"Water Liars" by Barry Hannah

Enjoy this tricky story. Nice Christian imagery for you to digest, since you were interested in the devil with Oates's story. Some other stuff, too. Remember with this entry to consider about the Burroway lessons on "fictional place."

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

This is one of the creepier stories we'll read.

Joyce Carol Oates is known for this story. She is also known for being a seriously prolific writer. Michael Dirda, in a NY Review of Books review, writes, "Joyce Carol Oates still bothers people--in all kinds of ways. For more than forty-five years she has been steadily producing novels, short stories, essays, poems, plays. Between the beginning of 2000 and the end of 2005 she published nineteen books. She has written over seven hundred short stories, more than Maupassant, Kipling, and Chekhov combined."

She is said to write from 8 until 1 every day, plus several hours in the evening.

"Rock Springs" by Richard Ford

Oops. Sorry this is too late to actually help us for class.

"Ysrael" by Junot Diaz

Remember to read all the stories by a given author. Read them especially well if something in the first story you read strikes you as fresh, impressive, or pleasantly mysterious.

One of your jobs this semester is to form your own "literary family."

"Hunters in the Snow" by Tobias Wolff

Read it and weep. Wednesday's discussion leaders are Andrew and Scott.

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

Here, Followers (this cracks me up):

Read all of O'Brien's stories in 3X33. Then, excluding Scott and Kyle, who will lead discussion tomorrow, write 2 paragraphs of comments on "The Things They Carried." Use the story as a way to focus on one or two of the elements of fiction we've just read about Burroway. A refresher:

significant detail (Burroway, pages 26-31)

how authors write about emotion (31-32)

filtering (32-33)

active voice (33-35)

prose rhythm (36-38)

mechanics (38-39)

P.S. To comment, click on the Comments link at the bottom of this post.

P.P.S. Emerson quote of the day: "How can I talk when my body feels like crying?"