YourEnglishClassDotCom

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott, portrait by George Healy; in the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association collection, Concord, Massachusetts.

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel [[Little Women]], set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in [[Concord, Massachusetts]], and published in 1868. This novel is loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters.

Alcott’s early education included lessons from the naturalist [[Henry David Thoreau]]. She received the majority of her schooling from her father. She received some instruction also from writers and educators such as [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], and [[Margaret Fuller]], who were all family friends.

Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as an occasional teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Her first book was Flower Fables (1849), a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the [[Atlantic Monthly]]. When the [[American Civil War]] broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., for six weeks in 1862-1863. Her letters home – revised and published in the Commonwealth and collected as [[Hospital Sketches]] (1863, republished with additions in 1869) – garnered her first critical recognition for her observations and humor.

Alcott’s literary success arrived with the publication by the Roberts Brothers of the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, (1868) a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Part two, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives, (1869) followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages. Little Men (1871) detailed Jo’s life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women. [[Jo's Boys]] (1886) completed the “March Family Saga.”

 Sourced from Wikipedia

• Pegasos – Biography of Louisa May Alcott
• American Studies at the University of Virginia – Biography of Louisa May Alcott
  Domestic Goddesses
• The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library – “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott
• Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
• A Celebration of Women Writers – “An Old-Fashioned Girl” by Louisa M. Alcott
• Orchard House – Home of the Alcotts
• Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott

The Woman Behind “Little Women”

Sourced from PBS

How Much Land Does a Man Need – Audio

Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author of War and Peace and How Much Land Does a Man Need.

What follows is an audio recording of “How Much Land Does a Man Need.” The audio is provided by LibriVox and is in the public domain.

Here the link the the text of the story.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

How Much Land Does a Man Need

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Promotional DVD for the latest project from The Jazz Mandolin Project’s Jamie Masefield — a modern interpretation of the classic story “How Much Land Does A Man Need” by Leo Tolstoy.

How Much Land Does a Man Need – Summary

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

This guy’s Readers Digest version of Tolstoy’s classic story is well delivered.

What is Literature?

My students might be surprised to know that using English literature as a focus of instruction is a relatively new concept. In England and America prior to the 20th century, literature classes were mostly about studying the  Bible or reading Latin and Greek texts. Believe it or not, it was India, under the British empire, that was the first country to have English literature instruction.

Today, most students think that literature is old, stuffy poems and stories found in school literature textbooks. They may never consider the fact that literature can come from the most surprising places, and that even stoned-out headbangers are quite skilled at reciting long English Romantic poems and never missing a beat or a word. See YouTube video.

Over the weekend, I want my seniors to think about what literature is exactly. How do they define it? And how do they think our concept of literature is changing?

“The Wanderer”

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

The Anglo Saxon poem, The Wanderer, consists principally of two different speeches, the first (lines 1-5 and 8-57) uttered by the eardstapa (land-wanderer), the second (58-110) by the philosophical person described as snotter on mode (wise spirit). The poet supplies sage advice in the epilogue (112-115). Some see the poem as having only one voice, that of the eardstapa, who speaks of his experiences and the sufferings of others and thus earns the epithet of line 111, snotter on mode. This is a perfectly good way to read the poem. But I prefer to think that the eardstapa and the snotter on mode are two different voices because the characterization is much sharper if the poem is read that way, although neither approach to the poem alters the sequence of ideas and emotions presented.

What I love most about this poem, and what it has in common with Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, is its emphasis on alleviating personal sorrow by recognizing the inevitable ruin of earthly values and the great need to seek out a lasting satisfaction in another realm.

These themes are presented most artfully in the above Johnny Cash video, “The Wanderer,” with a little help from U2.

Dashiell Hammett

Mystery writer Dashiell Hammett was born on this day in 1894. The three film adaptations of his most famous story, The Maltese Falcon, became staples of the film noir genre. His romantic relationship with Lillian Hellman, a well-known playwright, inspired The Thin Man, a story featuring heroine Nora Charles. The film adaptation of this novel was so successful that it spawned multiple sequels. Hammett was the founding father of the “hard-boiled” mystery, a subgenre characterized by its gritty characters and depictions of events.

Places in “To Build a Fire”

Nine men and one woman standing on top of a mining dump, Sulphur Creek, Yukon Territory, ca. 1898

Two RCMP Officers posing in front of the RCMP Post at Sixty Mile.

Dyea Waterfront March 1898

John Updike’s A&P

Site of the famous short story by John Updike.

In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don’t see them until they’re over by the bread.

And so begins John Updike’s most famous short story, A&P. The entire text of Updike’s story can be found here.

My brother drives a taxi in Tampa and keeps a popular blog, and one of the things he writes about on occasion is John Updike’s A&P. I hope he doesn’t mind that I took the following from his blog:

Remember when every city had an A&P supermarket? I remember as a little kid riding in the cart while my mother would grind her own coffee — the A&P special 1844 blend. This was way before Starbucks and home coffee brewers. She used a peculator, which was about all there was. Fresh ground coffee was a big deal back then and I remember how great it smelled. I did not drink coffee; that was for grownups.

I picked up this man the other day at the airport and took him to his beautiful home on the beach. It turns out he was a writer for the New Yorker and he seemed interested that I had a blog. For some reason I told him that the only short story from school that I remember reading was John Updike’s A&P. I told him that Updike’s story reached me in an archetypal way.

A&P is a story about a young man named Sammy who works at the local grocery store. His job is sort of boring, but the people who shop there are even more boring. One day these three girls in bathing suits walk in to buy some snacks. Sammy notices them, but not in the primitive way that young men look at Girls. These women represent something more profound. Updike details the people and items that are purchased in the store including a record bin with Tony Martin Albums. When the girls leave, Sammy quits his job and runs outside to join the girls, but they are gone.

John Updike is telling us that people follow predetermined rules, a set path, and similar habits. The individual has no role in this society, and any attempt to escape these set customs will be dealt with. The nonconformist is the one that will change the World. There is very little individualism in society and we behave in ways that are merely a product of our environment.

Follow your own path. I always have.

What follows is a short film based on Updike’s coming-of-age story. Actor Sean Hayes does a passable job of portraying the young Sammy. Amy Smart plays an excellent Queenie. What I like about this film is that it captures the class differences between the grocery clerk and the country club girls.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Click on the arrow below and listen to a short lecture on A&P from a college professor:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

John Updike’s Early Stories

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

This is a fascinating interview with the late great John Updike from a few years ago when he’d just published his collection The Early Stories: 1953-1975. I keep chatting up Updike because we’re about to read one of his finest pieces, A&P, probably the most-anthologized short story of the past fifty years.