Structural Anthropology, by Adam Mars-Jones

A BIT OF BIOGRAPHY

According to the Wikipedia, Adam Mars-Jones is a British novelist and film critic; he was born in 1954, so now is 70; his father was a judge and his mother a lawyer, people belonging to the high establishment (so, being gay, we have to suppose he didn’t have an easy life when he was young).

He studied English in Cambridge.

He had a polemic with Martin Amis and Ian McEwan about feminism, the false feminism and the patriarchal model. In his essay Venus Envy about this topic, he used anthropological concepts, so this science isn’t something unknown to him.

The most celebrated books of his are a series of novels (Pilcrow, Cedilla, Caret –all punctuation symbols) around a character, John Cromer, a gay teenager with mobility issues who describes the world around him; there isn’t much plot in the story, only little stories related to the hero, or witnessed by him. The author defines this series as semi-infinite, because he can go on with them without ending.

He has also short stories collections, as Lantern Lecture, and writes regularly in newspapers, as The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement.

SUMMARY

This is an atypical short story, because it’s written like an essay, not like a tale with characters and a plot. There’s an anecdote (a deceived wife drugs her adulterous husband and, while he’s asleep, she sticks with superglue his right hand round his penis), but the most part of the text is a pseudo-anthropological analysis of the anecdote that tries to discover the deep meaning of the wife’s doing and its relation with the human behaviour or the collective psychology. For this kind of analysis, the author uses the structuralist technique and concepts.

The structuralism is a method of linguistic analysis born in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, and basically says that you cannot discover the true essence/value/meaning/…whatever of an element without keeping in mind its relation with the other elements in the set. According to this idea, there’s no possible definition of “yellow” without keeping in mind the rest of the colours. The basic tools are pairs of opposites (cold/hot, singular/plural, etc.). Claude Levi-Strauss took advantage of this method for his anthropological studies of the South America tribes.

So the narrator pretends to use this method to study and understand the sociological and psychoanalytical pattern of the event (anecdote), and so he (or she) uses pairs of opposites to elucidate its signification. So the whole thing is a joke full of ironies at the expense of this method, nowadays already old-fashioned.

QUESTIONS

-What do you know about anthropology?

-When does an anecdote / story become a myth? Sure in your family there is a story which is repeated in the great meetings: this is a kind of myth. Don’t you have one?

-What do you know about the triangle Vulcan-Mars-Venus?

-What do you think it’s the main difference between culture and nature? Can you give some examples?

-When is food a drug? Do you follow a diet? Do you believe in diets?

-Has a wedding to be public? Give your reasons.

-According to your opinion, must a religion canvass people, or has it to restrict itself to the private sphere?

VOCABULARY

startling, tangle, retaliate, receding, binding, release, patterning, spurned, diminished, unstintingly, cleave, cleave

Review

A mention

Video: books by Adam-Mars Jones

A review of Venus Envy

Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend, by P. D. Wodehouse

P. D. Wodehouse at the Wikipedia

Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend, at the Wikipedia

Video

Radio adaptation (from 1:50:00 to 2:15:00)

P. D. Wodehouse, by Begoña Devis

BIOGRAPHY 

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born on the 15^th of October 1881, in Guildford (UK). He was the son of Eleanor Deane, from a landed family, and Henry Ernest Wodehouse. The Wodehouse had been based in Norfolk for many centuries. His lineage is ancient, going back to as far back as 1227, when Sir Bertram of Wodehouse fought with Eduard I against the Scots.
He was a prolific writer, author of more than 90 narrative books (70 novels and 20 collections with a total of 200 stories), another hundred short stories in magazines, 400 articles, 19 plays and 250 song lyrics for 33 musicals of Broadway as well as adaptations and screenplays.
Until the age of two, he lived in Hong Kong, where his father was a British government judge. Back in London, he grew up with his two older brothers practically as am orphan, under different family guardianships, especially aunts, since his parents continued to reside in Hong Kong until he was 15 years old. That’s reflected in his abundant production: in his work there are no mothers but aunts, and there are also few fathers and their relationship with their children are scarce and comical. On the other hand, his biographer revealed that, as a young man, he pretended to be almost mentally retarded, when in reality he has intelligent, complex and educated. Thanks to that false naive disguise, he was able to concentrate on what he really liked: writing.
Having studied at Dulwich College, his first paid paper was “Aspects of Game Captaincy”. He was unable to follow his brother to Oxford because the family finances began to have difficulties. So, instead of a university degree, in September 1900, he reluctantly took a job at the London office of the Bank of Hong Kong and Shanghai. To disassociate himself from this job that he did not like at all, he began to write about sports and humorous stories in the press and magazines. As a great sportsman, he represented Dulwich College in boxing, cricked and rugby, sports which, along with golf, figure directly or indirectly in many of his stories.
Although he had already visited New York in 1904, it was during another visit in 1909 that Wodehouse sold “two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier’s magazines for a total sum of $500, much more than he had ever made”. That decided him to leave the United Kingdom and settle in New York. In 1914, he married Ethel Newton, a widow he had met in New York two months earlier and whose daughter, Leonora, he adopted.
The following year, he was hired as a theatre critic by Vanity Fair magazine. By this time, his first novels had met with some success, and, from 1909, Wodehouse was living between Paris and the United States. His reputation as a humorous novelist was established with his work Psmith in the City. He maintained his enormous popularity through almost a hundred novels, in which a series of curious and very British characters were almost always idle young people disoriented by the absurd and comical situations. In 1919, he begins what will be his most famous series of novels and stories, with My Man Jeeves. This character, a shrewd valet who always rescues the reckless Mr Bertie Wooster, who almost always is the victim of some conspiracy by his aunt.
In 1934, Wodehouse, already very successful as a writer, and to avoid double taxation on his income, moved to live in France. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, instead of returning to the UK, he decided to stay in his house on the coast at Le Touquet. In the summer of that year, Wodehouse had gone to Oxford to be made an honorary doctor, and shortly after his return to Le Touquet. The German authorities interned him, in his late sixties, as an “enemy alien”, first in Belgium, then in Upper Silesia (now in Poland). After that, the British government, despite having a report by a senior M15 exonerating him of treason (which was not published until after his death), denounced him as a Nazi collaborator, and the media continued to accuse him of being a traitor for a long time, and some public libraries banned his books, and even some prominent authors criticized him harshly. Wodehouse, disgusted by the treatment received by his country, never returned to the United Kingdom, and in 1955 he obtained American citizenship.
PG Wodehouse is considered one of the best English humourists alongside Jerome K. Jerome, Evelyn Waugh and Tom Sharpe. An edition of his complete works is practically impossible, since in more than seventy years of constant literary work (from 1902 to1975) Wodehouse did not let a day go by without writing something. 
In the year of his death, the great Wodehouse was made Sir. He died in Remsenburg, Long Island (United States) on the 14^th of February 1975. He was 93 years old.

Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend 

Despite glorious weather, Lord Emsworth is miserable; it is August Bank Holiday, which means the annual Blandings Parva School Treat. The precious grounds are to be overrun with fairground rides, tea-tents and other amusements for the throngs, and Emsworth is will be forced by his sister Constance to wear a stiff collar and a top hat, despite the warm weather and his strong protests.
On top of that, Head Gardener Angus McAllister is determined to carry out his project of putting gravel in the garden. Emsworth, who loves his mossy carpet, loathes the idea, but his sister is in favour, and the stronger personalities overpower the elderly man.
After that, while visiting Blandings Parva to judge the flower displays, Emsworth is frightened by a large dog, but he is rescued by a small girl named Gladys. They chat and become friends, especially when she reveals that, having been seen picking flowers in the Castle grounds, she hit McAllister in the shin with a stone to stop him chasing her.
When the fête begins, Emsworth is uncomfortable as ever in his formal clothes, and he’s worried about the speech he will have to make. In addition, at the tea-tent, his top hat is knocked off by a cleverly aimed rock cake, and Emsworth flees, taking refuge in an old shed. In there, he finds Gladys, miserable; she has been put there by his sister Constance, for stealing from the tea tent something to take to her brother Ern, barred from the fête for biting Constance on the leg.
Delighted by this family, Emsworth takes Gladys into the house, and provides her a hearty tea, and also a feast to take back to Ern.  Gladys requests to pick some flowers to take home too. Emsworth hesitates, but cannot refuse her. As she is picking flowers, McAllister rushes up in a fury, but his master, encouraged by Gladys’s hand in his, stands up to the man, saying that the flowers belong to him, and that he also doesn’t want gravel in the garden, putting him in his place.
Constance approaches then, demanding Emsworth return to make his speech, but he refuses, saying he's going to put on some comfortable clothes and to visit Ern with his friend Gladys.
In my opinion is a really naive story, with sense of humour and ridiculous situations, as in almost always stories of the writer happen. In that story, the powerful aristocrat behaves like a boy, under the strict supervision of his sister (who could very well be his aunt), while his saviour is a little girl. Thanks to her, he finds the courage to do and say what he really wants.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters

-Lord Emsworth

-Lady Constant Keeble

-Angus McAllister

-Gladys

-Ern

-Beach

What happens in August Bank Holiday?

Tell us about the gravel path.

What opinion does Lord Emsworth have about Scottish people?

Why does Angus have the upper hand with Lord Emsworth?

Can you explain the scene with the dog?

What are Lord Emsworth’s resources as to deal with people of the other sex?

What is the meaning of “season” for a “classical lord”?

What kind of relationships does Lord Emsworth have with women?

Talk about Lord Emsworth’s Panama hat.

What was the problem with his collar?

What is the reference for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego?

According to Lord Emsworth, what are the characteristics of a London child?

Why Gladys and her brother were excluded from the garden party?

What do you know about the Battle of Bannonckburn?

When did Lord Emsworth feel like a true lord again?

“Better to cease to be a Napoleon than be a Napoleon in exile.” What do you think of this proverb?

 

VOCABULARY

summer morning, beaming, kippered, marquees, potter, evenfall, dodge, dodder, hemlock, peers, filling station, blistering, clutches, kink, number twelve heel, flout, demeanour, confidence trick, wizened, velveteen, pick, tenantry, ‘ahse, josser, plice, arf, sharted, ‘air-oil, todiy, stror, rummage-sale, ballyragged, Jno., gave at the knees, squeaker, cut both ways, rig-out, dickens, Saturnalia, goggling, vouchsafed, tough egg, curate, back-chat, squint, tumbril, slicer, dooce, shirk, lidy, gorn, Gad, pliying, dorg, fit, spineless, excursions

The Other Two, by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton at the Wikipedia

Summary and analysis

Analysis

Study Guide (even with a test)

Audiobook

Video biography and analysis

A Journey (another short story)

EDITH WARTON, by Nora Carranza

BIOGRAPHY

Edith Wharton was born in New York in 1862 and died in Saint Brices-sous-Forêt, near Paris, in 1937. She is one of the most notable American novelists. She belonged to an old and wealthy New York family, and she received a refined private education. In 1885, when she was twenty-three, Edith married Edward Robbins Wharton, twelve years older. They divorced in 1902 because of her husband’s infidelities, which affected the writer mentally and physically.
 In 1907, she settled permanently in Paris. She became a close friend of Henry James, and she met other relevant intellectual figures of that time, such as Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Jean Cocteau. Since then, Wharton always lived surrounded by aristocrats, novelists, historians and painters.
For her services to France during the First World War, she was awarded the order of the Legion of Honor. She was the first woman to receive her Ph.D. from Yale University, and, in 1930, was named Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Edith Wharton became known with the story The Valley of Decision, that appeared in 1902. Since then, she published almost one book per year until her death. She obtained recognition with The House of Mirth (1905), a solid criticism of the American aristocratic classes, starting her most fertile period of her literary activity with titles like The Fruit of the Tree (1907), Madame de Treymes (1907), Ethan Frome (1911), The Reef (1912), Summer (1917), The Custom of the Country (1913), and many more important works.
The Age of Innocence, published in 1920, is considered her best work, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. In it, the author analyses the difficulties of two lovers separated by the prejudices of their society.
The characters of Edith Wharton many times appear like victims of social conventions and injustice, destined to suffering and resignation, in a time of intolerable moral condition.
Edith Wharton is considered the greatest American novelist of her generation.

THE OTHER TWO

The story begins when, after their wedding, Alice and Waythorn spend the first night at their home. Waythorn impatiently awaits his wife’s arrival in the dining room, imagining the pleasure of the moment to come.

Alice had appeared in NY some years before this marriage, as the pretty Mrs Haskett. Society accepted her recent divorce, and, even with some doubts, considered that Mr Haskett was the responsible for that divorce, and she deserved their confidence.

The case was that, when Alice Haskett remarried Gus Varick, the couple became very appreciated in town, but not for long, because there was a new divorce. In this occasion, it was admitted that Varick was not meant for husband life.

Even some decent time had gone by when Alice married Waythorn, there was a kind of surprise and discomfort in the social group. However, by the time of the wedding, every bad consideration seemed to have vanished.

Waythorn has had a kind of grey life, due mainly to his character, and was seduced by Alice’s freshness and balanced personality.

Alice, 35 years old as she declared, had a little girl, Lily Haskett, from her first marriage. The child became ill during the honeymoon of her mother and Waythorn, and had been transferred to their house, according to Waythorn desire.

When Alice arrives to the dining room, she tells her husband that Mr Hackett claimed to visit his child in the house. Waythorn feels astonishment and surprise, he knows nothing about that man, but finally thought the father had the right to see his young daughter and accepted.

The following day, Waythorn was quite distressed, left his house early and planned to came back late, avoiding any possibility of meeting Mr Hackett.

Incredible but true, that morning the past came to the present again, and Waythorn met face to face Gus Varick in the tube, “the elevated” of New York, and again during lunch at a restaurant, where Waythorn had his lunch in a hurry and Varick calmly enjoyed his meal.

The story continues presenting different situations in which Waythorn has to meet the two previous husbands of his wife.

In the case of Mr Haskett, it was due to Lily’s health and his strong determination to intervene in the care and education of his daughter. This will provoke many visits and meetings between the two men. Waythorn observed the humble and simple condition of Mr Haskett, but also his correction about how to behave.

In the case of Gus Varick, it was an indeclinable professional issue that determines obligatory encounters between these men with such different personalities.

Over the time, the anxiety and disgust of Waythorn became transformed into routine and acceptance of the situation with two living ghosts in his marriage.

There was also a change in Waythorn valuation towards Alice’s attitudes. She always stood out for her immediate adaptation to the most complicated situations and her way of disguising the difficulties. That sometimes exasperated and annoyed Waythorn, but finally he accepted the advantages of this way of facing life, maintaining polite and impeccable forms, beyond the complexity of the circumstances.

This is how, at the end of the story, the matters that occupy the characters of the story lead them all to meet in the library of the married couple, and they all had a traditional 5 o’clock tea.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters (personality, appearance, relationship between them, job, age, social class, …)

Mrs Waythorn

Mr Waythorn

Lily Haskett

Mr Haskett

Mr Varick

Mr Sellers

What can you say about typhoid?

Why do you think Mr Waythorn fell in love with his wife? Do you think he really loves her or, for him, she is a kind of possession, an object?

In the story, they say that the only presence of the mother will restore the child’s health. Do you believe in “aura” or charisma on people? Did you find it in some person or other?

Where are Pittsburgh and Utica in relation to NY?

Describe Mr Waythorn and Mr Varick’s encounter on the train.

Explain the business that Mr Varick has with Mr Waythorn’s office.

What is the problem with the governess?

What are Mr Waythorn’s debts to the other husbands for the domestic happiness?

What age do you imagine (according to the text) women become slack or febrile?

Why did Mr Waythorn ask his wife something about Haskett with his back to her?

Was the love between Mrs Waythorn and Mr Varick mercenary?

Can you tell us differences and similarities between the three husbands?

Why is there a mention of the novel Ben Hur?

What is Mr Waythorn’s way to deal with his wife’s lies?

Compare Mme Bovary with Mrs Waythorn.

 

VOCABULARY

unblemished, ballast, slack, discrimination, champions, stanchest, crape, complexion, innuendoes, rallied, worn his nerves thin, wooing, proffer, “elevated”, overblown, propinquity, call, beringed, swaddled, alluring, obdurate, apprised, paltriness, “Church Sociable”, “picture hat”, chafing, wrought havoc, deprecatingly, groping, bare, lien, geniality, pliantly, abides, harassed, zest, shed, blunders, jarred, nape

My Vocation, By Mary Lavin

BIOGRAPHY, by Maribel Mayorga

Mary Josephine Lavin wrote short stories and novels, and she is now regarded as a pioneer in the field of women's writing.

She is particularly noteworthy for her stories on the topic of widowhood, which are considered her finest.

Mary Lavin was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts, EUA, in 1912, the only child of Tom and Nora Lavin, an immigrant Irish couple. She attended primary school in East Walpole until the age of nine, when her mother decided to go back to Ireland. Initially, Mary lived in Athenry, in County Galway, in the West Coast. Afterwards, her parents bought a house in Dublin.

Mary attended Loreto College, a convent school in Dublin, before going on to study English and French at University College Dublin. She taught French at Loreto College for a while. As a postgraduate student, she published her first short story, "Miss Holland", which appeared in the Dublin Magazine in 1938.

In 1943, Mary published her first book, Tales from Bective Bridge, a volume of ten short stories about life in rural Ireland; it was a critical success and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction

In 1954 her husband died. Lavin, with her reputation as a major writer already well established, was left to confront her responsibilities alone. She raised her three daughters and kept the family farm going at the same time. She also managed to publish short stories, and she won several awards for her work, including the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1961, Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1961, and an honorary doctorate in 1968. Some of her stories written during this period, dealing with the topic of widowhood, are her best stories.

In 1992, the members of Aosdána (an affiliation of creative artists in Ireland) elected Lavin Saoi (one of the highest honours in Irish culture) for achieving "singular and sustained distinction" in literature.
She died in 1996 at the age of 84.

MY VOCATION

My  Vocation was published in 1956 in the Atlantic  Monthly, a magazine in the USA, thanks to  a recommendation from J. D. Salinger (author of The Catcher in the Rye).

This is a story that talks about family, religion, life in Ireland, and about a daughter who was looking for her vocation: she was thinking of becoming a nun. One day she found in an ad in a newspaper that they were looking for applicants. She did not hesitate to write, and she received a telegram in answer to the application. She lived in Dorset Street and the best thing of Dorset Street was that it was like a big happy family, and everyone was proud of the idea of her going to the missions, although she did not like the idea of going with lepers. It was time for the interview: what did she decide for her future?

QUESTIONS

The “dowry”: does the tradition go on in the case of brides?
The smell of people: do you think people smell according their job? Have you read “The perfume”?
What do you know about Mary Magdalen? What is the irony in the story?
What are the Tiller Girls? And the Gaiety? What do you need to have to be a Tiller Girl?

What is the Seven Churches ritual? Is there something similar here?

In the story they say nuns don’t cough or sneeze because they are like angels. Here, when someone sneezes, we say “Jesus!”, or “Health!”, or, in catholic anglophone countries, “Bless you”. But usually in Great Britain, when somebody sneezes, he or she says “Sorry!” Do you know any different habits about sneezing, or yawning or belching?

What do you need to be a waitress, according to the story?

What kind of girl do the boys choose to get married to, according to the story? Do you know other clichés?

What do you know about Mary Alacoque?

What preparations did the mother do for the nuns visit? How did the neighbours help?

Our protagonist ties a knot in her handkerchief: What do you do when you want to remember something?

What do you know about leprosy and lepers? Have you seen the film “Sweet Bean”? And Papillon? What happened to Gaugin in the novel The Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham?

What is a Recruiting Officer?

Describe the two nuns that visit the protagonist’s house.

How did the meeting go?

On page 440, line 20, one of the nuns says: “Oh, we have to be ready for all the eventualities”. What do you think she means?

What cab did the girl order for the nuns? Describe cab, horse, cabby…

Tell us about the accident. Did the nuns get hurt?

At the end: is she going to be a nun? How do you know? What is Dollymount?

PREPARE YOUR SPEECH

 

What do you know (from your experience) about nuns? Did you study in a nun’s school? What do you think about your experience?

Tell us your experience about your call/vocation. Is it easy to know one’s call? An important number of students change studies after their first year: why is it so difficult to choose what one wants to be in one’s life? What would you do if you didn’t like your child’s call?

What do you think of Missions or NGOs? Do they really help the people they say they’re helping?

VOCABULARY

cut out, call, hopscotch, sniff, cheapen, sparky, scrub, hold with, hot jar, kneeler, tightly, dead keen, morosely, dowry, harp on one string, start the ball rolling, front, ram, lore, square meal, lug, return room, being any the wiser, raffle, stub, back out of, gorgeous, wear away, pickle, daft, flighty, cabby, bucket, caper

Many Are Disappointed, by V. S. Pritchett

BIOGRAPHY (from last year), by Rafel Martínez

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London businessman, started several businesses, but, due to his insecurity and his tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear, so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of Walter, the father.

The family moved to East Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an excellent travel chronicle about our country.

In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships.

During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).

Sir Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his time.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.

THE STORY

Four cyclists going on a ride expect to find a bar or a pub at the top of a hill, but they are disappointed because there is only a house with the old sign “Tavern”, that can mean an inn (that is no alcohol), so they won’t be able to have some beers. They have followed this road in the hope of sightseeing an antient Roman way: second disappointment. And thus, so on with some more. In the house there’s a small and frail woman with her daughter, also a little girl. The woman is happy to serve them some tea with some light food, although they would rather have had stronger food. At the end, they are happy with their tea, and they even start to have some feelings for the woman and her child. After tea, they went back again in search of a pub, and the woman feels very happy to have had them at home, and this not only for the money she got from their meal.

I think there are two very interesting features in this story. First, the characters: you don’t find the typical way of composing a story: the narrator begins introducing the characters with a full description, physical and psychological; instead, you have to unite the different pieces of the characters to form them, like in a puzzle. What did the author do this for? And second, the title. In the story, there are a lot of disappointments, and everyone has their own disappointment. But in the end, I think they are satisfied with what they had, at the end disappointment has been disappointed.

Many Are disappointed: Analisys

Many Are disappointed: Review

QUESTIONS

Look for and jot down information about the characters in order to describe them (surname, appearance, personality, age, likes and dislikes…)

Bert
Sid
Harry
Ted
The woman
The girl

What kind of bike are they riding? How do you know?

What different feelings does the woman have for the four different men?

Why does Sid think that he had seen the woman before? Does he want to flirt with her?

In which part of Great Britain is the story situated (look for the toponyms in a map)?

Why is there a confusion between Romans and Gypsies?

Describe the meal.

Why do you think the woman trusts a very confidential thing (she almost died) to Sid?

Do you think the house is really a “tea-house”? Why?

Explain all you know about the ring.

Are the really sportsmen? How do you know?

Why did or didn’t you like the story?

VOCABULARY

dunno, out-building, ruddy, skylark, stubborn, reed, meadows, hedge, wiry, whimper, frail, drab, moist, dumbfounded, sell, gasper, treacle (coloured), drizzle, dazed, dippy, cocksure, splice, flash, dawdle, drably, scabious, bin, boldly, wants, pout

The Family Man, by V. S. Pritchett

V. S. Pritchett at the Wikipedia: click here

The Family Man: analisis (text and audio)

Summaries of other Pritchett's stories: click here

PRESENTATION, by Rafel Martínez

BIOGRAPHY

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, was born in Suffolk, on 16 December 1900, he was the first of four children of Walter Sawdon Pritchett and Beatrice Helena. His father, a London businessman, started several businesses, but due to his insecurity and his tendency to credit and embezzlement, had to close the businesses and disappear, so the family was forced to change their address to different cities, such as Ipswich, Woodford, Essex or Derby, which forced the children to change schools frequently, all to circumvent the persecution of the numerous creditors of Walter, the father.

The family moved to East Dulwich and he attended Alleyn's School, but when his paternal grandparents came to live with them at age 16, he was forced to leave school to work as a clerk for a leather buyer in Bermondsey. The leather work lasted from 1916 until 1920 when he moved to Paris to work as a shop assistant. In 1923 he started writing for The Christian Science Monitor, which sent him to Ireland and Spain. Pritchett, along with his friend and writer Gerald Brenan, is one of the few Englishmen who, in the early 1930s, toured the Spanish territory. From that youthful experience, Pritchett wrote Marching Spain, which appeared in 1928. However, it was not until 1954 that, already a consecrated writer, he published The Spanish Temperament, an excellent travel chronicle about our country.

In 1936 he divorced his first wife and married Dorothy Rudge Roberts, by whom he had two children; the marriage lasted until Pritchett's death in 1997, although they both had other relationships.

During the Second World War Pritchett worked for the BBC and the Ministry of Information while continuing to write weekly essays for the New Statesman. After World War II he wrote extensively and embarked on various university teaching positions in the United States: Princeton (1953), the University of California (1962), Columbia University and Smith College. Fluent in French, German and Spanish, he published acclaimed biographies of Honoré de Balzac (1973), Ivan Turgenev (1977), and Anton Chekhov (1988).

Sir Pritchett was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 1975 for "services to literature" and a Companion of Honour in 1993, in addition to other multiple decorations and mentions throughout his life, which makes him the best English author of his time.

Sir V. S. Pritchett died of a stroke in London on 20 March 1997.

THE STORY

This work, written by V.S. Pritchett, like all the other tales of him, are considered masterpieces that make their author to be considered as the best writer in England of the 20th century.

Like all his works, these are stories of normal people, with ordinary lives and that the author deals with that typical English irony, the well-known English humour. In most cases the actors are put in scenes that we all recognize as picturesque and that the author deals with his fine vision of double meaning and irony that the reader finds so funny.

In this case it is one story of a middle-class promiscuous man called William Cork with the pet name ‘Bunny’. He is a womanizer, a professor at a college, a married man with children, and a compulsive flute player. He has affairs with numerous women. The story is told from the viewpoint of one of his mistresses from the college, a jewellery designer called Berenice. In the story, Berenice comes face to face with Florence Cork, the obese wife of William. Mrs Cork has come across a letter sent to William in secret and she presumes Berenice is the sender.

The author fills with constant hints, especially sexual, the interpretation of his actors, with comic scenes such as when Bernice and Mrs Cork treat the theme of William's flute, one referring to her husband's musical instrument and the other, Bernice, understanding the flute's reference as William's penis, her lover.

ANALYSIS

I have to confess that it is my first approach to a work by V. S. Pritchett and when I chose the title The Family Man, at first I confused it with the American film, A Family Man, directed by Mark William, and with main actors, Gerard Butler, William Defoe, that is about a businessman who must choose between promoting himself running a large Chicago company or tending his family life.

After reading three times Pritchett's work, I have ended up understanding many phrases and its double meaning that are the characteristic of its author, where he mixes simple events of normal lives with his fine humour and typical English irony.

Now that I have known a work by Pritchett, I promise to look for and read other works, to confirm that in his genre he was the best author of his time.

QUESTIONS

William Cork: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice Foster: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice's flat
Benerice's father
What is a Quaker?
Sexual allusions in the story
Florence Cork: appearance, personality, job...
Benerice's talent for lying / telling the truth
Describe the affair between William and Benerice
When Benerice thinks about marriages going on holiday, she imagines "the legs of their children running across the sand". Why the legs?
Who was Rosie?
How does the relation between Benerice and Florence progress?
What does William usually do after making love with Benerice?
The necklace
Mrs Cork said: "Don't be jealous of Mrs Glowitz, dear. You'll get your turn." What's the double meaning of this sentence?
Can you tell the difference between "swoosh her hair" and "put it up"?

VOCABULARY

dawdle, piquancy, blob, droop, lurch, flourish, soft-soap, twaddle, flopped, rummage, harass, bicker, slapdash, hang-dog, wisp, dab (dabbing), pushy, talk somebody's head off

SOME NOTES ABOUT V. S. PRITCHETT

He had a terrible handwriting and his manuscripts were so full of corrections and blots that only his wife was capable to decipher his texts and type them. She used an Imperial typewriter, and she typed with such a speed and strength that it sounded exactly as a gun machine.

V. S Pritchett was born in 1900, so he used to say that he was as old as the century, or that the century was as old as he. He wanted to be called V.S.P. because he didn’t like his first name Victor. His mother would rather like a girl and she would name her after the queen Victoria, but, as he was a boy, he was called Victor.

When he was a child his family used to move house frequently, and he sometimes lived with his grandparents near York. His father never lasted long in a job and changed employment very often.

Pritchett couldn’t go to university (his family were poor) and he had to work in a leather company, but he could work for the firm as a clerk in Paris. However he wanted to be an artist. He started to paint because in 1921 Paris was full of artists. He did his first picture in two weeks, but when he looked at it he saw was a failure, so he abandoned his painting career after fifteen days. Then he decided to write, but one has to have something to write and he didn’t have anything to say. However, by chance, he had a lucky strike: there was a jokes contest in a newspaper; you had to write a joke and send it to the paper. His joke (it was a regular joke) was published and, although he didn’t get any money, he was very happy. Now he knew that if you don’t have anything to say, at least you can tell what others say, and he started his career as a writer.

To write well he thought he could imitate what writers did before him, and he discovered that some writers used to walk a lot, and so he walked very long walks. Also he read that Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) said the best thing to do to start writing was to write about small things or about things that are near you. Following this piece of advice he wrote about his room, send the text to the newspapers and... three newspapers accepted his articles. Now he could say he was a real author because he earned money with his texts.

He didn’t like to reread his articles or his stories because afterwards he found them very poor, and so he got very sad about his talent; but then he discovered that this was a common feeling in lots of writers: it’s the depression after the work is done. So some writers, as himself, get satisfaction in the act itself, and not after the text is deemed finished.

After Paris, in 1923 he travelled to Ireland (after obtaining the independence from Great Britain and in the middle of a civil war) and became a newspaper’s correspondent. There, in that country fond of beer and whiskey, he discovered that drinking alcohol don’t make you write better, but exactly the other way round, and he banned liquors forever when he wrote.

He wrote his first short stories in Ireland, where from an Irishman he got the inspiration for the short story Sense of Humour, and in Spain, about where he wrote a pair of books.

The Family Man was published in 1979 in his collection of short stories On the Edge of the Cliff.