Late Story Research Articles

New essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's neglected stories

F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories are the most critically undervalued and ignored segment of his fiction. Despite the fact that most of his short fiction has been published in various extant collections, critics nonetheless continue to focus primarily on his novels. Moreover, even when they turn their attention to Fitzgerald's stories, they tend to deal with the half dozen most frequently anthologized to the exclusion of the vast majority. This volume presents twenty-three previously unpublished essays on Fitzgerald's other stories. section contains close readings of individual stories and ranges chronologically over his entire career--from The Spire and the Gargoyle (published in 1917, when Fitzgerald was at Princeton) through such early efforts as Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1920) and Jackson's Arcady (1924) down to late stories such as An Alcoholic Case (1937) and The Lost Decade (1939). second section includes essays on Fitzgerald's three story groups--the Basil and Josephine stories, the Count of Darkness stories, and the Pat Hobby stories.By placing these stories within the context of Fitzgerald's total fictional achievement, this collection serves as a resource for a deepened understanding of the intensely autobiographical nature of Fitzgerald's work, offering insights into his methods of composition and his aims, both artistic and human.The roster of contributors includes long-time Fitzgerald critics such as John Kuehl, Scott Donaldson, and Ruth Prigozy, along with distinguished critics of modern American literature such as Robert Merrill, Alan Cheuse, and James Nagel, and younger scholars like Gerald Pike and Heidi Kunz Bullock. editor, Jackson R. Bryer, deliberately chose such a diverse group to ensure a variety of critical perspectives. resulting volume is not the last word on these neglected stories; rather, these are the first words on stories that will now begin to receive more attention in what will be a continuing discovery of the pleasures in the full range of F. Scott Fitzgerald's fiction.

Through a Glass Darkly: Visions of Integrated Community in Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood"

or some time now, critics have taken Flannery O'Connor's fiction to task for its failure to endorse the historical struggle for racial integration and equality. Basing their argument on readings of the late stories which respond directly to the civil rights movement, these critics contend that O'Connor embraces the movement's goals but not its timetable. By their account, O'Connor's stories cast heaven rather than earth as the site where

Achilles' Heel: The Death of Achilles in Ancient Myth

This study examines the death of Achilles in ancient myth, focusing on the hero's imperfect invulnerability. It is concluded that this concept is of late origin, perhaps of the Hellenistic period. Early evidence about Achilles' infancy does not suggest that he was made invulnerable, and early evidence concerning his death apparently indicates that Achilles was wounded more than once. The story of Achilles' heel as we know it is therefore late, though it is demonstrable that certain themes and motifs of earlier traditions about Achilles were preserved in later traditions. What caused the concept of Achilles' imperfect invulnerability to emerge, it is proposed, was the late story in which the hero is ambushed in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo. Certainly Achilles was wounded in the lower leg in early Greek myth. An explanation is needed if this does not reflect the story of his imperfect invulnerability, and the arguments of several scholars are surveyed. The theory that the "swift-footed" hero was first immobilized by a lower wound before being slain is ultimately favored, though it is suggested that invulnerable armor and poison may have played a role. A comparative approach to myth and ritual is employed, with attention given to evidence from various areas (e.g., Scythia, the Near East) and ages (Proto-Indo-European to modern) in an effort to illuminate stories about the infancy and death of Achilles. The study also assesses two alleged reflections in the Iliad of Achilles' death, the death of Patroclus in Book 16 and the wounding of Diomedes in Book 11. The evidence in ancient art and literature about the death of Achilles is often obscure, but this exploration of continuity and innovation in myth about Achilles should assist our understanding of it.

Unemployment, employment contracts, and compensating wage differentials: michigan in the 1890s

Surveys taken by the Michigan Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics in the 1890s reveal that unemployment was pervasive among unskilled workers. The incidence of unemployment was not associated with personal characteristics, but rather with the type of employment contract and job: those with high risk of layoff commanded a wage premium. Seasonality is an important part of this late nineteenth-century story, and the subsequent demise of seasonal activities may have had an important impact on the evolution of labor market institutions.

Beckett's Critical Complicity: Carnival, Contestation, and Tradition

Samuel Beckett's work harbors an inevitable complicity with traditional modes and values. His idealist and even nihilist inclinations, for example, are closely related to the abstracting and systematizing tendencies that have predominated in Western thinking. His drama and fiction, in reproducing these tendencies, also help to reinforce and legitimate them. Beckett's work can thus be said to encourage an attitude of stoic resignation or life-denying withdrawal.Sylvie Debevec Henning's study reveals an important countertendency. In examining Beckett's art and literary criticism, his novel "Murphy," plays "Krapp's Last Tape" and "Endgame," his only film venture, and the late story "The Lost Ones," she shows that through a variety of double-voiced techniques -- irony, parody, and satire -- Beckett also brings a powerful critical light to bear upon our culture's repeated attempts to reduce or eliminate the more problematic aspects of existence and even mocks our desire to do so. His disquieting and occasionally uproarious interweaving of contradictory perspectives -- somber and carnivalized, established and contestory -- suggests that suffering and anguish are fundamental to life, while it affirms their relation to laughter and creative vigor within a richer, if less settled, cultural context.Drawing upon the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and particularly Bakhtin, Henning argues that Beckett's profound critique of Western intellectual tradition does not necessarily entail the loss of all positive values and beliefs. On the contrary, his use of carnivalesque and dialogized modes signals a revitalizing capacity that has not been fully appreciated.

Beckett's critical complicity: carnival, contestation, and tradition

Samuel Beckett's work harbors an inevitable complicity with traditional modes and values. His idealist and even nihilist inclinations, for example, are closely related to the abstracting and systematizing tendencies that have predominated in Western thinking. His drama and fiction, in reproducing these tendencies, also help to reinforce and legitimate them. Beckett's work can thus be said to encourage an attitude of stoic resignation or life-denying withdrawal.Sylvie Debevec Henning's study reveals an important countertendency. In examining Beckett's art and literary criticism, his novel Murphy, plays Krapp's Last Tape and Endgame, his only film venture, and the late story The Lost Ones, she shows that through a variety of double-voiced techniques -- irony, parody, and satire -- Beckett also brings a powerful critical light to bear upon our culture's repeated attempts to reduce or eliminate the more problematic aspects of existence and even mocks our desire to do so. His disquieting and occasionally uproarious interweaving of contradictory perspectives -- somber and carnivalized, established and contestory -- suggests that suffering and anguish are fundamental to life, while it affirms their relation to laughter and creative vigor within a richer, if less settled, cultural context.Drawing upon the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and particularly Bakhtin, Henning argues that Beckett's profound critique of Western intellectual tradition does not necessarily entail the loss of all positive values and beliefs. On the contrary, his use of carnivalesque and dialogized modes signals a revitalizing capacity that has not been fully appreciated.

Le style ionien dans la vie politique archaïque

In order to work out a distinctive political history of archaic ionian city- states, the Milesian crises are worth considering. Late stories relating the violent circumstances attending the fall of Kingship find an echo in the conflicts which, in Homeric Ithaca, set the Pretenders up against Ulysses and his followers. The sequel of Milesian history, especially if compared to the history of Chios, offers evidence of a will to assert himself as a Greek city-state against its barbarians neighbours, but also of a remarkable inability to do without a power of monarchical type, to stabilize a wide civic basis and control the whole of its territory.

Rudyard Kipling on America

Kipling's ripest comments on the United States are to be found in the late (1926) short story, ‘The Prophet and the Country’. The tale begins with the breakdown of the narrator's car on the Great North Road late one summer night. A passing American offers shelter in his trailer, and a tow in the morning: which offers are accepted. The generous fellow-traveller is Mr Tarworth, a former realtor from Omaha, Nebraska, five years a widower. He drops a few hints about the Collective Outlook of Democracy, the Herd Impulse, and ‘the counterbalancing necessity for Individual Self-Expression’ and then launches artlessly into the story of his life. His own Primal Urge for Individual Self-Expression, we learn, came to him on his way home from his wife's funeral, when he had a Revelation qua Prohibition. Prohibition is the sin of Presumption, foisted on the American male by the American female. The sin will be duly punished, because to protect any race from the ‘ natural and God-given bacteria’ of civilization is to induce a condition of virginity which is terrifyingly vulnerable. ‘Immunise, or virg'nise, the Cit'zen of the United States to alcohol, an' you as surely redooce him to the mental status an' outlook of that Redskin. That is the Ne-mee-sis of Prohibition.’ Such had been Mr Tarworth's Revelation. The next question was, how to convey it to his fellow-countrymen. He decided to make a movie, even if ‘the Movies wasn't a business I'd ever been interested in, though a regular attendant’.