Carrying mother on my back
Just for a joke.
Three steps: then weeping—
She's so light.
--Ishikawa Takuboku
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Week 2
Class Ground Rules
Read all the assignments before class.
Keep yourself on mute unless called on.
Raise your hands electronically.
Focus your comments only on the question at hand rather than straying to other parts of the story.
Refrain from offering a review of the whole story or jumping to the end.
Try to support your comments by referring to details from the text.
Listen to and respond to others with respect.
READ (at least twice): Charles Baxter, "Fenstad's Mother" (published in The Atlantic Monthly, September 1988). PDF posted below.
A man tries to appreciate his aging mother.
Think About:
Who is Fenstad? How would you describe him?
Who is Fenstad's mother? How would you describe her?
How do their life outlooks differ?
Is there a difference between being nice and being good?
Click on the top right corner below to open the story.
Fenstad's Mother - Charles Baxter.pdfPurely Optional - Here is the jazz tune Fenstad's mother and York are listening to when Fenstad arrives.
Charles Baxter Biography
Charles Baxter Biography
Charles Baxter is a novelist best known for realistic fiction about midwestern characters. He is often called a writer’s writer. In an interview with The Atlantic, he said, “I feel as if I’m in a familiar locale when I’m writing short stories, since I often feel as if I know where everything is. I love the directness of the form…for me, stories begin when things start to go wrong.” His characters often seem ordinary until a chance encounter, a persistent nagging, or a tilt in their world order pushes them to make sudden, feverish decisions.
In discussing short fiction, Baxter said, “short stories don’t have the time or the space to establish characters in detail….Very short stories have to get something into motion quickly, which means that you don’t have time for elaborate portraiture, with the result that the situation is likely to be more powerful than the character who finds himself in that situation. And that set-up, in turn, means that the character will probably react impulsively instead of acting or deciding. It’s all built into the structure.” More...
Link to Week 2 class recording: https://brandeis.zoom.us/rec/play/IUQ1igWG2hKFXpXvNifxLH7pHAF0fZM-1wFK2VvzoaIyRM8xLtjn3OOaHNijcM0NRGMQoPoJwgY8Ieog.-0xFRDf7SYu93wgv
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