Sunday, April 8, 2018

Danielle Evans


Danielle Evans is a modern American author. She studied at Columbia University and the University of Iowa. She is currently teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and will be teaching at John-Hopkins University in the fall. She has won several awards, including the “5 Under 35” fiction writer’s award in 2011. Her first anthology of short stories has been awarded the PEN/Robert Bingham in the same year. Danielle Evans’s writing was also published in The Paris Review and  the 2008 and 2010 Best American Short Stories collections in addition to the 2017 one, where “Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain” was anthologized. This is an impressive amount of accolades for such a comparatively young author.
“Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain,” was also published in the American Short Fiction literary journal, in Fall 2016, which was a retrospective of the best pieces published in the past 25 years. New Pages review of the journal mentions Evans’s story by name, and devotes a paragraph to it, an honor for such a brief review of a whole journal chock full of excellent writing.
Jenny Mark, the reviewer mentioned above said that, “Another story in this volume that had me completely focused on every word was “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain” by Danielle Evans. The name of the story was confusing to me—what could it be about? Even having read the story, I still am not sure how the title connects to the events within except that it harkens somewhat to the main character, Rena.”
In your comment please give us your opinion on how the piece’s title connects to the text of the story? Does the title fit? What influence does the historical reference have on the piece?

8 comments:

  1. Although I am still working through what relevance I think the title had to the piece, I think it did its job in grabbing my attention, especially because in the very beginning, I thought the title had no relevance at all. I spent a majority of the story, like Jenny Mark, trying to discern what the connection was. That's what drew me into the story. Additionally, the style of the story was very narrative-driven, and seemed to have an all-knowing narrator, so I was wondering if maybe they were going to reveal what the connection was, although I'm not sure they ever did.

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  2. Like Honor, I am still attempting to wade through research and decode the connection with the title. The closest thing I can guess is that Richard of York never got what he wanted (to be king) after being given the chance at it, much like Rena when she encountered JT fleeing his own wedding. Though I don't think really any of the characters in the story got what they wanted. Nobody was really happy in the end, even though they kind of were? Which I enjoyed, because it felt very real in a way that is hard to explain.
    I loved all of the bits of information that weaved together to create this narrative, and the fact that this story felt to me to be all about how fundamentally fucked up people are, and how imperfection lies at the heart of humanity.

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  3. I still have no idea how the title relates to the piece, but not knowing doesn't affect how I read the story. The title's purpose could've just been to grab the audience's attention. I began to speculate that maybe it had to do with the bride maids dresses. The color of the rainbow ROYGBIV? But it doesn't feel accurate because of how much happened in the story. To be completely honest, I didn't realize the title was supposed to be a historical reference.

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  4. The story Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain references the same mnemonic for the rainbow on the first page. But while that's clearly where the title is, I can see why some people (Jenny Mark included) were confused as to WHY Evans picked this title. For me, I feel it had something to do with the origin of the mnemonic itself.

    Richard of York was the third Duke of York during the 1400s and heir to the throne of England. However, his claim did not go well as the throne had been stolen from his father by King Henry IV. His entire life was one of political intrigue and violence to try and gain power within the English courts and ends with him dying at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460. While his descendants would be connected to the Tudor line and he would become the ancestor for every following English monarch, he died a pretty sad and depressing death after devoting his life to gaining something he could never get back.

    And that final battle is used to help children remember the colors of the rainbow. Now, every time I hear Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain I'm not going to think about rainbows but about how this guy's tragedy was used for something nice and sweet, ignoring the reality. And isn't that what Rena's about? She loves and forgives horrible men who abandon her for "a woman somewhere willing to lie and say she can fix it, another prepared to spend decades pretending it isn't there," and she can't even swim in a pool without thinking of dead children anymore, or spend a day without remembering what happened to her sister. Rena lives a life where she can't NOT see the tragedy and suffering. Just like I know can't hear a simple mnemonic without being uncomfortable now.

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  5. I'm going to be honest: I don't know how the title ties to the story, and I still find it hard to make a connection. The story was fine, which is probably why I didn't care for any connection. Whether it is a historical reference or just a clever title, I feel like speculating about it is pointless to the overall narrative.

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  6. I think Savanna's explanation for the title sums it up well. I knew that it was a mnemonic device for ROYGBIV, but I was quite confused over why that mnemonic device specifically. But the last paragraph of Savanna's comment made me realize how clever it is, and now I feel I enjoy the story even more. I am still scratching my head over the significance of "king sum" written on the locker, though. It HAS to be significant, especially with the title being what it is. But how???

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  7. I had no idea that Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain was a mnemonic device for remembering the colors of the rainbow. I didn't even know that there were any other devices than Roy G. Biv, a man of great renown, who I spent years believing was a real person. Savanna's comment was very enlightening, as well, since I didn't know there was a famous historical figure named Richard and assumed that somebody in the story was secretly named Richard and that it was some sort of guessing game. Alas, JT probably does not stand for Richard.

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  8. I was actually talking about this with Val last night and she told me that it was ROY G BIV because I couldn't understand it. I still don't quite understand the rainbow part since the rainbow was only used to color coordinate the bridesmaids and groomsmen and then it was dropped off like half way through. Even colour theory and classic colour symbolism doesn't quite work to enhance the plot or even the characters. The characters to really even be close to Richard of York is Rena and Dori but even then those are stretches.

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