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That is interesting, Ken. Nice twists. Are you marketing this? > Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 18:25:54 -0400 > From: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: The Business of Poetry RE: Ken > To: [log in to unmask] > > deborah russell wrote: > > http://www.balletmet.org/Notes/ButterflyStory.html > > > > I got most of it right from memory, but the aggregate of Butterfly > stories has captivated me for years because it's so incredibly sad. > Really it seems a prefiguration of the "Ugly American" syndrome that > seems out of place in jingoistic late 19th century America. In any > event, it fired me up a year or two ago to write my own plot for a sequel. > > Butterfly: After the Tragedy > > Suzuki: two years after Butterfly's suicide she marries a shopkeeper > in Nagasaki and lives out the rest of her life there. She is killed > when the second atomic bomb drops on the city on August 9, 1945. > > Sharpless: He never quite gets over the disaster with Pinkerton and > Butterfly, and blames himself for not seeing the signs. After two > years more he resigns from the diplomatic corps and returns to > America, where he becomes a professor of foreign studies at an East > Coast university. He dies in 1940, filled with foreboding for the > catastrophe that will befall Japan--a nation he continues to love--if > it expands its territorial ambitions in the direction of the United > States. > > Kate Pinkerton: Stops sleeping with her husband upon their return from > Japan. Perpetually polite and a perfect hostess for a US Navy > officer, she sometimes drinks heavily and is believed to take lovers > when her husband is at sea. She is rarely alone in the same room with > him. She is the longest-lived character after the curtain, and dies > in 1963. No one writes down her last words but someone in the room > thinks she hears Kate whisper "Thank you." > > B. F. Pinkerton: Becomes profoundly silent and dark-dispositioned. He > volunteers for hazardous duty in the Atlantic during World War I. He > is caught more than once weeping uncontrollably and for no apparent > reason. He often leaves the room when his son comes in. He receives > a medical discharge from the Navy in 1921 and shoots himself a week > afterwards. > > "Trouble" is renamed B. F. Pinkerton, Jr. After his family settles on > the West Coast he is mocked by schoolmates as "The Jap" and "The > Yellow Nigger" and is expelled from several private schools for savage > fighting bordering on bloodlust. He goes to court at his majority and > changes his last name to his adoptive mother's. He comes home and > punches his father in the mouth a week before Pinkerton takes his > life. Fitting nowhere, drifting from one job to the next, in and out > of trouble with the police, the former child descends into alcoholism > and drug addiction. A week before he is to be interned in Manzanar > for his ancestry and visibly Japanese appearance, he commits sepuku > with a ritual dagger he bought in a San Diego pawnshop. > > > > -- > ---------------------------- > Ken Wolman > > http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com > http://opensalon.com/blog/kenneth_wolman > http://wearethecure.org/friends/cids-memory-p-394.html _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy is not the too busy. Combine all your e-mail accounts with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multiaccount&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_4