JGB's FALL 2017 CRWR 383
Posted in Steven Millhauser on Oct 31st, 2017
“Eisenheim the Illusionist” by Steven Millhauser is told in the form of a biography. While fictional biographies have a first person point of view as a general rule, this short story’s narrator attempts, to the best of their ability, to tell this from a third person dramatic point of view, employing first person terms such as […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 24th, 2017
For the dome, but you say, how to transform the entire country into a gigantic mall, whose sole purpose is to encourage feverish consumption.” (p. 118) Millhauser’s short story, “The Dome,” has an extremely fantastic world in which these domes are invented that are able to cover, protect, and isolate a house. Then the […]
Posted in Steven Millhauser on Oct 24th, 2017
“No doubt we shall never rest content until the great All is enclosed in a globe of transparent Astrilume.” (120) “The Dome,” like many of Millhauser’s works, uses exaggeration as an element of the fantastic. The domes share characteristics with a greenhouse or a snow globe, creating an artificial environment that’s better for whatever is […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 24th, 2017
Indeed, one might argue that under the regime of the Dome, the country has become not a mall but an immense hall of entertainment, in which every citizen is a player. Certain unpleasant facts of life—rundown neighborhoods, traffic accidents, robberies, drive-by shootings—are in this view taken less seriously, since they are felt to be […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 17th, 2017
Read this article and then compose a short short story that makes use of the fantastic. Your story should be entitled “The Pard.” You will then read it to the class.
Posted in Steven Millhauser on Oct 17th, 2017
Was that the beginning? Was it the first sign of a disturbance that had been growing secretly? The fantastic in this story is surprisingly normal. Thinking about the meaning of words makes them become distorted. They end up meaning more when you think about them because their definitions take on the word itself. The fantastic […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 17th, 2017
[T]hat single word, “love,” was trying to compress within itself a multitude of meanings, was trying to take many precise and separate feelings and crush them into a single mushy mass, which I was being asked to hold in m y hands like a big sticky ball. We’ve talked a lot about the choices a […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 17th, 2017
You turned slowly to me. I remember the lazy roll of your head, your cheek against the vinyl strips, your hair flattened on one side, your eyelids sleepy. You said, “Do you love me?” Your voice was flirtatious, easy—you weren’t asking me to put a doubt to rest. I smiled, opened my mouth to answer, […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 17th, 2017
I’ve seen krill accelerate toward the maw of Team Whale, streaming bubbles, a mute shrimp battle cry.” (p.140) In Russell’s short story, “Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating,” the narrator goes into detail about these Food Chain Games in the Antarctic between whales and krill. This story is very fantastical because it takes this wild, […]
Posted in Karen Russell on Oct 16th, 2017
“Rule Five-A: If your wife leaves you for a millionaire motel-chain-owning douchebag fan of Team Whale, make sure you get your beloved mock-bioluminescent Team Krill eyestalks out of the trunk of her Civic before she takes off” (141) In a first person narrative that focuses on the reader as opposed to the narrator, it can […]
Posted in Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Oct 12th, 2017
In a novel so saturated with the fantastic, one fantastic element that stood out to me was the circumstances surrounding deaths. The two that stick out the most to me are the deaths of Melquíades and of Remedios the Beauty. The fantastic element of Melquíades’ death was not the actual death but the lasting effect […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 12th, 2017
Characters that Inhabit Fantastical Elements There are a couple of confusing elements in this story. First, the characters have the same names. Secondly, the characters have the same personality traits as the person they are named after. Though this is confusing it brings forth an interesting idea that there is no individual identity and that […]
Posted in Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Oct 12th, 2017
One of the fantastic themes of One Hundred Years of Solitude is the insomnia plague that runs through Macondo. I found this so fascinating because it is a common illness that people experience and yet Marquez takes it and turns it into a fantastic disease that spreads through the town. He also chooses to make […]
Posted in Gabriel Garcia Marquez on Oct 11th, 2017
The novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was an extremely fantastical novel with so many forms of fantastic within. My favorite fantastical detail of this world that Gabriel García Márquez creates is the magical forest that once the men slash to get through, the plants already begin growing back. The forest is described as if […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 3rd, 2017
“‘I learned from falling in love with that Koenig & Bauer. Infatuation is worth nothing. It has nothing to do with the real world.’ She nodded at the steam engine looming in the corner by her bed. ‘Me and Hercules, we have an understanding. We take care of each other. It’s a better kind of […]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 3rd, 2017
Although the laugh parlors existed in fact, for we all attended them and even began to form clubs of our own, they also continued to lead a separate and in a sense higher existence in the realm of rumor, which had the effect of lifting them into the inaccessible and mythical.” p. 78 In this […]
Posted in Karin Tidbeck on Oct 3rd, 2017
“Anna’s relationship to Hercules did seem much happier in comparison, especially when her belly started to swell. The pregnancy was uncomplicated, even though Anna sometimes complained of strange sensation in her stomach. When Franz laid and ear to her belly, he could hear clicking and whirring sounds in there.” (19) In Tidbeck’s “Beatrice” the beginning of […]