Week 1

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.

• Discuss the author's story, not your own story.

• Try to support your comments by referring to details from the text.

• Listen to and respond to others with respect.

Optional - Placing Jill McCorkle in Southern American Fiction

Jill McCorkle, who began publishing in the 1980s, fits into what is often called the Contemporary Wave of Southern American fiction (1980-present), though she has some interesting connections to earlier traditions, particularly the Southern Renaissance (1920-1950).

McCorkle's work shares certain qualities with writers of the Southern Renaissance, like Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, especially in her attention to the small moments of everyday life and her use of humor to illuminate deeper truths. However, she brings a distinctly contemporary perspective to her work.

Key characteristics that place McCorkle in the Southern literary tradition include:

• Her focus on small-town North Carolina life and the complex social dynamics within these communities.

• Her use of multiple perspectives and voices to tell layered stories.

• Her blend of humor with serious themes.

• Her exploration of family relationships and generational dynamics.

• Her attention to women's experiences in the South.

What makes her especially interesting in the Southern tradition is how she handles time. Unlike many Southern writers who deal heavily with the burden of history and the past (think Faulkner's famous quote "The past is never dead. It's not even past."), McCorkle tends to focus more on how the present moment is shaped by personal rather than historical pasts. She's less concerned with the grand sweep of Southern history and more interested in how individual memories and personal histories shape people's lives.

Her use of humor is also distinctive. While Southern literature has a rich tradition of humor (think Mark Twain and Flannery O'Connor), McCorkle's humor tends to be gentler and more empathetic than O'Connor's grotesque comedy or Twain's satire. She finds humor in human foibles while maintaining deep compassion for her characters. She has a particular talent for capturing what she calls "the serious joke" – the way humor and tragedy often coexist in life.

In terms of literary technique, she's particularly skilled at what is sometimes called "vertical writing" - exploring a single moment in great depth rather than moving horizontally through time. This approach appears prominently in her short stories, where she often examines how a single moment can contain multiple layers of meaning and memory.