SHORT STORY SEMINARS: WEEK OF APRIL 4, 2011

Definitely the highlight of the semester was the student-designed and led short story seminar project, with both the peer reading read around sessions -- “We should do this more often!” exclaimed Andrea during our first read around --- and the in-class midterm essay comparing two works of literature on war running tied at a close second.

Svetlana kicked off the second week of seminars for us after a two-week hiatus for spring break. Before the break, Svetlana presented a gorgeous PowerPoint that she created for us about the life and times of the great Russian short story writer Anton Chekhov. The Russians definitely elevated the short story to a high art form, and Chekhov in many ways represents this form at its peak. With voracious appetites we read the short story “The Bet” (intriguingly first published under the title “Fairy Tale” in 1889), about a lawyer who enters into a bet with a banker to endure 15 years of solitary imprisonment to prove his point that a life in prison is a more humane fate than the death penalty. Svetlana used her well-prepared questions and commentary to guide our discussion, as we probed philosophical topics prompted by the reading. Ivete summed up the message of the story as the other side of the old adage “ignorance is bliss”: knowledge is pain. We enjoyed reading Svetlana’s selection from Joseph Brodsky’s Nobel lecture about books and reading, and we discussed its application to the short story at hand. We concluded that Chekhov, true to his pseudonym “the man without a spleen,” emphasizes the ephemeral nature of worldly pursuits and shows both his faith in human nature through the lawyer’s final choice and also his playfully ironic sense of humor through the banker’s final move at the end of the tale.

On Tuesday, Andrea began her seminar with a dynamic and informative PowerPoint that she designed about the history of her diverse nation of Colombia, providing us with a context in which to interpret her short story selection, “One of These Days” (1962), by her fellow Aracatacan, the world-renowned Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Andrea’s questions about the literature were straightforward, as apparently is the narrative, leading us to easily find the key concepts and deeply analyze the complex nature of human beings, the horror of political corruption, the cruelty of war, the complicated motives underlying actions, and, as one participant noted, the concept of “the banality of evil” that the tone of the reading seems to evoke. This story of “a dentist without a degree” making choices about life and death as he goes about his mundane morning routine reveals much about the resilience of human beings under extreme pressure. Olga, standing out in our discussions as an eternal optimist, pointed out her analysis of the dentist as a symbol of the potential power of the common people who rise up to achieve a voice and a say one day. We enjoyed very much this ironic tale and its major significance and implications, both social and political.

On Wednesday, Ivete shared with us the intriguing short story, “Those Lopes” (1967), beginning her seminar discussion with a biography of the Brazilian author of the tale, Guimaraes Rosa. Ivete’s questions and selected quotations were well-designed to encourage participants in the analysis of this rich first-person narrative, the narrator-protagonist of which, Flausina, emerging as not only unreliable but even intentionally deceptive. Petra pointed out that she viewed the narrator as “robust,” a fitting adjective to describe a woman who tries to paint herself as a weak and helpless victim as she ironically describes how she systematically murdered a number of “Lopes” men. Andrea pointed out that from early on in the narrative, all the narrator-protagonist seems to care about is money. Having anticipated this point, Ivete directed the discussion towards her question which asks participants to make a comparison of Flausina and Mme. Loisel, the protagonist of Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace.” Finally, pointing out the etymology of the name “Lopes,” which derives from the Latin lupus (wolf), Ivete led us into a brilliant comparison of this short story with the classic fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” In this analysis, Flausina becomes the wolf that had initially intended to devour her, and Flausina, the biggest wolf of them all in the end, eats the wolves themselves. This Brazilian short story is irony at its finest, although the tale itself is quite dark and hard to swallow.

On Thursday, Olga shared with us a biography of the Russian writer A. I. Kuprin and his darkly humorous and ironic short story “Mechanical Justice” (1907). This story evokes many themes, including an emergent technology, the absurdity of the human condition, crime and punishment, the oftentimes unjust enforcement of justice, and, in the context of post-1905 Revolutionary Russia and pre-1917 Bolshevik Russia, a political critique and warning that, as Olga explained, “What you do to the people will come back to you.” In this context Olga led us to analyze the symbolism in the story, with the audience representing the elite ruling class, and the prophetic symbolism of the whole story, that the masses of poor people would one day rise to achieve true social justice. The story ends on a sardonically happy note, with the inventor of the now obliterated machine having learned his lesson fully.

On Friday, the final day of our seminars, Petra shared with us a comprehensive biography of the German writer and social activist Heinrich Boell, and led a discussion of the short story, “Like a Bad Dream” (1956). Petra explained that the title in German actually translates in English as “Like a Cheap Novel,” which added to our understanding of the story. Petra’s questions guided us towards a deep analysis of the relationship between the two main characters, the sophisticated Bertha and her naïve husband, who remains nameless throughout the narrative and who relates the story to us as the first-person narrator. We also discussed the significance of religion and religious artifacts in the story. We analyzed the story as an expression of the “Zeitgeist,” the spirit of the times of post-WWII Germany, and the genre of “Trummerliteratur” or “rubble literature,” which emerged during this time of the rebuilding of Germany from the ashes. We discussed the topic of corrupt business practices and the concept of “the end justifies the means.” We engaged in a debate over the possible future of the narrator and his marriage. Ivete suspects that the narrator continued along the business path he had begun, while Olga is fairly confident that he, having realized he had “betrayed his soul,” would reject this path and change careers. Of course this would inevitably lead to the demise of his relationship with Bertha, which some participants did not consider to be a likely choice.