A few weeks ago I attened the Carole Maso Reading. She is the author of six works of fictions and is working on her seventh. She also has written two non-fiction works and poetry. Maso is a reacher at Brown for writing. At the reading I attended she read several of her shorter pieces of fiction.
Two of the four works were short stories about one of her characters from a book she has written about a girl named Eva who is sick and is in her last days at a hospital. She also read a short story about a mother during a stressful time and an essay about the future of fiction.
For my second paper I wrote about the poems "l(a)," by E.E. Cummings and "This is Just to Say," by William Carlos Williams. These two poems are similar to the readings by Maso because they are unconventional in form, like Maso's unconventional topics in her stories. They also use similar themes such as loneliness.
The first story she read was called "Mothering During Wartime." This is a story about how a mother must care for her child in unbelievable circumstances of a war going on around them. The child brings stuffed animals to dinner like nothing is wrong, but the only thing left for dinner are sunflower seeds. The child came home from school one day with an assignment yo use navigation skills to dig up a treasure. The night before they did the assignment the mother heard bombs sounding in the background, and the narrator in the story says that you don't know whether it's acutally bombs or just the mother's madness. The next day when they go on the assignment and "the mother stands paralyzed at the mass grave, and the child says dig." This story is a little dark and the mother feels like she has no where to turn and no idea what to do. The church is in flames and she thinks "where are all the people?" This idea relates to the theme in Cummings' "l(a" of loneliness, and how one is a big part of that. In this case the mother is one out of the city that she knows is safe, but with her safety comes insanity and loneliness.
The second story called "Young H saved From Infamy" is about a hallucination of a man that Eva has while waiting for her bone-marrow transplant. Mr. H is a man who wants to become an artist, but he is fascinated with death and revenge because is mother is ill. He wants to make a lasting mark in order to make his mother proud. He gets in the art academy, graduates, and becomes a painter. While others were fighting the great war he said "let others fall in trenches," and he went on to creat postcards of cities. Later on he became humbled in front of the blank canvas and couldn't think of anything to draw, but he was asked yo serve as a judge for new applicants, so he was saved once again. At the end of the story Mr. H understands that the pursuit of power destroys love, and that although dreams are good, you have to consider everything else along the way and remember it the best you can.
The next story is when Eva is on the death bed and is titled "Intersession of the Saints." This story explained how life swings like a pendulem towards and away from God. The Saints say that one conquers challenges of the world through pain, and then after pain a floating feeling comes, and everything is okay. Saints reiterate that like is unbearable without suffering; that it is needed in order to live, or your life wouldn't be worth it.
These two stories go along the lines of Williams' "This is Just to Say" Although his poem considers the more playing meaning of forgiveness, it is about forgiveness none the less. These two stories are about how Eva has to forgive God for what is happening to her and for all her pain, because he has other plans in store for her. Without forgiveness she will end her days bitter and not accept what is to come next.
The last reading was an essay about the future of fiction. Maso read this because she knew it was a year of the city event and this essay involved life after the disaster of 9-11 in the major city of New York. Maso feels that fiction will contain unimaginable, emotional freedom in the future. With events like 9-11 emotions will certainly come into play in many author's works. Maso herself used to pivot on Sullivan Street where one way she saw the Empire State Building, and then she would turn around to see the WTC. Now she describes it as a habit, because she still does it, and sadness is bestowed upon her everytime. It's feelings like this that will break into new fiction; a sense of real non-fiction emotions will be brought into the fictional world. Just like Cummings' and Williams' poems are unconventional in describing their emotions, so will new works of fiction.