Popular Authors on SSMT Agatha Christie Alice Munro Ambrose Bierce Amy Hempel Ann Beattie Anton Chekhov Arthur Conan Doyle Barry Hannah Bernard Malamud Carson McCullers Clarice Lispector Donald Barthelme Edgar Allan Poe Edna O'Brien Edward P. She felt how intellectualized she had become, her entire body passive and observant and cynical.Īs always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter to the Short Story Magic Tricks Monthly Newsletter to get the latest short story news, contests and fun. With Gordon, in those hurried sleep moments back in Detroit, the two of them always fearful of being discovered, her body had been keyed up to hysteria and love had made her delirious with Bryan, near the end of their marriage, she had sometimes felt a tinge of love, a nagging doubtful rush that she often let fade away again, but with Lyle her body was dead, worn out, it could not respond to his most tender caresses. She was so tired most of the time she did not even pretend to feel anything. And that’s quite a trick on Oates’s part. So when the narrative evens out and begins to go in a straight line, we can totally understand Ilena’s panic. No wonder Ilena is feeling like she is losing herself. The story warps back and forth through these three relationships, almost like an omniscient narration stream of conscience. Bounce slightly forward and learn about her affair at the university. Then we travel back and learn about her ex-husband. So we get a picture of her current state in Buffalo. Oates mixes up the different pieces of Ilena’s predicament.
It soon becomes a muddle in the reader’s brain, too. Ilena is juggling career success with romantic struggles, and all of it is becoming a muddle in her brain. In “The Dead,” she spills out Ilena’s identity crisis. That’s what I’m going to be looking at this week – how these Oates stories create something new. “The Dead” does a remarkable job of recreating the identity crisis, the jealousy, and the snow of the original. OK, so I’m not going break down these stories against their models. We’re talking brilliant, brilliant stuff here. She expands some of the themes, compresses others, uses ideas and pieces of structure – all to create stories that both comment on their antecedents and say something entirely new. Oates doesn’t simply draw from old texts in a cutesy, derivative way.
If it sounds like a gimmick, get over it and give these stories a chance. Each takes its title from a classic short story of the past. Today we begin a week looking at five stories from Oates’s 1972 collection, Marriages And Infidelities. Simulating for the reader the protagonist’s sense of lost identity
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