Charity, by Joy Williams

 Summary and analysis (video)

Analysis of Joy Williams’s Stories

SOME DATA ABOUT HER BIOGRAPHY
Joy Williams was born in Massachusetts in 1944. Her father was a religious minister.
She studied at the University of Iowa (Raymond Carver was studying there at the same time).
She got married to Rust Hills, editor of Esquire, a men’s magazine, and moved to Florida, where she taught creative writing.
She wrote some novels (State of Grace, The Quick and the Dead), but she is best known for her short stories, where she displays her minimalist style. She was nominated once for the Pulitzer prize, and in 2021, she got the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
As an example of her minimalism we have her collection 99 stories of God. In her book The Visiting Privilege she has collected all her stories.

SUMMARY
The story starts in the dunes around White Sands Park. There, Janice and her husband (or partner) listen to a policeman telling them about the feelings he experienced being on a dune.
After this bizarre spontaneous explosion of sincerity, they went on driving through the Sands Park. Janice wanted to stop and get out of the car, but Richard wasn’t impressed by the place and refused to pull over. Nevertheless, after a while, he needed to stop to pee, and they pulled into a rest-stop. There, a couple with two children travelling on a van were holding a sign asking for money to get some petrol for their vehicle.
Janice decided she wanted to give them something, but Richard rode along. However, soon afterwards, he stopped to fill the tank at a gas station. There, while Richard was inside the shop, Janice changed places to sat on the driver’s seat and left the gas station —and Richard— behind. She drove back to the rest-stop where she found the family van. She told the woman, Rose, that she wanted to give some money for petrol. Rose, honest enough, accepted the offer, but told her it was better to go together to the petrol station to show Janice they would spend the money in petrol and not in anything else. It was the same petrol station where she and Richard had stopped several minutes earlier, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Rose’s family appeared to be decent people, even as the children were a little bit naughty. The boy, Zorro, was a little bit too active, and the girl, Zoebella, too pertly clever. Still, their parents seemed to be good people. However, Janice’s first intention to give them only twenty dollars didn’t work —in an outburst of charity, she paid for the bill’s mechanic at the garage where they had the van repaired, she paid for the food at the restaurant where they waited for the mechanic finishing his work, and then, as the repair needed some days, she offered to take them to their place, although it didn’t lay exactly in her way home.
During the trip, they had a car accident because Zorro suddenly jerked the steering wheel and Janice coudn’t control her car. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but Janice was exhausted and deeply upset. They had to abandon the car and stay at a motel. Although Rose insisted that Janice needed some rest, they ended up together in the same room, the only one suitable to sleep in. But, all in all, in the end she fell asleep. She dreamt she was on the road alone hoping somebody would pick her up and take her home.

QUESTIONS
-They say you’re getting old when you aren’t able to feel enthusiasm. What is your opinion about it?
-What do you know about dog’s behaviour? Can dogs identify their names?
-“She distrusted speech as a way of expressing thoughts.” How else can you express your thoughts?
-Whe we’re generous, aren’t we selfish all the same (because being generous please our feelings)?
-Do you usually think things twice?
-Do you sometimes dislike somebody only for their clothes?
-When you give charity, do you try to check how they will spend it?
-Do you think people have a more beautiful appearence when they are “good”?
-According to a saying, blind people are more suspicious. What is your view?
-What do you usually borrow from hotels and restaurants when you leave?

VOCABULARY
wears, take a leak, ramada, rummaging, grille, brave, shot glasses, signed, low rider, retrieved, queasy, trading post, road runner, fitted beedsheet, pull over, misery lights, drummed out, blacktop road, stony wash, axles, sacred datura, bath crystals, swatted, scootch

Package Tour, by Maeve Binchy

 The Chemistry of Love

Written by Begoña Devis

BIOGRAPHY
She was born in Dalkey, Ireland, May 28, 1940. She studied History at University College of Dublin and worked as a teacher and as a journalist. She taught languages ​​at several girls’ schools, a job she combined with contributions to The Irish Times before deciding to dedicate herself entirely to literature. Binchy was known for her novels, short stories, and plays in which she reflected, with a sharp and biting wit, the reality of small Irish towns and their typical inhabitants. Throughout her career, Binchy sold more than forty million copies of her books, which were translated into thirty-seven languages, making her one of the best-known and most beloved authors in her country.
In 1978, Binchy won a Jacob Award for her play Deeply Regretted By. The National Portrait Gallery in London owns a 1993 photograph of the writer with Richard Whitehead (a Paralympic runner), and a painting of her with Maeve McCarthy (a famous Irish artist), commissioned in 2005, was exhibited at the National Gallery of Ireland.
In 2000, Binchy announced that she would no longer tour to promote her novels, but, instead, she would devote her time to other activities, and to her husband, the children’s author Gordon Snell.
She was awarded prizes such as the British Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, the PEN Irish Award and the Irish Book Award. Binchy’s work has been adapted for television and films on several occasions. Among her novels, notable titles include Under the Dublin Sky, Tara Road, and Circle of Friends.
She died in Dublin, July 30, 2012.

SUMMARY
The story talks about a young couple in their twenties, Shane and Moya, who met at a Christmas party and intermediately liked each other. Over time, they discover they have more and more things in common; they both like being in good shape, they both have office jobs, their family types are also similar (Shane has a difficult mother, and in Moya’s case, the difficult one was her father), and above all else, they love having holidays abroad. They explain each other their exotic travels, and consequently, they began to think about having a very good holiday that summer. It would be the high spot of the year for them.
They collect brochures as early as January, and try to discover the secret message behind the sentences apparently very attractive. They worked out the jargon so as not to be deceived. The trip can be exotic but not so much expensive. Both of them hate the Single Room Supplement. Must people go off on their holidays two by two, like animals into an ark?, they think. Why is travelling alone penalised? It’s difficult to travel with other people; you can start the trip as friends and end up as enemies. Shane knew of a case like that.
But several months later they began to realise that that summer they would probably travel together. They admitted it one evening over a plate of spaghetti: they would go to Crete. The only knotty problem was the matter of the Single Room. They weren’t lovers yet, so Shane said that the most sensible thing would be to book a double room, with two separate beds. They were grown-ups, and to sleep in separate bed wouldn’t be a problem. Deep down, they both believe they will end up being lovers, even spending their lives together, but they didn’t want to be forced into it simply because they had to sleep in a double bed.
Their differences became apparent when, looking at a magazine about it, they decided what kind of suitcase to take. Shane chose a huge suitcase with wheels and a matching smaller suitcase. Moya chose two normal suitcases, easy to identify on the carousel, Both of them thought that the other must be looking at the wrong page. A cloud appeared between that happy relationship, but both of them decided to ignore it. However, another storm came in April, when Shane gave Moya a travel iron as a birthday present. Moya desperately wished it was a joke, but it wasn’t.

The truth was that Shane wanted to bring mountains of clothes, and spares for everything, to have a wardrobe like a sultan’s. That vision horrified Moya. She planned to bring only the bare minimum, which meant washing it regularly, and therefore spreading it around the room while it dried. That vision horrified Shane. They wish they had met on vacation, so they would have known these things from the beginning, and not to discover that terrible shock at the height of romance.
At first, they thought of booking separate rooms, which could avoid that horrifying visions to them. But it went deeper than that, it seemed to show the kind of people they were, and they eventually realised that it would be impossible to spend two weeks together, let alone a life time. So they transferred their bookings to separate holidays, and with separate hopes and dreams.

PERSONAL OPINION
I like that short story because is both simple and profound. In my opinion, the reflections you can do after reading are more interesting than the story itself.
Here the writer encapsulates the problems of living together. Why do couples divorce? Is it because of philosophical or existential issues, or because she can’t stand the coins falling to the floor every night when he takes off his pants, which drives her crazy? Or because she leaves her purse and wallet lying around day after day, and it takes her hours to find it, which drives him crazy? These are just examples, but I’ve always thought the latter outweighs the former. Another very common problem that also ends relationships is not talking about problems when they arise. They think it won’t happen to them, but when the time comes, they make the same mistake. Has this happened to any of us? I think so.
On the other hand, a holiday trip it’s a moment very well chosen by the author, because it is like an obstacle course that helps you to get to know someone you are interested in. «The couple that travels together stays together», you could say. Age is also very important here. When you are twenty is easy to fall in love and think you can spend your life with a charming person who you just met, but a trip —and in this case even just the planning for it— can ruin everything.

QUESTIONS

-Do you believe in love at first sihgt?

-Do you agree with the popular saying «out of sight, out of mind»?

-In your opinion, what is the difference between liking eomeone and falling in love with someone? Are there special signs which help you to tell the difference between infatuation and love?

VOCABULARY

bedsitter, stamina, glossy, haranguing, dalek, gear, holdall

The Toys of Peace, by Saki

 Short film

Audiobook

A review

Summary and analysis

BIOGRAPHY
Saki was the pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro. According to the legend, he named his alias after a word he found in the Rubáiyát, by Omar Khayyam, translated by Fitzgerald, “saqi”, meaning “cup bearer”, a servant in charge of liquors, and therefore of cheerfulness. Nevertheless, some people said it came after “sarcasm”, because of the tone of his journalistic articles.
He was born in 1870, in Burma, now Myanmar, then an Indian province, and thus a colony belonging to the British empire. His father was a police officer working there. Hector was the youngest of his three children.
When he was two, he lost his mother in a very tragic accident: in a visit to Great Britain, a cow knocked her down, and days later she died from her injures.
The father, being a widower now, decided to leave his children in Great Britain under the care of two aunts. According to Ethel, Hector’s sister, they weren’t very affectionate (to put it midly), and later Hector took his revenge using them as inspirations for some of his characters.
When he was twelve, he was sent to Bedford, a boarding school.
After finishing school, he decided to go to Burma with his father to work also as a policeman. But  he contracted malaria there and, after a year, had to go back to England.
There, he decided to became a writer. His family supported him in this project, and after six years, in 1900, he produced a historical book about the Russian empire.
We don’t know much about his private life, and after what happened to Oscar Wilde, he carried an even more secluded life.
He had a stroke of luck when the editor of the magazine The Westminster Gazette commissioned him to write a series of short sketches about famous contemporary figures. It was then when he adopted his well-known pseudonym.
In 1902, he was sent as a reporter for The Morning Post in the Balkans, where he spent six years.
Back in London, he published a pair of novels, The Unbearable Bassington and When William Came, as well a kind of political fiction, A German Invasion Fantasy. However he showed his greatest talent in his short stories, first published in magazines and later collected in volumes such as Reginald, The Chronicles of Clovis, and Beasts and Super-Beasts.
He volunteered to serve at the First World War, even as he was forty-four and had previously malaria. They offered him a position in the rear, but he preferred to serve in the front as an ordinary trooper. He was killed by a German sniper in 1916 and his body was never recovered.
One of his most famous paradoxical remarks was “to have reached thirty is to have failed in life”.

SUMMARY
Eleanor, Eric and Bertie’s mother, wants to accommodate their education to the pacifist ideas of the National Peace Council. Its proposal is to change the war toys children usually play with with “peace toys”. The Council believes that this way children will become less aggressive and less warlike.
In order to start her experiment, she asks her brother, who usually comes to see the family at Easter bringing some toys for his nephew (an eleven-year-old boy) and his niece (a nine-and-a-half-year-old girl), to bring this time “civilian” (that is, non-military) toys this time. He also would have to explain them how they work,  since they would be new for the children and very different from the usual ones. From what we can see in the story, war toys don’t require any instructions.
So, uncle Harvey arrives with some figures representing important and valuable contributors to social progress, as politicians, philosophers, reformers, pedagogues..., and some curious objects as pocket dustbins or similar useful urban items. The children don’t show much enthusiasm, but listen to the uncle’s explanations. All in all, they don’t seem very convinced.
Then, uncle Harvey leaves the children alone with the toys for a while, expecting they will know how to play peaceful games; but when he comes back, he founds out that Eric and Bertie have a lot of imagination and that they are also able to turn the tables.

QUESTIONS
-What do you think are the best way in schools or at home to promote the ideal of peace between nations?
-Do toys have a real influence in children's education? Do governments have to issue rules about toys? What kind of rules?
-Is war a natual human instinct?
-Toys for boys and toys for girls... how can we avoid being sexists with toys?
-What do you know about these people: John Stuart Mill, Robert Raikes, Mrs Hemans, Rowland Hill, John Hershel, Hogarth, Madame Du Barry, Madame de Maintenon, Marshal Saxe...?

VOCABULARY
upbringing, Dreadnoughts, hot houses, wahs-house, ballot-box, sewers, calico