Nice bit of wordplay, yourself, Ken: '....see the tangle as far more
interesting than the clearing.'
Which of the O'Connor short stories is about the Bible salesman who seduces
his customer in a hay loft and steals her wooden leg? Nothing but laffs,
that one! Your students'll love it.
Don't forget to tell them that T Williams' main character in 'Menagerie' was
hankering for the Rah Rah guy, the Gentleman Caller. Gives a bit of
dimension to the play, as it does to the Hot Tin Roof.
jbp
2008/9/20 Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> Frederick Pollack wrote:
>
>>
>>>> "A Dream Play" and "A Ghost Sonata" were huge early influences on me.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ah, old favorites. Not a sense in them of any touch of helium, however.
>>>
>>> k
>>>
>>> But much Misery ...
>>
>
> One of my sections involved the kids writing "off" literary works. After
> we went through "The Lottery," one of the young ladies asked "How come so
> many stories are depressing or sad?"
>
> That did not quite throw me, but made me pause. Related I suppose to the
> question of why depictions of Evil are so much more interesting than those
> of Good. I referred the class back to an earlier story, "A Good Man Is Hard
> To Find," and threw back at them the unanswered question of why Flannery
> O'Connor, a Georgia-accented Lady Marchmain who believed profoundly in
> redemption, found one of her greatest characters in an invincibly evil
> bastard like The Misfit, someone so "gone" that he is a type without a name.
>
> I don't know how many people see the tangle as far more interesting than
> the clearing, but it's hard for me to come up with optimistic Happy Ending
> tales.
>
> They would love Strindberg's *The Father* or *Miss Julie*. We'll get to
> *The Glass Menagerie* in a few weeks and see how that one flies.
>
> I avoided, i.e., copped out on, saying "Real life, folks. It ain't
> necessarily shits 'n' giggles."
>
> Ken
>
>
> --
> Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com
> http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
> -------------------
> "I have been watching you; you were there, unconcerned perhaps, but with a
> strange distraught air of someone forever expecting a great misfortune, in
> sunlight, in a beautiful garden."--Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelleas et Melisande
>
|