest of the
story slowly reveals that
why, with strategically placed details and backstory. While the
revealing detail is important
in all fiction, I would think that divulging that crucial detail—a
new lead for the detective,
or, in this story, a new piece in the puzzle of the narrator's
past—must be perfectly timed
in crime writing. How do you decide when to disclose what?
I wish I could give you a great answer for that, but I can't. You
just write along and see what
happens. When I started the story I just had that first sentence. I
had no idea why the
39. narrator was in prison, and I had no idea what the hell happened
to Gwen. You don't know. You
just begin to write your way into the story. Gradually, I realized
that the big question for me was:
Why was I writing in the second person, which is a very strange
point of view to do? Gradually,
I realized that the story was about a guy's search for his own
identity, so the second person was a
wonderful way to keep his name off the page—because he
doesn't really know his name. We
don't learn his name until he remembers Gwen saying it, in the
past.
In "Until Gwen" the distribution of the clues is really a product
of the story's structure. The
actual timeframe of the story is about six hours, it's just that
day. The characters walk into town,
and they're looking for something. Gradually, through the
looping back of the structure, and the
idea of past being present, we get the crucial revelation. But the
narrator knew it all along. That
was the idea of character revealed purely through action. If I
started having him think on the
40. page for you, and telling you the story in a conventional way,
then he would have had to reveal
his suspicions about Gwen on page two. By revealing him
purely through what he does, I was
allowed to play around with withholding a major piece of
information.
******
Your fiction often includes a character who is haunte d by a
dark, traumatic event from the
past. In Mystic River the three main characters are haunted, into
adulthood, by Dave's
abduction. In Shutter Island one of the U.S. Marshals cannot
free his mind from thoughts
of his dead wife. In "Until Gwen" the narrator slowly reveals
the full story behind what
haunts him.
I think the past certainly haunts all of my characters. Carrying
around a nice big wound is just
dramatically interesting.
41. But I'm really working on that—on trying to get backstory out
of my work as much as I can.
When I teach fiction I tell my students to read poets for
language and to read playwrights for
plot, to just learn how to get the story moving. It doesn't mean
that it has to take off like a bullet,
or you have to have a flying car or a shootout or anything, but
just tell the damn story.
Playwrights know that better than anybody. You've got a bare
stage, somebody walks out, and
stuff better start happening or the audience is going to leave. I
teach a lot of David Mamet's
theories. He's got a book, Three Uses of the Knife, that's
absolutely wonderful. One of the things
Mamet says is: no backstory. Playwrights hardly ever have
backstory.
I would guess—and correct me if I'm wrong—that when you
were getting your M.F.A. at
the Florida International University, your classes focused on
authors like Raymond
Carver, Flannery O'Connor, and Chekhov, and that you probably
weren't taking classes
on the crime writing of Raymond Chandler or Patricia
42. Highsmith. Am I right?
Right.
So how did you come out of an M.F.A. program with a detective
novel?
In the early nineties there was a sort of backlash against the
direction fiction was going. Not all
fiction, but a majority of what I considered bad fiction had
become choir preaching, esoteric
fiction written by academics for academics. Every novel was
about a forty-two-year-old
professor having an affair with a student and going through a
midlife crisis. Story had
disappeared. One of the most explosive publishing events when
I was in graduate school was The
Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones. There's nothing about Thom
Jones that's absolutely spectacular
or innovative. He just brought story back. Denis Johnson's
Jesus's Son was another book about
which we said, "Oh my God, this is fiction that's about
something, the blood and guts of it. It's
life going on here."
43. I think that was the moment when I turned toward noir. A lot of
us who are considered the new
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renaissance writers of noir believed that's where the social
novel was going. We wanted to write
about the people nobody was writing about. I've always said
that the best novel hands down of
the 1990s was Clockers. It never got the respect it deserved.
This was what was going on in the
early nineties in America, but nobody was writing about it.
Nobody would touch it with a ten
foot pole because they were writing about thinly disguised
versions of Princeton. Who cares.
This guy was writing about crack. It was America. He was
writing about race. I think that's how I
ended up drifting into this genre—the desire to write about
social issues. So my first novel was
about racism.
44. *******
"Until Gwen" takes place in West Virginia, but, I have to admit,
I did begin with the
preconceived notion that the story was taking place in Boston.
Do you plan to move away
from becoming a "regional writer?" Do you see yourself—like,
say, a Richard Ford or an
Annie Proulx—picking up and moving to a new area and
infiltrating it until you can sense
how the people tick?
That's not my gift.
Is Boston too much in your blood? Is this where most of your
fiction will continue to
reside?
I think most of my fiction will reside in Boston. There might be
exceptions. In my new book, the
ending is not in Boston. It's not finished yet, but I know the last
third of the book will be in
Oklahoma—but that's because of history. The finale of the new
book is the Tulsa race riot of
45. 1921. But it starts in Boston and the meat of the book is the
Boston police strike of 1919.
I love Boston. My books will always be set primarily in Boston
because there's so much to say
about it. My short stories, on the other hand, are usually set in
the South, because I lived there for
eight years and I like to go down there and play with it. Short
stories for me are the one realm
where pleasing the audience is not a consideration.
What do you mean?
The late Andre Dubus, who was a friend of mine, wrote a great
article about how he got paid so
little for short stories that he wouldn't change a line on anyone
else's account. If an editor asked
him, he'd simply say, "No, thank you, I'll take the story back."
His theory was that they don't pay
you enough, so you're not in it for the money. You're in it for
the piece and the piece alone, so
you can take it and sell it someplace else.
Might not be quite that easy for people who aren't Andre Dubus.
46. Exactly. I get that. But with me, it's the same thing. I have no
monetary reason to write short
stories, so I write them for the love of it. I wrote "Until Gwen"
to do that thing with character in
action and to play with second person. I've written stories set in
South Carolina, in Florida. I go
all over the map.
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Do you write a lot of short stories?
No. Probably one a year. But I love the form. I think ultimately
I'm a novelist, but I trained as a
short-story writer for seven years.
How do you translate training in short stories into structuring a
novel and taking on a
much larger endeavor?
That's a tough one. What I discovered was that I was banging
my head against a wall as a short-
47. story writer. What I only gradually realized, once I had a few
novels under my belt, was that the
novel is just a bigger form, and I do bigger better. I wish I
could do smaller, and I am in awe of
the people who can. I am in awe of the great short-story writers
because I can't do that, except
occasionally, and I don't do it naturally. Whereas a novel, with
its gradual unfurling, its building
up to an epic kind of feel—that's something that comes
naturally to me, so I took to it. I wrote
the first draft of my first novel faster than I'd ever written a
short story. The entire novel. I just
blasted through it. It was an awful, awful draft, but it was done,
it was out, and I could play with
it. I think that was a big wake-up moment. Then I went to grad
school, and I went back to writing
short stories, and everybody kept saying, "What are you doing
with that novel?" And I was
saying, "I don't know." Just as I was finishing grad school it
was accepted for publication.
Does being defined as a "regional writer" come with
limitations?
48. I write about Boston because I love to write about Boston.
Anywhere else I'd be somewhat of a
tourist. I think you can get away with that for thirty pages, but
otherwise I think I'd feel like I'd
get caught at it. I understand Boston instinctively, and I write
about it at novel length because
that's where I'm comfortable.
I also believe in what Bogart said: All you owe them is a great
performance. That's what I owe
the audience. I don't get hung up on what their expectations are,
because I think that's silly and
disingenuous. What makes the librarian from Waltham happy is
not going to make the pipe-fitter
from Southie happy. So who's my audience? I just go where the
material takes me, and with my
new book the material's taking me to Tulsa. And I'm not
thinking, Oh dear, will the reader
follow me? Either he will or he won't.
East Buckingham, the fictional city in Mystic River, is clearly
Boston—from comments
about the Sox to Dunkin' Donuts to road rage. What made you
decide to use a fictional
49. name for the city? And what advantages are there to creating a
city—even one so clearly
pinned to a real area?
It was a decision that accompanied the shift from a first-person
series to a third-person novel.
Once I knew I was going to paint whatever I wanted on my
canvas, then I said, well why not
create a whole place. I control where the post office is and I
don't have to receive silly letters that
say, actually, that street doesn't go that far. We seem to have
entered this boring, hyper-realistic
age where people are saying, I don't know if it would happen
that way. Who cares?
With East Buckingham, I had this idea about a park, and I
wanted to put a drive-in screen there. I
actually took two parks—a park where I walk my dogs in
Brighton and what was once the old
Neponset drive-in in Dorchester—and I merged them. From that
moment on I said, I'm going all
the way. I took four neighborhoods—Charlestown, Southie,
Brighton, and Dorchester—and
51. Notes on A & P and Until Gwen:
The theme of A & P by John Updike is centered around the idea
of a gesture, one which
is done at some personal cost. What further complicates this
story is the question of if this is
ultimately an empty gesture, or one which is, in the end,
worthwhile. However, with this larger
theme, other important issues are suggested as well- social
positions; “de-humanizing” effects of
businesses, with constricting rules; attitudes towards women.
Also, as you read this, don’t forget
that Sammy is still a young man, emphasized by the way Updike
begins with the somewhat
colloquial style of expressing himself, “In walks these three
girls…” Sammy’s sense of his own
identity is somewhat unformed as well, and Updike uses
specific details (presumably from
Sammy’s own point of view) to show that Sammy is aware of
social tastes and positions. For
example, when “Queenie” is picking up pickled herring for her
mother, he pictures a very
sophisticated garden party with the men in “ice cream” colored
suits, in comparison to his own
52. family’s “Schlitz” beer glasses (the PBR of the 1960s!) Do you
think his perceptions and actions
show his lack of identity, or a sense of finding it?
In Until Gwen Lehane’s narrator is something of a mystery with
the effect heightened by
the use of second person point of view turning the reader into a
sort of dual narrator. This is a
young man without a name, without a history beyond the failed
robbery that led to his
imprisonment. He doesn’t know where he was born, what his
date of birth is, doesn’t have a
social security number. What he does know is that he loves a
woman, Gwen, who was with him
the night of the robbery. What Gwen gives him, ultimately, is
his identity; for it is only through
her that he (and we, the readers, being the “you”) hears his
name. How do you think his
(Bobby’s) father’s deliberate sense of withholding the truth
about his son’s identity allowed him
to control Bobby? Think about the fact that Bobby has no photo
of his mother or Gwen; that his
father changes his stories and lies at will whenever he (his
53. father) feels threatened; and that
ultimately Bobby even outsmarts his father. Do you think his
perceptions and actions show his
lack of identity, or a sense of finding it?
FICTIONJUNE 2004; THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
Until Gwen
DENNIS LEHANE
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Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon,
with an 8-ball of coke in
the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back
seat. Two minutes into
the ride, the prison still hanging tilted in the rearview, Mandy
tells you that she only
hooks part-time. The rest of the time she does light secretarial
for an independent video
chain and tends bar, two Sundays a month, at the local VFW.
But she feels her calling—
her true calling in life—is to write.
You go, "Books?"
"Books." She snorts, half out of amusement, half to shoot a line
off your fist and up her
left nostril. "Screenplays!" She shouts it at the dome light for
54. some reason. "You know—
movies."
"Tell him the one about the psycho saint guy." Your father
winks at you in the rearview,
like he's driving the two of you to the prom. "Go ahead. Tell
him."
"Okay, okay." She turns on the seat to face you, and your knees
touch, and you think of
Gwen, a look she gave you once, nothing special, just looking
back at you as she stood at
the front door, asking if you'd seen her keys. A forgettable
moment if ever there was one,
but you spent four years in prison remembering it.
"... so at his canonization," Mandy is saying, "something, like,
happens? And his spirit
comes back and goes into the body of this priest. But, like, the
priest? He has a brain
tumor. He doesn't know it or nothing, but hedoes, and it's
fucking up his, um—"
"Brain?" you try.
"Thoughts," Mandy says. "So he gets this saint in him and that
does it, because, like,
even though the guy was a saint, his spirit has become evil,
because his soul is gone. So
this priest? He spends the rest of the movie trying to kill the
Pope."
"Why?"
"Just listen," your father says. "It gets good."
55. You look out the window. A car sits empty along the shoulder.
It's beige, and someone
has painted gold wings on the sides, fanning out from the front
bumper and across the
doors. A sign is affixed to the roof with some words on it, but
you've passed it by the
time you think to wonder what it says.
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"See, there's this secret group that works for the Vatican?
They're like a, like a ..."
"A hit squad," your father says.
"Exactly," Mandy says, and presses her finger to your nose.
"And the lead guy, the, like,
head agent? He's the hero. He lost his wife and daughter in a
terrorist attack on the
Vatican a few years back, so he's a little fucked up, but—"
You say, "Terrorists attacked the Vatican?"
"Huh?"
You look at her, waiting. She has a small face, eyes too close to
her nose.
"In the movie," Mandy says. "Not in real life."
"Oh. I just—you know, four years inside, you assume you
missed a couple of headlines,
but ..."
56. "Right." Her face is dark and squally now. "Can I finish?"
"I'm just saying," you say and snort another line off your fist,
"even the guys on death
row would have heard about that one."
"Just go with it," your father says. "It's not, like, real li fe."
You look out the window, see a guy in a chicken suit carrying a
can of gas in the
breakdown lane, think how real life isn't like real life. Probably
more like this poor dumb
bastard running out of gas in a car with wings painted on it.
Wondering how the hell he
ever got here. Wondering who he'd pissed off in that previous
real life.
Your father has rented two rooms at an Econo Lodge so that you
and Mandy can have
some privacy, but you send Mandy home after she twice
interrupts the sex to pontificate
on the merits of Michael Bay films.
You sit in the blue-wash flicker of ESPN and eat peanuts from a
plastic bag you got out
of a vending machine and drink plastic cupfuls of Jim Beam
from a bottle your father
presented when you reached the motel parking lot. You think of
the time you've lost, and
how nice it is to sit alone on a double bed and watch TV, and
you think of Gwen, can
taste her tongue for just a moment, and you think about the road
that's led you here to
this motel room on this night after forty-seven months in prison,
and how a lot of people
57. would say it was a twisted road, a weird one, filled with curves,
but you just think of it as
a road like any other. You drive down it on faith, or because
you have no other choice,
and you find out what it's like by the driving of it, find out what
the end looks like only
by reaching it.
Late the next morning your father wakes you, tells you he drove
Mandy home and you've
got things to do, people to see.
Here's what you know about your father above all else: people
have a way of vanishing in
his company.
He's a professional thief, a consummate con man, an expert in
his field—and yet
something far beyond professionalism is at his core, something
unreasonably arbitrary.
Something he keeps within himself like a story he heard once,
laughed at maybe, yet
swore never to repeat.
"She was with you last night?" you say.
"You didn't want her. Somebody had to prop her ego back up.
Poor girl like that."
"But you drove her home," you say.
"I'm speaking Czech?"
You hold his eyes for a bit. They're big and bland, with the
58. heartless innocence of a
newborn's. Nothing moves in them, nothing breathes, and after a
while you say, "Let me
take a shower."
"Fuck the shower," he says. "Throw on a baseball cap and let's
get."
You take the shower anyway, just to feel it, another of those
things you would have
realized you'd miss if you'd given it any thought ahead of
time—standing under the
spray, no one near you, all the hot water you want for as long as
you want it, shampoo
that doesn't smell like factory smoke.
Drying your hair and brushing your teeth, you can hear the old
man flicking through
channels, never pausing on one for more than thirty seconds:
Home Shopping
Network—zap. Springer—zap. Oprah—zap. Soap-opera voices,
soap-opera music—zap.
Monster-truck show—pause. Commercial—zap, zap, zap.
You come back into the room, steam trailing you, pick your
jeans up off the bed, and put
them on.
The old man says, "Afraid you'd drowned. Worried I'd have to
take a plunger to the
drain, suck you back up."
You say, "Where we going?"
"Take a drive." Your father shrugs, flicking past a cartoon.
59. "Last time you said that, I got shot twice."
Your father looks back over his shoulder at you, eyes big and
soft. "Wasn't the car that
shot you, was it?"
You go out to Gwen's place, but she isn't there anymore. A
couple of black kids are
playing in the front yard, black mother coming out on the porch
to look at the strange
car idling in front of her house.
"You didn't leave it here?" your father says.
"Not that I recall."
"Think."
"I'm thinking."
"So you didn't?"
"I told you—not that I recall."
"So you're sure."
"Pretty much."
"You had a bullet in your head."
"Two."
"I thought one glanced off."
60. You say, "Two bullets hit your fucking head, old man, you don't
get hung up on the
particulars."
"That how it works?" Your father pulls away from the curb as
the woman comes down
the steps.
The first shot came through the back window, and Gentleman
Pete flinched. He jammed
the wheel to the right and drove the car straight into the
highway exit barrier, air bags
exploding, water barrels exploding, something in the back of
your head exploding, glass
pebbles filling your shirt, Gwen going, "What happened? Jesus.
What happened?"
You pulled her with you out the back door—Gwen, your
Gwen—and you crossed the exit
ramp and ran into the woods and the second shot hit you there
but you kept going, not
sure how, not sure why, the blood pouring down your face, your
head on fire, burning so
bright and so hard that not even the rain could cool it off.
"And you don't remember nothing else?" your father says.
You've driven all over town,
every street, every dirt road, every hollow you can stumble
across in Sumner, West
Virginia.
"Not till she dropped me off at the hospital."
"Dumb goddamn move if ever there was one."
61. "I seem to remember I was puking blood by that point, talking
all funny."
"Oh, you remember that. Sure."
"You're telling me in all this time you never talked to Gwen?"
"Like I told you three years back, that girl got gone."
You know Gwen. You love Gwen. This part of it is hard to take.
You remember Gwen in
your car and Gwen in the cornstalks and Gwen in her mother's
bed in the hour just
before noon, naked and soft. You watched a drop of sweat
appear from her hairline and
slide down the side of her neck as she snored against your
shoulder blade, and the arch
of her foot was pressed over the top of yours, and you watched
her sleep, and you were
so awake.
"So it's with her," you say.
"No," the old man says, a bit of anger creeping into his puppy-
fur voice. "You called me.
That night."
"I did?"
"Shit, boy. You called me from the pay phone outside the
hospital."
"What'd I say?"
"You said, 'I hid it. It's safe. No one knows where but me.'"
62. "Wow," you say. "I said all that? Then what'd I say?"
The old man shakes his head. "Cops were pulling up by then,
calling you 'motherfucker,'
telling you to drop the phone. You hung up."
The old man pulls up outside a low red-brick building behind a
tire dealership on Oak
Street. He kills the engine and gets out of the car, and you
follow. The building is two
stories. Facing the street are the office of a bail bondsman, a
hardware store, a Chinese
takeout place with greasy walls the color of an old dog's teeth,
and a hair salon called
Girlfriend Hooked Me Up that's filled with black women.
Around the back, past the
whitewashed windows of what was once a dry cleaner, is a
small black door with the
words TRUE-LINE EFFICIENCY EXPERTS CORP. stenciled
on the frosted glass.
The old man unlocks the door and leads you into a ten-by-ten
room that smells of roast
chicken and varnish. He pulls the string of a bare light bulb, and
you look around at a
floor strewn with envelopes and paper, the only piece of
furniture a broken-down desk
probably left behind by the previous tenant.
Your father crab-walks across the floor, picking up envelopes
that have come through
the mail slot, kicking his way through the paper. You pick up
63. one of the pieces of paper
and read it.
Dear Sirs,
Please find enclosed my check for $50. I look forward to
receiving the information
packet we discussed as well as the sample test. I have enclosed
a SASE to help facilitate
this process. I hope to see you someday at the airport!
Sincerely,
Jackson A. Willis
You let it drop to the floor and pick up another one.
To Whom It May Concern:
Two months ago, I sent a money order in the amount of fifty
dollars to your company in
order that I may receive an information packet and sample test
so that I could take the
US government test and become a security handler and fulfill
my patriotic duty against
the al Qadas. I have not received my information packet as yet
and no one answers when
I call your phone. Please send me that information packet so I
can get that job.
Yours truly,
Edwin Voeguarde
12 Hinckley Street
Youngstown, OH 44502
64. You drop this one to the floor too, and watch your father sit on
the corner of the desk
and open his fresh pile of envelopes with a penknife. He reads
some, pauses only long
enough with others to shake the checks free and drop the rest to
the floor.
You let yourself out, go to the Chinese place and buy a cup of
Coke, go into the hardware
store and buy a knife and a couple of tubes of Krazy Glue, stop
at the car for a minute,
and then go back into your father's office.
"What're you selling this time?" you say.
"Airport security jobs," he says, still opening envelopes. "It's a
booming market.
Everyone wants in. Stop them bad guys before they get on the
plane, make the papers,
serve your country, and maybe be lucky enough to get posted
near one of them
Starbucks kiosks. Hell."
"How much you made?"
Your father shrugs, though you're certain he knows the figure
right down to the last
penny.
"I've done all right. Hell else am I going to do, back in this shit
town for three months,
waiting on you? 'Bout time to shut this down, though." He holds
up a stack of about
sixty checks. "Deposit these and cash out the account. First two
65. months, though? I was
getting a thousand, fifteen hundred checks a week. Thank the
good Lord for being
selective with the brain tissue, you know?"
"Why?" you say.
"Why what?"
"Why you been hanging around for three months?"
Your father looks up from the stack of checks, squints. "To
prepare a proper welcome for
you."
"A bottle of whiskey and a hooker who gives lousy head? That
took you three months?"
Your father squints a little more, and you see a shaft of gray
between the two of you, not
quite what you'd call light, just a shaft of air or atmosphere or
something, swimming
with motes, your father on the other side of it looking at you
like he can't quite believe
you're related.
After a minute or so your father says, "Yeah."
Your father told you once you'd been born in New Jersey.
Another time he said New
Mexico. Then Idaho. Drunk as a skunk a few months before you
got shot, he said, "No,
no. I'll tell you the truth. You were born in Las Vegas. That's in
Nevada."
You went on the Internet to look yourself up but never did find
66. anything.
Your mother died when you were seven. You've sat up at night
occasionally and tried to
picture her face. Some nights you can't see her at all. Some
nights you'll get a quick
glimpse of her eyes or her jawline, see her standing by the foot
of her bed, rolling her
stockings on, and suddenly she'll appear whole cloth, whole
human, and you can smell
her.
Most times, though, it's somewhere in between. You see a smile
she gave you, and then
she'll vanish. See a spatula she held turning pancakes, her eyes
burning for some reason,
her mouth an O, and then her face is gone and all you can see is
the wallpaper. And the
spatula.
You asked your father once why he had no pictures of her. Why
hadn't he taken a picture
of her? Just one lousy picture?
He said, "You think it'd bring her back? No, I mean, do you?
Wow," he said, and rubbed
his chin. "Wouldn't that be cool."
You said, "Forget it."
"Maybe if we had a whole album of pictures?" your father said.
"She'd, like, pop out from
time to time, make us breakfast."
67. Now that you've been in prison, you've been documented, but
even they'd had to make it
up, take your name as much on faith as you. You have no Social
Security number or
birth certificate, no passport. You've never held a job.
Gwen said to you once, "You don't have anyone to tell you who
you are, so you
don't need anyone to tell you. You just are who you are. You're
beautiful."
And with Gwen that was usually enough. You didn't need to be
defined —by your father,
your mother, a place of birth, a name on a credit card or a
driver's license or the upper
left corner of a check. As long as her definition of you was
something she could live with,
then you could too.
You find yourself standing in a Nebraska wheat field. You're
seventeen years old. You
learned to drive five years earlier. You were in school once, for
two months when you
were eight, but you read well and you can multiply three-digit
numbers in your head
faster than a calculator, and you've seen the country with the
old man. You've learned
people aren't that smart. You've learned how to pull lottery-
ticket scams and asphalt-
paving scams and get free meals with a slight upturn of your
brown eyes. You've learned
that if you hold ten dollars in front of a stranger, he'll pay
twenty to get his hands on it if
you play him right. You've learned that every good lie is
threaded with truth and every
accepted truth leaks lies.
68. You're seventeen years old in that wheat field. The night breeze
smells of wood smoke
and feels like dry fingers as it lifts your bangs off your
forehead. You remember
everything about that night because it is the night you met
Gwen. You are two years
away from prison, and you feel like someone has finally given
you permission to live.
This is what few people know about Sumner, West Virginia:
every now and then
someone finds a diamond. Some dealers were in a plane that
went down in a storm in
'51, already blown well off course, flying a crate of Israeli
stones down the Eastern
Seaboard toward Miami. Plane went down near an open
mineshaft, took some swing-
shift miners with it. The government showed up, along with
members of an
international gem consortium, got the bodies out of there, and
went to work looking for
the diamonds. Found most of them, or so they claimed, but for
decades afterward
rumors persisted, occasionally given credence by the sight of a
miner, still grimed brown
by the shafts, tooling around town in an Audi.
You'd been in Sumner peddling hurricane insurance in trailer
parks when word got
around that someone had found a diamond as big as a casino
chip. Miner by the name of
George Brunda, suddenly buying drinks, talking to his travel
69. agent. You and Gwen shot
pool with him one night, and you could see his dread in the
bulges under his eyes, the
way his laughter exploded too high and too fast.
He didn't have much time, old George, and he knew it, but he
had a mother in a rest
home, and he was making the arrangements to get her
transferred. George was a fleshy
guy, triple-chinned, and dreams he'd probably forgotten he'd
ever had were
rediscovered and weighted in his face, jangling and pulling the
flesh.
"Probably hasn't been laid in twenty years," Gwen said when
George went to the
bathroom. "It's sad. Poor sad George. Never knew love."
Her pool stick pressed against your chest as she kissed you, and
you could taste the
tequila, the salt, and the lime on her tongue.
"Never knew love," she whispered in your ear, an ache in the
whisper.
"What about the fairground?" your father says as you leave the
office of True-Line
Efficiency Experts Corp. "Maybe you hid it there. You always
had a fondness for that
place."
You feel a small hitch. In your leg, let's say. Just a tiny
clutching sensation in the back of
your right calf. But you walk through it, and it goes away.
You say to your father as you reach the car, "You really drive
70. her home this morning?"
"Who?"
"Mandy?"
"Who's ... ?" Your father opens his door, looks at you over it.
"Oh, the whore?"
"Yeah."
"Did I drive her home?"
"Yeah."
Your father pats the top of the door, the cuff of his deni m jacket
flapping around his
wrist, his eyes on you. You feel, as you always have, reflected
in them, even when you
aren't, couldn't be, wouldn't be.
"Did I drive her home?" A smile bounces in the rubber of your
father's face.
"Did you drive her home?" you say.
That smile's all over the place now —the eyebrows, too. "Define
home."
You say, "I wouldn't know, would I?"
"You're still pissed at me because I killed Fat Boy."
"George."
71. "What?"
"His name was George."
"He would have ratted."
"To who? It wasn't like he could file a claim. Wasn't a fucking
lottery ticket."
Your father shrugs, looks off down the street.
"I just want to know if you drove her home."
"I drove her home," your father says.
"Yeah?"
"Oh, sure."
"Where'd she live?"
"Home," he says, and gets behind the wheel, starts the ignition.
You never figured George Brunda for smart, and only after a
full day in his house, going
through everything down to the point of removing the drywall
and putting it back,
resealing it, touching up the paint, did Gwen say, "Where's the
mother stay again?"
That took uniforms, Gwen as a nurse, you as an orderly,
Gentleman Pete out in the car
while your father kept watch on George's mine entrance and
monitored police activity
over a scanner.
72. The old lady said, "You're new here, and quite pretty," as Gwen
shot her up with
phenobarbital and Valium and you went to work on the room.
This was the glitch: You'd watched George drive to work,
watched him enter the mine.
No one saw him come back out again, because no one was
looking on the other side of
the hill, at the exit of a completely different shaft. So while
your father watched the
front, George took off out the back, drove over to check on his
investment, walked into
the room just as you pulled the rock from the back of the
mother's radio, George looking
politely surprised, as if he'd stepped into the wrong room.
He smiled at you and Gwen, held up a hand in apology, and
backed out of the room.
Gwen looked at the door, looked at you.
You looked at Gwen, looked at the window, looked at the rock
filling the center of your
palm, the entire center of your palm. Looked at the door.
Gwen said, "Maybe we—"
And George came through the door again, nothing polite in his
face, a gun in his hand.
And not any regular gun—a motherfucking six-shooter, like
they carried in westerns,
long, thin barrel, a family heirloom maybe, passed down from a
great-great-great-
73. grandfather, not even a trigger guard, just the trigger, and crazy
fat George the lonely
unloved pulling back on it and squeezing off two rounds, the
first of which went out the
window, the second of which hit metal somewhere in the room
and then bounced off
that. The old lady went "Ooof," even though she was doped up
and passed out, and it
sounded to you like she'd eaten something that didn't agree with
her. You could picture
her sitting in a restaurant, halfway through coffee, placing a
hand to her belly, saying it:
"Ooof." And George would come around to her chair and say,
"Is everything okay,
Mama?"
But he wasn't doing that now, because the old lady went ass-
end-up out of the bed and
hit the floor, and George dropped the gun and stared at her and
said, "You shot my
mother."
And you said, "You shot your mother," your entire body jetting
sweat through the pores
all at once.
"No, you did. No, you did."
You said, "Who was holding the fucking gun?"
But George didn't hear you. George jogged three steps and
dropped to his knees. The old
lady was on her side, and you could see blood staining the back
of her white johnny.
George cradled her face, looked into it, and said, "Mother. Oh,
74. Mother, oh, Mother, oh,
Mother."
And you and Gwen ran right the fuck out of that room.
In the car Gwen said, "You saw it, right? He shot his own
mother."
"He did?"
"He did," she said. "Baby, she's not going to die from that."
"Maybe. She's old."
"She's old, yeah. The fall from the bed was worse."
"We shot an old lady."
"We didn't shoot her."
"In the ass."
"We didn't shoot anyone. He had the gun."
"That's how it'll play, though. You know that. An old lady.
Christ."
Gwen's eyes were the size of that diamond as she looked at you,
and then she said,
"Ooof."
"Don't start," you said.
"I can't help it, Bobby. Jesus."
75. She said your name. That's your name—Bobby. You loved
hearing her say it.
Sirens were coming up the road behind you now, and you were
looking at her and
thinking, This isn't funny, it isn't, it's fucking sad, that poor old
lady, and thinking, Okay,
it's sad, but God, Gwen, I will never, ever live without you. I
just can't imagine it
anymore. I want to ... What?
Wind was pouring into the car, and the sirens were growing
louder, an army of them,
and Gwen's face was an inch from yours, her hair falling from
behind her ear and
whipping across her mouth, and she was looking at you, she was
seeing you—
really seeing you. Nobody'd ever done that, nobody. She was
tuned to you like a radio
tower out on the edge of the unbroken fields of wheat, blinking
red under a dark-blue
sky, and that night breeze lifting your bangs was her, for
Christ's sake, her, and she was
laughing, her hair in her teeth, laughing because the old lady
had fallen out of the bed
and it wasn't funny, it wasn't, and you said the first part in your
head, the "I want to"
part, but you said the second part aloud: "Dissolve into you."
And Gentleman Pete, up there at the wheel, on this dark country
road, said, "What?"
But Gwen said, "I know, baby. I know." And her voice broke
76. around the words, broke in
the middle of her laughter and her fear and her guilt, and she
took your face in her
hands as Pete drove up on the interstate, and you saw all those
siren lights washing
across the back window like Fourth of July ice cream. Then the
window came down like
yanked netting and chucked glass pebbles into your shirt, and
you felt something in your
head go all shifty and loose and hot as a cigarette coal.
The fairground is empty, and you and your father walk around
for a bit. The tarps over
some of the booths have come undone at the corners, and they
rustle and flap, caught
between the wind and the wood, and your father watches you,
waiting for you to
remember, and you say, "It's coming back to me. A little."
Your father says, "Yeah?"
You hold up your hand, tip it from side to side.
Out behind the cages where, in summer, they set up the dunking
machine and the
bearded lady's chair and the fast-pitch machines, you see a fresh
square of dirt, recently
tilled, and you stand over it until your old man stops beside
you, and you say, "Mandy?"
The old man chuckles softly, scuffs at the dirt with his shoe,
looks off at the horizon.
"I held it in my hand, you know," you say.
"I'd figure," the old man says.
77. It's quiet, the land flat and metal-blue and empty for miles in
every direction, and you
can hear the rustle of the tarps and nothing else, and you know
that the old man has
brought you here to kill you. Picked you up from prison to kill
you. Brought you into the
world, probably, so eventually he could kill you.
"Covered the center of my palm."
"Big, huh?"
"Big enough."
"Running out of patience, boy," your father says.
You nod. "I'd guess you would be."
"Never my strong suit."
"No."
"This has been nice," your father says, and sniffs the air. "Like
old times, reconnecting
and all that."
"I told her that night to just go, just put as much country as she
could between you and
her until I got out. I told her to trust no one. I told her you'd
stay hot on her trail even
when all logic said you'd quit. I told her even if I told you I had
it, you'd have to cover
your bets—you'd have to come looking for her."
78. Your father looks at his watch, looks off at the sky again.
"I told her if you ever caught up to her, to take you to the
fairground."
"Who's this we're talking about?"
"Gwen." Saying her name to the air, to the flapping tarps, to the
cold.
"You don't say." Your father's gun comes out now. He taps it
against his outer knee.
"Told her to tell you that's all she knew. I'd hid it here.
Somewhere here."
"Lotta ground."
You nod.
Your father turns so you are facing, his hands crossed over his
groin, the gun there,
waiting.
"The kinda money that stone'll bring," your father says, "a man
could retire."
"To what?" you say.
…
A&P
by john updike
79. In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the
third check-out slot, with my
back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the
bread. The one that caught my eye
first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky
kid, with a good tan and a sweet
broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just
under it, where the sun never seems
to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my
hand on a box of HiHo crackers
trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and
the customer starts giving me hell.
She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty
with rouge on her cheekbones and
no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She'd
been watching cash registers forty
years and probably never seen a mistake before.
By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a
bag -- she gives me a little snort
in passing, if she'd been born at the right time they would have
burned her over in Salem -- by
the time I get her on her way the girls had circled around the
bread and were coming back,
80. without a pushcart, back my way along the counters, in the aisle
between the check-outs and the
Special bins. They didn't even have shoes on. There was this
chunky one, with the two-piece -- it
was bright green and the seams on the bra were still sharp and
her belly was still pretty pale so I
guessed she just got it (the suit) -- there was this one, with one
of those chubby berry-faces, the
lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and a tall
one, with black hair that hadn't quite
frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across under the
eyes, and a chin that was too long
-- you know, the kind of girl other girls think is very "striking"
and "attractive" but never quite
makes it, as they very well know, which is why they like her so
much -- and then the third one,
that wasn't quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind of led
them, the other two peeking around
and making their shoulders round. She didn't look around, not
this queen, she just walked
straight on slowly, on these long white prima donna legs. She
came down a little hard on her
heels, as if she didn't walk in her bare feet that much, putting
down her heels and then letting the
81. weight move along to her toes as if she was testing the floor
with every step, putting a little
deliberate extra action into it. You never know for sure how
girls' minds work (do you really
think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a
glass jar?) but you got the idea she
had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now
she was showing them how to do
it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know --
bathing suit with a little nubble
all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were
off her shoulders looped loose
around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit
had slipped a little on her, so all
around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it
hadn't been there you wouldn't have
known there could have been anything whiter than those
shoulders. With the straps pushed off,
there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her
head except just her, this clean
bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones
like a dented sheet of metal
tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty.
82. She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached,
done up in a bun that was
unraveling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P
with your straps down, I suppose it's
the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so high
her neck, coming up out o fthose
white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didn't mind. The
longer her neck was, the more
of her there was.
She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my
shoulder Stokesie in the second slot
watching, but she didn't tip. Not this queen. She kept her eyes
moving across the racks, and
stopped, and turned so slow it made my stomach rub the inside
of my apron, and buzzed to the
other two, who kind of huddled against her for relief, and they
all three of them went up the cat-
and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-ri ce-raisins-
seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-soft drinks-
rackers-and- cookies aisle. From the third slot I look straight up
this aisle to the meat counter,
and I watched them all the way. The fat one with the tan sort of
83. fumbled with the cookies, but on
second thought she put the packages back. The sheep pushing
their carts down the aisle -- the
girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have
one-way signs or anything) -- were
pretty hilarious. You could see them, when Queenie's white
shoulders dawned on them, kind of
jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own
baskets and on they pushed. I
bet you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people
would by and large keep reaching and
checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering "Let me see, there
was a third thing, began with A,
asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!" or whatever it is they do
mutter. But there was no doubt, this
jiggled them. A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked
around after pushing their carts past
to make sure what they had seen was correct.
You know, it's one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on
the beach, where what with the
glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another
thing in the cool of the A & P,
under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages,
with her feet paddling along
84. naked over our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.
"Oh Daddy," Stokesie said beside me. "I feel so faint."
"Darling," I said. "Hold me tight." Stokesie's married, with two
babies chalked up on his fuselage
already, but as far as I can tell that's the only difference. He's
twenty-two, and I was nineteen this
April.
"Is it done?" he asks, the responsible married man finding his
voice. I forgot to say he thinks he's
going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it's
called the Great Alexandrov and
Petrooshki Tea Company or something.
What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a
big summer colony out on the
Point, but we're right in the middle of town, and the women
generally put on a shirt or shorts or
something before they get out of the car into the street. And
anyway these are usually women
with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and
nobody, including them, could care
less. As I say, we're right in the middle of town, and if you
stand at our front doors you can see
85. two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper
store and three real-estate offices
and about twenty-seven old free-loaders tearing up Central
Street because the sewer broke again.
It's not as if we're on the Cape; we're north of Boston and
there's people in this town haven't seen
the ocean for twenty years.
The girls had reached the meat counter and were asking
McMahon something. He pointed, they
pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a pyramid of Diet
Delight peaches. All that was
left for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and
looking after them sizing up their
joints. Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn't
help it.
Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family
says it's sad but I don't think it's sad
myself. The store's pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon,
so there was nothing much to do
except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up
again. The whole store was like a
pinball machine and I didn't know which tunnel they'd come out
of. After a while they come
86. around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, records at
discount of the Caribbean Six or
Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste
the wax on, sixpacks of candy
bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane that faIl apart when
a kid looks at them anyway.
Around they come, Queenie still leading the way, and holding a
little gray jar in her hand. Slots
Three through Seven are unmanned and I could see her
wondering between Stokes and me, but
Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party in baggy gray
pants who stumbles up with four
giant cans of pineapple juice (what do these bums do with all
that pineapple juice' I've often
asked myself) so the girls come to me. Queenie puts down the
jar and I take it into my fingers icy
cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49¢.
Now her hands are empty, not a
ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where
the money's coming from. Still
with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the
hollow at the center of her nubbled
pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that
was so cute.
87. Then everybody's luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from
haggling with a truck full of
cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked
MANAGER behind which he
hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengel's pretty
dreary, teaches Sunday school and the
rest, but he doesn't miss that much. He comes over and says,
"Girls, this isn't the beach."
Queenie blushes, though maybe it's just a brush of sunburn I
was noticing for the first time, now
that she was so close. "My mother asked me to pick up a jar of
herring snacks." Her voice kind
of startled me, the way voices do when you see the people first,
coming out so flat and dumb yet
kind of tony, too, the way it ticked over "pick up" and "snacks."
All of a sudden I slid right down
her voice into her living room. Her father and the other men
were standing around in ice-cream
coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up
herring snacks on toothpicks off a
big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water
with olives and sprigs of mint in
them. When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade
and if it's a real racy affair
88. Schlitz in tall glasses with "They'll Do It Every Time" cartoons
stenciled on.
"That's all right," Lengel said. "But this isn't the beach." His
repeating this struck me as funny, as
if it had just occurred to him, and he had been thinking all these
years the A & P was a great big
dune and he was the head lifeguard. He didn't like my smiling --
-as I say he doesn't miss much --
but he concentrates on giving the girls that sad Sunday- school-
superintendent stare.
Queenie's blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid,
that I liked better from the back -
- a really sweet can -- pipes up, "We weren't doing any
shopping. We just came in for the one
thing."
"That makes no difference," Lengel tells her, and I could see
from the way his eyes went that he
hadn't noticed she was wearing a two-piece before. "We want
you decently dressed when you
come in here."
"We are decent," Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing,
getting sore now that she
89. remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs
the A & P must look pretty
crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in her very blue eyes.
"Girls, I don't want to argue with you. After this come in here
with your shoulders covered. It's
our policy." He turns his back. That's policy for you. Policy is
what the kingpins want. What the
others want is juvenile delinquency.
All this while, the customers had been showing up with their
carts but, you know, sheep, seeing a
scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a
paper bag as gently as peeling a
peach, not wanting to miss a word. I could feel in the silence
everybody getting nervous, most of
all Lengel, who asks me, "Sammy, have you rung up this
purchase?"
I thought and said "No" but it wasn't about that I was thinking. I
go through the punches, 4, 9,
GROC, TOT -- it's more complicated than you think, and after
you do it often enough, it begins
to make a lttle song, that you hear words to, in my case "Hello
(bing) there, you (gung) hap-py
pee-pul (splat)"-the splat being the drawer flying out. I uncrease
90. the bill, tenderly as you may
imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest
scoops of vanilla I had ever known
were there, and pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink
palm, and nestle the herrings in a
bag and twist its neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.
The girls, and who'd blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I
say "I quit" to Lengel quick
enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their
unsuspected hero. They keep
right on going, into the electric eye; the door flies open and
they flicker across the lot to their car,
Queenie and Plaid and Big Tall Goony-Goony (not that as raw
material she was so bad), leaving
me with Lengel and a kink in his eyebrow.
"Did you say something, Sammy?"
"I said I quit."
"I thought you did."
"You didn't have to embarrass them."
"It was they who were embarrassing us."
I started to say something that came out "Fiddle-de-doo." It's a
saying of my grand- mother's, and
91. I know she would have been pleased.
"I don't think you know what you're saying," Lengel said.
"I know you don't," I said. "But I do." I pull the bow at the back
of my apron and start shrugging
it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had been heading
for my slot begin to knock against
each other, like scared pigs in a chute.
Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray.
He's been a friend of my parents
for years. "Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and
Dad," he tells me. It's true, I
don't. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal
not to go through with it. I fold
the apron, "Sammy" stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on
the counter, and drop the bow tie
on top of it. The bow tie is theirs, if you've ever wondered.
"You'll feel this for the rest of your
life," Lengel says, and I know that's true, too, but remembering
how he made that pretty girl
blush makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the No Sale tab and
the machine whirs "pee-pul" and
92. the drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene taking place
in summer, I can follow this up
with a clean exit, there's no fumbling around getting your coat
and galoshes, I just saunter into
the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the
night before, and the door heaves
itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating around on the
asphalt.
I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There
wasn't anybody but some young
married screaming with her children about some candy they
didn't get by the door of a powder-
blue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows,
over the bags of peat moss and
aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see
Lengel in my place in the slot,
checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back
stiff, as if he'd just had an
injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard
the world was going to be to me
hereafter.