JGB's FALL 2017 CRWR 383
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 26th, 2017
It was hard to pick a good quote from this story because there were so many that could be discussed. I know that no one is going to believe any of this. That’s okay. If I thought you would, then I couldn’t tell you. Promise me that you won’t believe a word. This story is […]
Posted in Kelly Link on Sep 26th, 2017
Promise me you won’t believe a word. As writers, we often ask ourselves what we need to do to make a story believable, especially when dealing with elements of the fantastic. Kelly Link creates believability in, what my opinion, is a clever and masterful way. Our narrator is Genevieve, the granddaughter of Zofia who possesses […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 26th, 2017
Zofia has never seen such a place. There were trains and electric lights and movie theaters, and there were people shooting each other. Bombs were falling. A war going on. Most of the villagers decided to climb right back inside the handbag, but Zofia volunteered to stay in the world and look after the handbag. […]
Posted in Kelly Link on Sep 26th, 2017
“I know that no one is going to believe any of this. That’s okay. If I thought you would, then I couldn’t tell you. Promise me you won’t believe a word.” (3) In this moment, which is later repeated at the end of the story, the narrator, Genevieve, takes a moment to acknowledge that she […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 26th, 2017
It’s kind of like if you went through the wardrobe in the Narnia books, only instead of finding Aslan and the White Witch and horrible Eustace, you found this magic clothing world–instead of talking animals, there were feather boas and wedding dresses and bowling shoes, and paisley shirts and Doc Martens and everything hung up […]
Posted in Steven Millhauser on Sep 19th, 2017
Often I wondered what would have happened if I had turned to look at her, the day the curtains parted. And I saw it clearly: the sun-filled air, the dust swirling in shafts of light, the bright empty room. No, far better to have turned away, to have understood that, for me, Isabel existed only […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 19th, 2017
No, the real division was between the visible world and that other world, where Isabel waited for me like a dark dream. (p.63) The story “The Room in the Attic” by Millhauser becomes extremely fantastical when Isabel is introduced. From the beginning of their friendship, David doesn’t even know if she is real, or if […]
Posted in Karen Russell on Sep 19th, 2017
“And like a quagmire the terror won’t release me, because the man is speaking in the voice of my own father, and every sodbuster in the Hox River Settlement – a voice that can live for eons on dust and thimblefuls of water, that can be plowed under, hailed out, and go on whispering madly […]
Posted in Steven Millhauser on Sep 19th, 2017
Nothing was there. In the thick darkness I felt myself dissolving, turning into black mist, speaking into the farthest reaches of the room. The feeling that Isabel may not be real is an interesting choice that Millhauser makes in this story. Even by the end of the story, we can’t be quite sure that David […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 19th, 2017
“He said that the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness, which was why the people who selected books for high school English classes were careful to choose only false books that were discussable, boring, and sane, or else, if they chose a real […]
Posted in Karen Russell on Sep 14th, 2017
Titles, unless they’re Fall Out Boy songs from 2006-2009, are rarely so long or descriptive, so this one caught my eye. Right from the outset, Russell gives us setting. We are in 1979, in Strong Beach, and a seagull army has descended. While we don’t yet know the significance of any of these pieces of […]
Posted in Karen Russell on Sep 14th, 2017
Russell in “The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979” hides the pieces of fantastic within it, while having the fantastical pieces and the world of Nal and his family very fleshed out, knowing very specific details about each character. I like how from the beginning, the mass amount seagulls surrounding Nal is noticed slightly, […]
Posted in Karen Russell on Sep 14th, 2017
But to Nal’s dismay, the ladies of Athertown flocked to Samson in greater multitudes than before. Girls trailed him down the boardwalk, clucking stupidly about the new waxy sheen on his head. Samson was seventeen and had what Nal could only describe with a big laugh and the deep serenity of a grazing creature. Russell […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 14th, 2017
Emily Rapp Black is a very with a positive spirit, which was very unexpected. Though she has been through very rough challenges, she still has a great sense of humor and is confident in who she is. When she read part of her essay “Casa Azul Cripple,” I was really able to see the true authentic […]
Posted in Karen Russell on Sep 14th, 2017
The gulls landed in Athertown on July 11, 1979. Clouds of them, in numbers unseen since the ornithologists began keeping records of such things. Scientists all over the country hypothesized about erratic weather patterns and redirected migratory routes. At first sullen Nal barely noticed them. (53) The shift in point of view from dramatic third […]
Posted in Karen Russell on Sep 14th, 2017
Warping people’s futures into some new and terrible shapes, just by stealing these smallest linchpins from the present. The mystery behind the appearance of the seagulls in this story is very apparent, yet it is not the focal point. Russell continues to change the point of the story as it moves along. At first, she […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 5th, 2017
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 5th, 2017
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 5th, 2017
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 5th, 2017