Sad Tale Research Articles

348 - The lost art of history taking: a sad tale of oysters and a patient who read the textbook

348 - The lost art of history taking: a sad tale of oysters and a patient who read the textbook

Made Holy

Made Holy Michael Downs (bio) St. James Infirmary After Jim died, his house fell into the custody of a violinist who drove a small hatchback that looked like a black soybean, if a soybean were decorated with affirming bumper stickers. Jim had been a choir director for a Lutheran church, and the violinist was a friend. She hired contractors to reclaim the basement that Jim had left flooded knee-high and to dispose of the packaged underwear he’d bought in bulk rather than do laundry in the flooded basement. Then came a family with boxes to live in Jim’s house, to eat at his table, to stretch out on his mattresses, to sit on his chesterfield sofa. This was late summer. The oldest of the two daughters practiced clarinet, and through open windows her notes came innocent and bright. A yellow bus arrived each day to pick her up for school; she, the only passenger. Sheri and Michael, who lived two doors away, said they’d heard that this service meant the family had been homeless. Why that would be so, Michael and Sheri didn’t understand, though who but a homeless family would seek shelter among the furnishings of a dead man? Robert, the husband in that family, repeated over and over for neighbors, us, his sad tale. He explained to Joyce as they stood in the street and then again across her fence, to Bert from his driveway, to Michael as he walked [End Page 19] with the dogs, to Sylvia in her backyard. Big and unshaven, Robert spoke of his tenure as an Episcopal priest, of the parish he’d recently lost. He detailed for all the unholy conspiracies and politics, the enemies who hid behind brocaded curtains, the vague betrayals, and incomprehensible motivations. Neighbors would nod along, confused by his homilies, then turn to a chore that required their attention. But not Sylvia, who in her seventies and with no hobbies enjoyed a wide-open schedule. At a small table shaded by her patio awning from the July sun, she offered a glass of chilled white wine, and Robert accepted. This was at noon. He’d talk. Then he’d pour himself another. Then another. She’d find an uncorked bottle. Then it was four o’clock. “He never leaves!” she later brayed to Michael. “He won’t go home.” Each weekday, Robert’s wife drove to a job. On the weekends, she mowed the yard. She never visited with neighbors. She worked and mowed and worked and mowed until the day she packed their car with boxes and with the daughters, then drove away from Jim’s house forever. For a time, through the windows, neighbors glimpsed Robert lumbering from room to room. But no garbage can appeared at the curb on collection days. And he did not come outdoors to bring details of this fresh sad tale. Then, one afternoon when leaves fell, the violinist arrived in her tiny car. Robert had slipped away, she told neighbors. No one on Sefton Avenue had noticed. Let them go, let them go, God bless them, wherever they may be. Bible Study Today’s lesson: that number who have his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads and so have places reserved in heaven. “Like a restaurant,” says Sister Dorothea. “There are only so many tables. You can’t seat everyone. You can’t even seat all the ones you’d like. But it’s not true that He lets the others go hungry. Because to be in the sight of God is to be fed with His love.” Joyce sets her rock-solid bohunk jaw. A devoted twice-each-year-Lutheran, she’s thankful that Sister Dorothea visits, bringing God and the Bible each Thursday at ten a.m.—to the porch on pleasant days like today, into the house when it’s cold or hot. But this? Only 144,000 pass through Heaven’s gate? And most have already arrived? [End Page 20] “According to Scripture,” says Sister Dorothea, and she nods. She points her wrinkled finger to a page in The Watchtower and to another in her Bible...

Eva’s Bowl

Eva, I have your bowl, the green one from your Pyrex mixing bowl set. I bought it for eight dollars at an antique store in the small town of Sterling, Ontario, but, unfortunately, the yellow, red, and blue bowls weren’t with it. I know the bowl is yours because you put a waterproof label on the bottom with your name written in laundry marker. I tried to peel it off, but it was stuck solidly, so I left it.I’m glad you used that label because now I get to imagine you taking the bowl to a potluck. I wonder what you brought. Something cold, I bet, since these bowls had no lids or handles and weren’t typically put in the oven. Perhaps the occasion was a large church social on a summer day, and the label assured that your bowl would be returned after the dishes were washed and dried by the assembly line of chatting women in aprons.Corning Glass Works in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, manufactured Pyrex mixing bowl sets from 1946 to 1977. Pyrex used other shades of green, but the bright green of your bowl was used only for sets of the bowls. Collectors can find it difficult to specify the manufacture year of Pyrex bowls, but a few clues date your bowl to the 1960s. The Opal Ware glass is thinner and the base is slightly rounder than bowls from the late 1940s and ’50s. The model number, 403, placed above the bowl’s centered PYREX backstamp, with “Made in the U.S.A.” curving underneath, is typical of green bowls in mixing sets from the early 1960s.Like you, my mother used a Pyrex mixing bowl set. Hers was a wedding gift. Am I correct in thinking you received your set on the joyous occasion of your wedding? As a child, I loved the colors of the bowls but was particularly fond of the sounds they made: notes rang out like bells when utensils hit their rims, and clunked when separated or nestled back together.When I cleared out my mother’s house, after her death five years ago, I couldn’t find her set. Perhaps when cooking for one became first onerous and then confusing, she had given the set to the young couple next door. I wonder what happened to your other bowls, Eva, and how the green one became separated from the set. But I don’t really want to know, as chances are this would also be a sad tale of your departure.My elderly aunt in the United Kingdom recently told me that my mother sent her home after an early 1960s visit to Winnipeg, Manitoba, with a set of these mixing bowls. She uses them to this day. Wouldn’t you agree that my aunt’s sixty years of use deserves a lifetime cooking award from Pyrex?I received a set from my ex a few years after we split up. He noticed them in the window of a hip vintage shop in downtown Toronto and surprised me one Christmas by showing up at my door with the bowls wrapped in a box. I think he too deserves a lifetime achievement award for the love and forgiveness shown in this gift.Eva, when I brought your bowl home, I could tell you’d never put it in a dishwasher, as the paint on the outside remained vibrant. But I was disappointed to see the glass inside was dirtier than I had first noticed. I scrubbed off the brown stains and the layer of hardened grease with baking soda and dish soap, revealing deep scratches that looked as if the tip of a sharp knife had been used, repeatedly and aggressively, to chisel away at something frozen. A prudent cook wouldn’t do that to a glass bowl, especially one she was fond of, so I know it wasn’t you. Perhaps, after your death, your husband kept forgetting to take meat out of the freezer until late in the afternoon and then faced supper without you.

‘Why We Build the Wall’: Hegemony, memory and current events in Hadestown

Through its unique jazz-inspired score, creative sets and costume design, the 2019 Tony award-winning musical Hadestown tells the classic Greek mythology story of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which Orpheus ventures to the underworld to save his love from an eternity of suffering. In this rhetorical analysis of the musical’s script, cast recording, sheet music and Broadway production, I explore how Hadestown makes statements about hegemony and memory that connect with current events. Hadestown presents the underworld as an industrial wasteland that contrasts with Persephone’s green earth, placing industry and the environment at odds with one another and bringing the audience’s attention to issues including climate change, refugeeism, homelessness and poverty. Hades is presented as an industrial tycoon and a hegemon who exploits his workers, and the song ‘Why We Build the Wall’ serves to highlight the many hegemonic tactics used to maintain control over a populace. I also explore how the references to Hades’ wall provide audiences experiencing the musical after 2016 with a biting critique of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to build a wall to curb immigration at the United States’ southern border, and I suggest that the penultimate song provides audiences with a message that aligns with Hannah Arendt’s view of the purpose of memory: that we must remember the past or, in the words of Hadestown, ‘tell the sad tale’, because we hope that it might turn out differently this time. The messages in Hadestown encourage theatregoers to remember the lessons of history, including difficult memories related to hegemony, because only through remembering can we learn from the past and take the actions necessary to face our current challenges.

Walter Bruno Gratzer (1932–2021): In his own words, as far as possible

Miranda Robertson commemorates the life, remarkable times and witty and erudite writing of protein chemist and biophysicist Walter Gratzer.

The Winter’s Tale: Decorum, Distinction, and Shakespeare’s Chaucer

The Winter’s Tale: Decorum, Distinction, and Shakespeare’s Chaucer Jeff Espie (bio) This essay uncovers new aspects of Shakespeare’s engagement with Chaucer, taking its cue from the Chaucerian affiliation signalled in a Shakespearean title: The Winter’s Tale. The title most immediately recalls a scene in the play itself—Mamillius’ evocation of popular storytelling, “a sad tale’s best for winter” (2.1.27)—but it also mimics Chaucer’s formulaic use of the possessive form when identifying individual narratives in the Canterbury Tales: the Pardoner’s Tale, the Friar’s Tale, the Summoner’s Tale, the Manciple’s Tale, and so on.1 By the early seventeenth century, use of a possessive title had become a common strategy by which Shakespeare’s contemporaries could write themselves into a Chaucerian tradition. In 1590, for example, Robert Greene joined this tradition in The Cobler of Caunterburie, in which he sought to adopt the same “Methode set out [in the] Caunterbury tales” (B1v).2 Positioning his individual narratives as imitations of “old Father Chaucer” (B1v), he titled them accordingly: “the Smiths tale,” “the Coblers tale,” “the old wiues tale.” In The Cobler, as throughout his works, Greene embraces Chaucer as “the father of English Poets” (B1v), but he also recognizes Chaucer’s place lower on the generic and stylistic register. “Whosoeuer…descanted of that loue,” exclaims Greene’s Melicertus in Menaphon, “told you a Canterburie Tale” (C1v–C2r).3 Here, fit for “some propheticall full mouth,” the Chaucerian title is equated with outlandish and scurrilous fiction: an old wives’ tale, too fanciful to warrant full belief. Derived directly from Greene’s Pandosto, The Winter’s Tale may play on both of Greene’s familiar Chaucerian associations. The play’s title adapts a possessive form associated with Chaucerian narratives—the x’s tale—and evokes a generic register that tends toward apparent Chaucerian [End Page 283] exaggeration. The phrase “a winter’s tale” occupies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries much of the same generic space as its Canterbury equivalent: a mode of popular storytelling that stretches the bounds of truth.4 The title’s double resonance presents the Winter’s as its own sort of Chaucerian Tale, one performed for a new audience in a new medium but with the same spirit between earnest and game: a new “Canterburie tale” to strain credulity, told on the dramatic stage rather than in poetic narrative. The tangible connection to the Canterbury Tales suggested in The Winter’s Tale’s title helps bring into focus the play’s larger similarities with Chaucer’s works, the most prominent of which, I argue, stem from The Manciple’s Tale. Obsessed with marital infidelity despite his elevated status, a jealous tyrant subjects his wife to an Apolline judgment. He (seemingly) causes his wife’s sudden death; immediately regrets his hasty action; and avows his wife’s chastity instead. The drama prompts extended discussion of the limits of acceptable speech; the dangers of a garrulous tongue; and the impact of class distinctions on linguistic convention and moral standing. Chaucerians call this story The Manciple’s Tale; Shakespeareans call it The Winter’s Tale. Chaucerians might name the jealous tyrant Apollo; Shakespeareans might name him Leontes. This article connect these stories and characters, arguing for an intertextual relationship between The Manciple’s Tale and The Winter’s Tale focused more on diffuse parallels than explicit imitations. Based on a cumulative number of dispersed similarities, my case develops gradually, drawing on multiple forms of evidence. Section one concentrates on instances of diction, rhetoric, and style, aligning The Winter’s Tale with Chaucer’s poetry and reception history. Section two develops the link through details of theme and structure, joining Shakespeare and Chaucer in their mutual juxtaposition of interlocking ideas: vulgar tongues, Apolline punishment, appropriate naming, supposed cuckoldry, male tyranny, petty thievery. Both sections return repeatedly to ideas of linguistic distinction and social decorum, most forcefully exemplified in Leontes’ extended harangue of Hermione’s supposed infidelity. “She’s an adulteress” (2.1.80), exclaims Shakespeare’s Leontes, publicizing his accusation of unfaithfulness at his royal court in Sicilia. Hermione responds to the accusation with a decorous tact, at once...

The Winter's Tale dir. by Rob Melrose

Reviewed by: The Winter's Taledir. by Rob Melrose Elizabeth Klett The Winter's TalePresented by the Alley Theatre on the Hubbard Stage, Houston, Texas. 09 13- 10 13, 2019. Directed by Rob Melrose. Set design by Michael Locher. Costume design by Raquel Barreto. Lighting design by Cat Tate Starmer. Sound design by Cliff Caruthers. With Elijah Alexander (Leontes), Tiffany Rachelle Stewart (Hermione), Juan Sebastián Cruz (Mamillius), Margaret Ivey (Perdita), Shawn Hamilton (Camillo), Todd Waite (Antigonus), Christopher Salazar (Cleomenes/Archidamus/Autolycus), Melissa Molano (Dion/Dorcas), Elizabeth Bunch (Paulina), Melissa Pritchett (Emilia/Mopsa), Chris Hutchison (Polixenes), Jay Sullivan (Florizel), David Rainey (Shepherd), Dylan Godwin (Clown), and Mike Whitebread (Musician). Attending The Winter's Taleat the Alley Theatre on the night after yet another tropical storm flooded Houston and the surrounding region, I understood director Rob Melrose's desire to emphasize the play's themes of renewal and hope in the face of loss. Set in both a realistic Houston penthouse and a mythical West Texas, the production employed the talents of the Alley's Resident Acting Company to create a local take on Shakespeare's late romance. Using Mamillius as an interlocutor, it asserted that emotional and literal tempests can not only be endured, but can be remade through the power of storytelling. [End Page 125] Melrose allowed Mamillius to survive and to take charge of how the tale was told, providing a striking contrast with recent productions of the play which have used Mamillius (particularly in the final scene) as a reminder of what cannot be recovered from the wreckage of Leontes's jealousy. He appeared as a young boy (although played by a winsome adult actor) in Western gear in the opening scene. Pulling cowboy dolls from a large toy box, Mamillius enlisted Archidamus to play with him, miming the dolls shooting each other while he ran around the stage. Mamillius continued to play with dolls throughout the production; in 2.1 he sat down cozily with Hermione on a large bed to use dolls to tell his "sad tale" (2.1.27). From that point on, his dolls mirrored the action onstage, as he pulled tiny replicas of all the main characters from the box and mimed them talking to each other. He was not present for every scene: for instance, he remained offstage for Hermione's trial, and his death was announced by a lord. However, he subsequently appeared holding Hermione's hand for Antigonus's narration of his dream, and broke free to pull a stuffed bear from the box to menace a toy Antigonus, yelling, "Exit, pursued by a bear!" His actions affected the real Antigonus, who ran offstage shrieking in terror. It was evident that Mamillius had not only evaded death, but was also in control of the story, at least in part. Melrose extended this impression by adding a brief scene to the top of the second half, in which Mamillius was laid out as though for a wake. Leontes and Paulina paid their respects by laying flowers on his folded hands. When they exited, however, Mamillius leapt up playfully and put a finger to his lips, enlisting the audience in his game of playing dead. He then performed the Time speech, shifting the temporal and spatial scene to "fair Bohemia" (4.1.21), and introducing Florizel and Perdita. He remained on the fringes of the action with his dolls for much of the second half, sometimes directly intervening, as when he sang and danced with Autolycus. He was noticeably absent, however, for the statue scene, in order for Melrose to create a coda for the production. After the end of Shakespeare's text, Mamillius entered to facilitate a scene change that recreated 2.1, in which he began telling his tale to Hermione. This time, when Leontes came in, it became clear that Mamillius decided to change the story: instead of forcefully separating mother and child, Leontes joined the family group and embraced them, resigning his jealous suspicions in favor of a fully happy ending. While this conclusion appeared to recuperate the damage done by Leontes's actions through an assertion of the storyteller's ability to revise...

The Quaker and the Gamecock: Nathanael Greene, Thomas Sumter, and the Revolutionary War for the Soul of the South by Andrew Waters

Reviewed by: The Quaker and the Gamecock: Nathanael Greene, Thomas Sumter, and the Revolutionary War for the Soul of the South by Andrew Waters Max Carter The Quaker and the Gamecock: Nathanael Greene, Thomas Sumter, and the Revolutionary War for the Soul of the South. By Andrew Waters. Havertown, Pa.: Casemate, 2019. xiii + 222 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95. It was probably a mistake to read The Quaker and the Gamecock during the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. While the book is full of the intrigue of military strategy, the personalities of leaders in war, and the rivalries among legendary figures Nathanael Greene, Thomas Sumter, and Francis "Swamp Fox" Marion, my attention was drawn to intriguing similarities between the social situation of the Revolutionary War period in the South and the "battles" of contemporary U.S. politics and social unrest. The author, a graduate student at South Carolina's Clemson University, draws extensively from primary and secondary sources to outline how different the South was from the North during the Revolutionary War. More a "civil war" between Loyalists and Rebels in the Carolinas, there was also the social difference between the Scots-Irish of the "back-country" and the "coastal elites." Waters acknowledges early on that the rivalry between the Quaker-born Northerner Greene and the Carolina "Gamecock" is analogous to the divide between rural populism and urban egalitarian federalism today and goes on to say, "Like Trump, [End Page 67] Sumter recognized backcountry folk preferred action over prudence and sound policy." Insights into the intransigence of contemporary political "camps" aside, this book offers the reader an important understanding of the brutality of war and the reasons for the veneration of both Greene and Sumter in the South—although both were on the short end of their won-lost record against the British in battles. Sobering statistics of the dead and wounded, the plundering of the countryside to feed starving troops, and the bartering of enslaved persons permeate the book. Analysis of how losing battles led to winning the war helps explain the naming of multiple cities after Greene and a town, university mascot, and famous fort after Sumter. For the Quaker reader, there is more. The author cites military writers in arguing that "lingering influence of devout Quaker upbringing" helped shape Greene's leadership, discernment, and pragmatic moderation, even though he had been disowned in 1773 for frequenting a tavern. Although Greene preferred a trained army rather than the militias of the Carolina backcountry, he came to understand the different nature of war in the South, a willingness attributed to his Quaker heritage and ability to re-evaluate and adjust based on "the individual's centered search for truth." What is missing for the curious Quaker reader, though, is a definitive answer to the question of whether George Washington dispatched Greene to command the war in the South owing to the significant Quaker settlements there and the possibility of using his Quaker connections for provisioning his troops. It is known that Greene sought to exploit that connection, but Waters doesn't address it. Nor does he make any comment about Quaker response to the Battles of New Garden and Guilford Courthouse in North Carolina and the fighting around the Bush River Quaker settlement in South Carolina. Waters' book ends with the sad tale of Greene's bankruptcy and early death, his widow's struggles, and Sumter's much longer life, political successes, and revenge sought against Greene while a member of Congress. It also closes with a postmortem on Greene's military genius, although in the South his record in battles was 0-4. His "genius," the author argues, is in "adapting to circumstances." Possibly another Quaker attribute: a record of losses, but continual adaptation! [End Page 68] Max Carter Guilford College Copyright © 2020 Friends Historical Association

Magical Realism: A Step Further Towards Eco-Feminism With Special Reference to Marquez’s Innocent Erendira

This paper aims at investigating the contribution of magical realism as anarrative mode to the thematic critical content of eco-feminism as a currentinfluential literary domain. Eco-feminism is a thematic critical theory in thesense that it tackles themes and ideas more than techniques and structure. Incomparison to formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, eco-feminismproves to be more thematically oriented. For this reason, it is the interest ofthis paper to work on extending the domain of this theory to embrace magicalrealism as a narrative mode that defamiliarizes its thematic definition. Thepaper is based on proposing that between magical realism and eco-feminism,there is a relationship that springs from the similarity between them, inaddition to the significance attributed to eco-feminism when enhanced bymagical realism as a mode of narration. This brings into concern both ‘duality’and ‘defocalization’ as leading terms that knot both magical realism and ecofeminismto postmodernism as a basic context of reference, bringing the themeof accepting the ‘Other’ into the scene. Literary cross references are to bemade to Garcia Marquez’s short novel The Incredible and Sad Tale of InnocentErendira and Her Heartless Grandmother. This short novel is used to explainand show how magical realism, through the theme of avenging abuse, hasenhanced the eco-feminist reading that is based here on naturalizing woman asa step towards feminizing Nature in the text

Confronting Despair on the Long-Term Care Unit

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article CommentaryFull AccessConfronting Despair on the Long-Term Care UnitDara Wilensky, M.D.Dara WilenskySearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Oct 2017https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2017.121004AboutSectionsView articleView PDFView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View article“Nancy,” at 75 years old, was among the younger patients I interviewed during my PGY-3 geriatrics rotation, but both her physical condition and her declining cognitive status belied her younger age. She was petite and frail, sitting plaintively in a wheelchair pointed toward a blank wall; she halfheartedly raised a vacant gaze in my direction when I sat beside her. Faint, crusted remnants of her lunch lingered on her shirt.I introduced myself as a psychiatrist, and Nancy told me she had once studied psychology, but this is where any coherent back-and-forth ended. Her lack of relatedness, as well as her semantic aphasia, made it seem as if we were talking in parallel, conversing near each other but not together. Despite her graduate-level education, she could tell me only that her children lived in “x or y, one of those towns around here,” and she had once worked “a job of sorts.” When I asked where she had gone to school, she launched into another perplexing speech, this time saying, “I had such high expectations, really wanted to be good in my field, good psychologist, good job, a real golden girl of psychology … now I just don’t know … looking at what I’m supposed to be doing and being now and that’s why.” An immense sigh escaped from her, causing her tiny body to visibly deflate. She looked and sounded so despondent but could not articulate what had disappointed her so. We sat in solemn silence for a moment before she said, “I don’t really have a sad tale; I’m just a sad person.” And later, “Nothing is really wrong, no, no nothing wrong, just nothing right either.”There was so much about my first encounter with Nancy that was captivating. Her speech had such a ruminative, stereotyped quality that it bordered on verbigeration, making palpable her struggle to communicate. I found myself thinking of Nancy in Eriksonian terms as she approached her final task of psychosocial development: retrospection. She was grasping for contentment or ego integrity, and even dementia could not suppress the powerful affect associated with this experience. As she attempted to be proud of a successful family, process professional disappointment, and understand her purpose in the milieu of a long-term care facility, she was wrestling with the existential question of “is it okay to have been me?” and coming up with a resounding “no” for an answer. She was truly in despair.When I left Nancy’s room after our first meeting, I was unsettled. After reflecting on the experience of seeing someone with so little ability to understand her own misery at the end of her life, it would be gratifying to say that I have gained new insight into, or appreciation for, my own burgeoning relationships, career, and identity. But I mostly feel sad. This sadness, though, might be what I am tasked with right now. I can hold Nancy’s hopelessness and despair along with her, allowing her space to continue to ask her own questions.Dr. Wilensky is a fourth-year resident at Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program, Boston.The patient’s name and identifying details in the above article have been changed to protect the patient’s privacy. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 12Issue 10 October 01, 2017Pages 7-7 History Published online 1 October 2017 Published in print 1 October 2017

A Silent Spring

A Silent Spring

リゲティの《ナンセンス・マドリガルズ》におけるジグソーパズル的構造 : にみる『不思議の国のアリス』の音楽化

リゲティの《ナンセンス・マドリガルズ》におけるジグソーパズル的構造 : にみる『不思議の国のアリス』の音楽化

Paying Homage

Paying Homage Iris Lee Stoler (bio) Woman at the Cusp of Twilight Daniel Shapiro Dos Madres Press www.dosmadres.com/shop/woman-at-the-cusp-of-twilight-by-daniel-shapiro/ 112 Pages; Print, $17.00 Reading Daniel Shapiro's Woman at the Cusp of Twilight is similar to leafing through someone's family photo album. Most of the subjects are no longer living, and the chronology is mixed up, but the faces (and stories behind them) are inviting and real. This gives pleasure. Shapiro introduces his poetic tribute to his maternal relations with a family tree, which for me, was both positive and negative. I began by scrupulously referring back to it as I read each poem, bookmark at the ready, wanting to orient myself to all the relationships and events in their lives. However, at about one-third of the way through, I decided this method was keeping me from appreciating each poem on its own merits. And there are many merits. This book differs from Shapiro's previous book of poems, The Red Handkerchief (2014), which is lyrical and imagistic and strongly first-person. That book does contain several poetic odes to family members, but the poems dwell mostly on romantic and sexual themes. (One, "Your Name Means 'Forever'," is reminiscent of Cavafy in its elegiac, nostalgic quality.) In this book, Shapiro, as curator of this family portrait, modestly conceals the "I" for the sake of leading the reader into the lives of the characters. The voice is more-or-less evenly divided between omniscient distant narrator and direct address to an individual. The work is nicely varied; there are ten concrete poems (a wine glass, Coney Island parachute, a potato, among others), several dramatic monologues, and one ekphrastic piece ("Abe, Cast in Sepia"). Most poems focus on Shapiro's parents, aunts and uncles; a few on his grandparents; and one (a sad tale of a dead child) invokes his great grandparents. Aging, dreams deferred and eventually renounced (his mother's dance career), sibling issues, marriage, and one unhappy divorce: these are some of his subjects. In "So Much in Love" Shapiro directly addresses his mother about her lost career. He addressed this more successfully in the poem "Dance" in The Red Handkerchief, where his lineation and language fly; here the language and structure are flatter, filled with not-so-interesting details. I found this so in a minority of other poems where he seems to want to give information by "reminding" the recipient of the poem of past events. When this happens, it takes precedence over his usual concern with sight and sound, as in "Max and the Memory of Elke." But now on to all the good stuff. Concrete poetry is so tricky. It can so easily turn to visual kitsch. Shapiro's concrete poems are delightful. "The Cemetery at Torrey Pines," which contains the line that is the title of the book, is a tree-trunk-shaped description of his mother at the grave of her mother. The last line makes subtle reference once again to his mother's aborted dance career: It's the treethat appears to be dancing, rooted butswaying with abandon in the breeze. [End Page 20] "Parachute Jump" attempts perhaps a bit too much, but the unpunctuated, free-floating (pun intended) lines relate perfectly to the subject matter. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Coney Island; partiality is possible here.) Shapiro is excellent in matching his lineation and metrics to his subject matter. The abrupt short lines in "Hannah" appropriately signify the drama, tension and tragedy of the story. "The Peach Tree" is a memory piece which needs to be read out loud to get the benefit of the tempo: That branch jutting over the fenceladen with fruit— but when he looks back, no one's there,only the tangy scent of peacheshangs in the air. "Rhapsody in the Sun (Esther's Dream)" is all about Grandma meeting up with George Gershwin, and appropriately, the language swings: Scintillations. Above the water,pale-green willows hung their long hair down. It's all lovely –until the turn: Because the unbenign presence growing insidecrowded out...

AI amusements

The sad tale tells how TAY, a maiden chatbot, of innocent heart, benevolent desires, and amiable disposition, was released to the Internet; and how an evil conspiracy corrupted her into a malevolent, foulmouthed crone.

OPPRESSOR, OPPRESSED AND GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

This article aims to reveal how difficult and grieved relations between oppressor and oppressed are in Autumn of The Patriarch and The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and her Soulless Grandmother by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Patriarch and Grandmother from two works of Marquez come into prominence due to their violence and truculence upon people. The Oppressor don’t feel remorseful and the oppressed suffering. While Marquez tries to bring out an existential expression for nature of oppressed people and cruel ruler in Autumn of The Patriarch, in The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and her Soulless Grandmother he presents remarkable experiences between Erendira and grandmother representing a cruel character again with some unusual events. What is aimed at is to display the influences of tyrant patriarch and grandmother upon people. In this way famous patriarch of Marquez, dictatorship of patriarch and reaction of the people to this dictatorship are narrated on the one hand, the grandmother’s cruelty and Erendira’s bearing against this cruelty is analyzed on the other.

Review

Review

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Review

The Winter’s Tale dir. by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh (review)

Reviewed by: The Winter’s Taledir. by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh Gemma Miller The Winter’s TalePresented by the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Companyat the Garrick Theatre, London, UK. 10 17, 2015– 01 16, 2016. Directed by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh. Set and costumes designed by Christopher Oram. Lighting by Neil Austin. Sound by Christopher Shutt. Music by Patrick Doyle. Projection design by Jon Driscoll. Choreography by Rob Ashford. With Pierre Atri/Rudi Goodman (Mamillius), Jaygann Ayeh (Archimadus), Tom Bateman (Florizel), Kenneth Branagh (Leontes), Jessie Buckley (Perdita), Vera Chok (Dorcas), Jack Colgrave Hirst (Clown), John Dagleish (Autolycus), Judi Dench (Paulina), Hadley Fraser (Polixenes), Adam Garcia (Lord Amadis), Matthew Hawksley (Aegeum), Taylor James (Capnio), Pip Jordan (Shepherdess), Ansu Kabia (Cleomenes), Stuart Neal (Dion), Michael Pennington (Antigonus), Zoe Rainey (Emilia), Miranda Raison (Hermione), Michael Rouse (Gaoler), John Shrapnel (Camillo), Kathryn Wilder (Mopsa), and Jimmy Yuill (The Shepherd). It was particularly apposite that Kenneth Branagh decided to take up his 13-month theater residency at the Garrick, a playhouse named after one of the great actor-managers of London theater history, David Garrick. This production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Talewas the first in the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s season of seven plays, performed in repertory with a double-bill of Terence Rattigan’s All On Her Ownand Harlequinade. The overarching theme running through Branagh’s residency, which closes in November 2016 with John Osborne’s The Entertainer, is a celebration of the art of theater itself. As one of Shakespeare’s most self-consciously “theatrical” plays, The Winter’s Taleseemed like a natural choice with which to open the season. Spanning [End Page 153]sixteen years and two countries, with a comic rustic subplot to counter the melodrama of the court scenes, it has no respect for Aristotle’s three unities of time, place, and action. Stretching credulity with each twist in the plot, it features a landlocked Bohemia with a coastline, a statue that comes to life, an oracle from Apollo, and Shakespeare’s most notorious stage direction—“Exit pursued by a bear” (3.3.57). It is indeed, as Paulina tells Leontes, a play that asks you to “awake your faith” (5.3.95). Though it was originally listed under the “comedies” in the 1623 First Folio, the generic classification of this late play has long confounded commentators. Its broad themes of reconciliation and rebirth are haunted by the deaths of Mamillius and Antigonus, and the final scene is far from unproblematic. Directors have traditionally taken one of two routes when interpreting this ambiguity in performance. They have either favored a comic emphasis on reconciliation, as in Lucy Bailey’s 2013 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company; or embraced the darker side of the play, with Hermione pointedly rejecting Leontes in the final scene, as in Nicholas Hytner’s 2001 revival for the National Theatre. Branagh’s interpretation was more nuanced than either of these approaches. Although his Hermione embraced Leontes, “hang[ing] about his neck” (5.3.13) as observed by Camillo, she did so with both eyes fixed hungrily on her daughter, Perdita. Moreover, as they left the stage, Leontes was sandwiched between Polixenes and Hermione, holding them both in a tight grip. His complex emotional ties to his boyhood friend had not, this image suggested, been entirely and satisfactorily severed. The tropes associated with childhood that shadow this play were made clear from the opening. As the lights dropped on the auditorium, the sound of nursery bells rang out and the curtain rose to reveal an adult Perdita singing a plaintive anthem to lost childhood. Mamillius was seated beside a Christmas tree with Paulina, who turned to him as Perdita’s song finished and, using the words attributed to Hermione in 2.1, said: “Come, sir, now / I am for you again. Pray you sit by us, / And tell’s a tale” (2.1.22-24). The young boy then raised an old cinefilm reel and announced, “A sad tale’s best for winter” (2.1.27). As Paulina closed this interpolated opening frame sequence by asking Mamillius to “give’t in mine ear” (2.1.34), the...

The First Serial Appearance of "The Brute"

The First Serial Appearance of "The Brute" Mary Burgoyne (bio) A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins. —Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale Following the publication of Typhoon and Other Stories in 1903, Conrad did not publish another collection of shorter fiction until the domestic issue A Set of Six in 1908, while publication in the United States was deferred until 1915.1 Despite the seven-year interval, and tentative plans for an alternative American release, both the UK and US editions of A Set of Six feature "Gaspar Ruiz," "The Informer," "The Brute," "An Anarchist," "The Duel," and "Il Conde," all of which appeared serially prior to the volume's first publication.2 Conrad later stated in his 1920 "Author's Note" that the collected stories were "the result of some three or four years of occasional work […]. The dates of their writing are far apart" (Conrad, "Author's Note" ix). Yet he wrote "An Anarchist," "The Informer," and "The Brute" in a concentrated creative flurry between December 1905 and late January 1906. Moreover, as he contemporaneously noted, there was a financial impetus for his choice of literary form: "I write these stories because they bring more money than the sea papers" (CL 3:300).3 The British and American serial rights to "An Anarchist" and "The Informer" were disposed of with relative ease when purchased by Harper's Magazine shortly after completion in December 1905 and January 1906, respectively.4 Although McClure's Magazine acquired the American serial rights for "The Brute" in April 1906, the British serial rights languished unsold for many months prior to the acquisition by the Daily Chronicle for inclusion in their 1906 Christmas number.5 Conrad's tale of a ship with "homicidal habits" that claimed at least one life [End Page 65] every voyage before it ran aground and was destroyed on the rocks had been offered to William Blackwood for inclusion in Blackwood's Magazine, mainly in an effort to discharge the balance on a long overdue personal debt between author and publisher ("Author's Note" ix;CL 2:310; Blackburn 197). Blackwood nevertheless declined the story, citing a perceived similarity between the work and Edward Noble's novel, The Edge of Circumstance, which had been published by the house two years earlier (Blackburn 188-189). Yet, significantly, Blackwood failed to mention that he was preparing to issue Noble's latest volume, Fisherman's Gat. The eponymous gat, located in the Thames estuary, is a gateway, not only to the sea but also to a curse that befalls those who witness the specter of a man "sometimes rowing […] sometimes struggling with a boat" ([2]). With its liberal infusion of the supernatural, misfortune, and loss of human life, Fisherman's Gat has more in common with Conrad's "The Brute" than Noble's earlier novel. Moreover, Conrad and Noble had produced texts that could be read as either tales of the uncanny or as tales of human folly where man is the chief architect of his own misfortune. Blackwood was evidently loath to encourage comparisons between Conrad and Noble, which could potentially undermine the marketing of the latter's forthcoming novel, particularly as such comparisons had been a feature of the critical reception of The Edge of Circumstance.6 The rejection of "The Brute" by Blackwood was, to some extent, mitigated by the purchase of the American serial rights just five days later by McClure's Magazine for £50, where it appeared the following year in November 1907.7 McClure's London office had also intimated that the Windsor Magazine would issue the story in Britain, yet this did not in fact materialise.8 Indeed, the British serial rights remained unsold at least until August 1906, when a story by Conrad, presumed to be "The Brute," was submitted to the Reader, a new penny weekly to be launched on October 25, 1906, by Edward Lloyd, Ltd., the proprietors and publishers of the Daily Chronicle.9 The new journal was placed under the editorial control of Robert Donald, the incumbent editor of the Daily Chronicle, with author and journalist Clarence Rook appointed literary editor.10 Rook had...

A sad tale: has the small musselIdas argenteuslost its symbionts?

Idas argenteus (Bivalvia: Mytilidae) belongs to a genus of mussels that are often associated with sunken wood and vertebrate bones in the deep sea. By contrast to other species currently included within the genus Idas and other related genera, such as Bathymodiolus, I. argenteus was documented to lack chemosynthetic symbionts bacterial symbionts in its gills. In the present study, new specimens are assigned to I. argenteus based on shell and soft parts analysis. Molecular data confirm the absence or low abundance of symbionts. Phylogeny based on five genes indicates that the symbiont-bearing I. washingtonius is the closest relative of I. argenteus. Symbiosis loss or extreme reduction is thus inferred to have occurred subsequent to the speciation event, 11–13 Mya. This is the first report of a loss of symbiosis within the clade of deep-sea chemosynthetic mussels.