Day 3: Carson McCullers, Elizabeth Hardwick, Marianne Moore
Short story: Carson McCullers - The Haunted Boy
A lot of tension in this one. A boy comes home from school with a friend and his mother is not home. The boy is terrified that she might have tried to take her life again.
I expect most writers tagged with the Southern Gothic label to always have tragic, ironic or pessimistic endings, but this story is very sincere, kind hearted and sweet. The men and boys in this story are portrayed as sensitive and loving, which is refreshing to me. I liked this one.
Essay: Elizabeth Hardwick - When to Cast Out, Give Up, or Let Go
A sort of general self help article, written in Hardwick's wonderful and incisive style. She speaks of how our sense of self is formed by our close relationships, yet also by betrayals, abandonment and heartbreak. I assume this was written sometime after her divorce. She makes similar points to those of the Buddhists, who I have found helpful for dealing with sorrow.
Heres a quotes I like:
We set out each day with props, costumes, gestures--our personality. These are part of a mask, and yet the mask is real. Suddenly, you, the mask, your life, are different, violently altered by events or persons you have depended upon. We ourselves are an accumulation, and a lot of what is us has been supplied by others. When our relation to others suddenly changes, everything valuable seems to be brought into question with an unbalanced swiftness.
Nothing new, old truths are always true, but, its one I'll return to in the future
Poem: Marianne Moore - Letter to a Steamroller
This poem seems like a follow up to the Sontag essay from yesterday, railing against the flattening of beauty through academic interpretation or pragmatic usefulness.
The last two stanzas get quite confusing as it mocks the language of academic papers, employing a scholarly quotation that has clumsily pasted in and cut from a larger sentence (see the random comma in the middle).
The last sentence is so dense with arcane words that I cannot really understand it.
I wonder if she is dissing a particular person, or just critics in general?
I'd like to read more of her work.