{"id":9629,"date":"2015-06-22T10:37:39","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T14:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/?page_id=9629"},"modified":"2015-08-14T11:59:42","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T15:59:42","slug":"simpson-instructor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/journal\/past-issues\/issue-7\/simpson\/simpson-instructor\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Instructor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201cAlcohol, Emotion, and Tension in Raymond Carver\u2019s Fiction,\u201d Sara Kornfeld Simpson writes about the complicated relationship between alcohol and emotion in the short fiction of Raymond Carver. The final segment of our class focused on <em>Cathedral<\/em>, Carver\u2019s fourth and best-known collection. Many students and professional critics have read the collection, the scholarship, and the biographical information, and have come to the conclusion that the movement from alcoholism toward sobriety that is an important pattern in the book is Carver\u2019s clear-cut statement on alcohol: the failure, loss, and emotional disconnection of \u201cChef\u2019s House\u201d to the recovery and improved communication of \u201cWhere I\u2019m Calling From\u201d to the emotional connection and enlightenment of \u201cCathedral,\u201d Carver\u2019s most famous short story.<\/p>\n<p>Sara Kornfeld Simpson was not satisfied with that reading and decided to dig deeper, including going back to \u201cWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Love,\u201d the title story of Carver\u2019s previous collection. She discovered that alcohol is functioning in a more complex and \u201cparadoxical\u201d way here and elsewhere, and that alcohol and its more complex depiction is a key to the emotional content of Carver\u2019s fiction\u2014emotion that is always in tension, and in relentless motion. Simpson discovered that Carver saw alcohol as a powerful and mysterious element that could enhance lives as well as destroy them, foster communication as well as silence or distort it.<\/p>\n<p>Simpson argues an original and well-motivated claim through a wonderfully close, perceptive reading of four of Carver\u2019s best-known stories, and she balances that reading with careful and astute engagement with a wide range of secondary sources, including Carver\u2019s own essays and interviews, Carver scholarship, and critical essays from other points in the course\u2014a truly successful capstone essay for WR 100.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2014 ANTHONY WALLACE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>WR 100:\u00a0<span>The American Short Story: Tradition and Evolution<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In \u201cAlcohol, Emotion, and Tension in Raymond Carver\u2019s Fiction,\u201d Sara Kornfeld Simpson writes about the complicated relationship between alcohol and emotion in the short fiction of Raymond Carver. The final segment of our class focused on Cathedral, Carver\u2019s fourth and best-known collection. Many students and professional critics have read the collection, the scholarship, and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4801,"featured_media":0,"parent":9596,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9629"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9816,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9629\/revisions\/9816"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}