100 DAYS PROJECT: #62
The Story
Steve’s entire story was like 33 words. Meanwhile, there was a discussion going on at Mary Ellen’s Facebook that has been an ongoing thing since we’ve met, I think, about readerly/writerly, authorly/readerly, and as Mary Ellen appears to be following my own dragmarks in accepting the concept of Barthes, I thought I might use Steve’s story as an example to be interpreted in a classroom discussion.
The linking attempts to cover certain points of the story that are certainly open to interpretation, though only Steve Ersinghaus as the author may know what prompted the story and what meaning he gave to it. And as he taught me, we shouldn’t care about that at all.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Yeah, the smug evil grin, I remember it well. Am I the spriny one, the wound-up one, or the middle-aged one? Course, I could be the strange little character in the front–but I think that’s you.
Nice touch, when you click successively on author-story links you go round in circles forever. Did you plan it that way?
Wait till Christmas.
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Stick a g in spriny for me, will you? Thanks.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:01 pm
You’re the springy (tx!) wound up one I think. Yeah, the strange little person sounds like me.
Did I plan the circles? But of course! You think I just fling these things together without any planning and research?
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Yea… that evil, smug grin… how many nights of British Literature and Creative Writing… I’m going back for Shakespeare, if he ever teaches that again.
Great story!
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:34 pm
No! Dibs on Shakespeare! But you can have ts eliot, the pompous bastard.
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Hey…we can share! I’ve dreamed about being in a Literature class with you.
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
And readers may have the cosmic ability to assume a work and tear it asunder to reassemble it as a work of their own choosing and reason; but as a writer, I don’t think I could find the capacity to let something so free in the world that I should “never care about it at all”. 🙁 sap
July 22nd, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Thanks, Neha. But ladies, I am not specifying any particular prof here, honest.
ME, your last sentence may be based on a misinterpretation of my own. I referred to the reader not needing to know (or care at all about) the author in reading of a story, not the author not caring about his own work. Though yes, he must let it go.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Ah, that softens it a little. And no, I’m sure I can speak for Neha when I say we don’t have anyone in particular in mind, either.