William H. Gass is an eminent theorist and practitioner of postmodern metafiction, self-reflexive, performative fictions that emphasize the writing process itself by directing the reader’s attention to the author’s shaping presence in the showy deployment of literary strategies and conventions…. Read More ›
Literature
Analysis of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
In the short story cycle The Things They Carried (1990), Tim O’Brien cemented his reputation as one of the most powerful chroniclers of the Vietnam War, joining the conversation alongside Philip Caputo (A Rumor of War), Michael Herr (Dispatches), David… Read More ›
Analysis of Amy Hempel’s In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried
“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” initially appeared in Amy Hempel’s first collection of short stories titled Reasons to Live (1985), a group of stories that address various scenarios of coping, with this story, according to Hempel, providing… Read More ›
Analysis of Jill McCorkle’s Intervention
In an age of plastic surgery, stomach stapling, and laser treatments, American culture has placed its focus not on only hiding flaws but erasing them entirely in the quest for perfection. “Intervention,” by Jill McCorkle, was first published in Ploughshares… Read More ›
Analysis of O. Henry’s The Last Leaf
One of the most famous of the O. Henry tales, “The Last Leaf” (1907) not only concludes with the usual O. Henry surprise ending, but, like “A Service of Love,” is conveyed with a narrative tone of sadness and even… Read More ›
Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time
The publishing dates, the authoritative text, even the genre of the text all prove intensely problematic, for Ernest Hemingway’s early stories and arguably his best sustained work. Published in Paris in 1924 as in our time, a series of vignettes,… Read More ›
Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp
Originally printed in the April 1924 Transatlantic Review as “Work in Progress” and published the following year as part of In Our Time, “Indian Camp” is Ernest Hemingway’s earliest Nick Adams story. It focuses primarily on the relationship between father… Read More ›
Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s In Another Country
There is something unique about the way Ernest Hemingway begins a short story, and readers will find no better example of this than “In Another Country,” first published in 1927 as part of the collection Men without Women. It seems… Read More ›
Analysis of Sherwood Anderson’s I’m a Fool
The myth about Sherwood Anderson—that in the middle of a successful advertising career he repudiated the moneymaking ethics and the regimentation of business in order to realize himself as a writer—has become part of our literary tradition, an ironic reversal… Read More ›
Analysis of Tobias Wolff’s Hunters in the Snow
One of the most penetrating and riveting of the 12 stories in Tobias Wolff’s 1981 collection In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, “Hunters in the Snow” was selected as the title story of the British edition that appeared… Read More ›
Analysis of Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story
Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” is an often-anthologized metafictional short story that provides, among many surprises, an important literary representation of the Vietnam War and the trauma it inflicted upon individuals. The story is part commentary… Read More ›
Homosexuality in Literature
With the increasing impact of the gay rights movement and acceptance of gays in mainstream society, gay studies and gay literature are emerging as respected fields. Defining gay literature is sometimes difficult, given the frequent vague and subtle references to… Read More ›
Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants
The frequently anthologized Hills Like White Elephants first printed in transition magazine in 1927 is often read and taught as a perfect illustration of Ernest Hemingway’s minimalist, self-proclaimed “iceberg” style of writing: In much of Hemingway’s fiction what is said in… Read More ›
Analysis of Joy Williams’s Health
An anonymous Boston Globe reviewer once described Joy Williams as “Annie Dillard bumping into Cotton Mather.” She is also routinely compared with such contemporary writers as Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, as well as the film… Read More ›
Analysis of Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron
Kurt Vonnegut is celebrated more for his longer fiction than for his short stories. Nonetheless, Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron,” originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science in October 1961, and currently available in the author’s collection, Welcome to the… Read More ›
Analysis of D’Arcy McNickle’s Hard Riding
Most of D’Arcy McNickle’s short fiction was published posthumously in a 1992 collection titled “The Hawk Is Hungry” and Other Stories, yet McNickle is still seen as an important and influential person in American Indian literary studies. His most widely… Read More ›
Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Happy Endings
An innovative and oft-anthologized story that demonstrates the arbitrariness of any author’s choice of an ending, “Happy Endings” offers six different endings from which the reader may choose. “Happy Endings” was first published in the Canadian collection Murder in the… Read More ›
Analysis of Sherwood Anderson’s Hands
Sherwood Anderson’s story “Hands” might be called a portrait. Like a formal painted portrait, it not only depicts Wing Biddlebaum, the central figure, as he exists but also uses background props to reveal his past and define his circumstances. Wing’s… Read More ›
Analysis of Ring Lardner’s Haircut
Literary small-town life at its most positive is crafted in ways that celebrate community, collaboration, and the gentle accommodation of vulnerability and eccentricities. Ring Lardner’s “Haircut,” however, once referred to as “one of the cruelest pieces of American fiction” (Hardwick… Read More ›
Analysis of Henry James’s Greville Fane
Written in 1892, Henry James‘s short story “Greville Fane” depicts the troubled and tumultuous relationship between a popular novelist, Greville Fane, and her two ungrateful children, Lady Ethel Luard and Leolin. The short story begins with the narrator’s receiving news… Read More ›
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