Archive Spotlight:
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On Two Published Versions of Joan Didion’s “Marrying Absurd”
Michael W. Cox
8.2
Published on May 10, 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion’s second book (and the one that would establish her reputation as a major American writer) included twenty essays that had first appeared as reportage, column, or casual in some of the era’s most important magazines. Most of Slouching was written from 1965-1967, the majority of the pieces penned for the Saturday Evening Post, a general-interest magazine that had several million readers at the time. The stories that Didion had pursued were typically of her own choosing, and the pieces that would be included in Slouching were meant to embody her Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor Henry Robbins’ view of a book that showed “a native daughter’s confrontation with California: her reevaluation of youthful romance, her wonder and dismay at the changes time had forced” (Daugherty 257). While this guiding principle would help give the book unity, Didion, unhappy with the editing that had been imposed on her lines by magazine editors, pored over the tearsheets and insisted on typing the Slouching manuscript from scratch. She outlined the process in a September 9, 1967, letter to Robbins, saying that she would first write a preface, and that she would take until November 1st to pull the manuscript together. She was adding pieces to Slouching even as she typed; an October 2nd letter to Robbins mentions her wanting to add the Comrade Lasky piece, which was published in the Post’s November 18th issue. “Marrying Absurd,” the last Post piece included in Slouching, appeared in the December 16th issue. Click here to continue reading.
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No Cheap Realizations: On Kathryn Rhett’s “Confinements”
Hugh Martin
8.2
Rhett’s premise is, on the surface, simple: it’s “the first nice evening of spring,” the speaker has had “a headache for three days,” and her home has “begun to feel confining.” From the first sentence to the last, the essay circles and interrogates that word, “confinement,” as a physical, psychological, and societal concept. The opening line, iambic and direct, establishes a casual, relaxed tone: “I saw the places of confinement.” With that she takes us on a seemingly leisurely walk through her small neighborhood in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I’ve taught the essay in countless creative writing courses because of its brilliant control of syntax, concision, description, and Rhett’s rejection of easy epiphany. I’ve also taught it because of the way in which Rhett takes a seemingly mundane evening stroll and transforms it into an existential exploration of, among other things, complacency, class, suburbia, mortality, along with other literal and metaphorical confinements.
From a craft perspective, Rhett’s scenes are a crash course on anaphora, description, and syntax. The speaker’s rhythmic, almost hypnotizing voice moves from object to object with anaphoric cadence. Click here to continue reading. |