Who Dealt, by Ring Lardner

Ring Lardner at the Wikipedia

Ring Lardner, by Sílvia Brunet

BIOGRAPHY

Ringgold William "Ring" Lardner (1885 -1933) was an American sports columnist and satirical short story writer who enjoyed poking fun at revered institutions such as marriage, theatre, and sports. His works were admired by his contemporaries, renowned authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and J.D. Salinger.

Born in Niles, Michigan, the youngest of nine children in a wealthy family, Lardner knew he wanted to be a newspaper man early on. In childhood he wore a brace for his deformed foot until he was eleven. As a teenager, he began work at the South Bend Tribune, then moved on to the South Bend Times, before moving to Chicago where in 1913, he published a syndicated column in the Chicago Tribune, titled "In the Wake of the News." It was carried by over 100 newspapers.

Lardner married Ellis Abbot in 1911.They had four sons, all of whom became professional writers. His son James Lardner was killed in the Spanish Civil War fighting with the International Brigades.

In 1916, Lardner published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, a collection of fictional letters by a bush-league baseball player, loaded with satire about athletics' propensity for stupidity and greed. Some of the letters were published as short stories in The Saturday Evening Post the same year. Lardner's love for writing about the game faded after the "Black Sox Scandal" when the Chicago White Sox sold out the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Lose with a Smile (1933) was his last published collection of fictional baseball writings.

In addition to sports, Lardner admired the theatre, and co-wrote a three-act play which made it to Broadway, called Elmer The Great, with the legendary George M. Cohan.

Lardner died on September 25, in 1933, at the age of 48 in East Hampton, New York, of a heart attack due to complications from tuberculosis.

WHO DEALT?

The story “Who Dealt?” by Ring Lardner was written in 1925. It is written in first person. The story happens while two young couples are playing bridge. The characters are the Cannon couple (Tom and the narrator -we don’t know the name) and the Gratz couple (Arthur and Helen) who are the hosts.

The narrator is Mrs Cannon who is talking and talking all the time during the bridge game, about her life and other matters in an innocent and silly way. During her speech we began to know information about the four characters.

First of all, we know that Tom and, Arthur and Helen were real friends all their life. And there was a special friendship between Tom and Helen when they were kids. We also know, that the Cannon were married three months ago and the Gratz were married four years ago. She knows that Helen is a good singer. And she explains that Tom is abstaining from alcoholic beverages since they were married. She says that Tom is a secretive person. She continued talking about Tom experience with horrid football people at Yale, about their honeymoon in Chicago, about clothes, about the possibility of Tom to run for mayor thanks to the Guthrie couple, about how was Mrs Guthrie… Meanwhile, she was very bad playing cards, but she doesn’t mind.

There’s a point in the story when all seems to change, is when she begins to talk about the relation with her husband Tom. She starts saying that she and Tom are made for each other and agree in everything, but not in music, not in cultural matters, not in things to eat… She continues explaining us that she broke some Tom’s habits like big breakfast or taking his shoes off when he gets home, or changing the nightgown to a pajamas…

The tension is in crescendo when she confesses that Tom is an author, because she had found a sad poem dated four years ago and it was about other girl. And she explains too, he has written a story about two men and a girl which they were all brought up together. One man was rich, and popular like Arthur, and the other was an ordinary man like Tom, with no money, but the girl like him and promised to wait for him. She got tired waiting the poor man and married the rich one. The Tom story ends when they meet again and they pretend everything was all right, but his heart was broken.

The culminant point is when Mrs Cannon starts to recite Tom’s sad poem and the characters feel reflected on it.

In that moment Helen revoked in the game and Tom starts drinking Scotch again!

I wonder if Mrs Cannon is as innocent and silly as it seems…

QUESTIONS

Talk about the different people (job, the way they play cards, financial situation, hobbies, sports, studies, habits, clothes… anything you know about them)

The narrator Mrs Cannon

Tom Cannon

Arthur Gratz

Helen Gratz

Ted Jones

Ken Baker

Gertie Baker

A.L. Guthrie

Mrs Guthrie

Mr Hastings

What is a real friend for you? How do you know when a friend is a real friend? Do you think a real friend has to be a friend from your childhood, or you can make friends at any period of your life?

What is your opinion about boasting of children/husband/wife?

Would the narrator be a good detective, as she said of herself?

Do you know this saying, “You don’t know a person until you’ve travelled with them”? I think there is another one as good as this: “You don’t know a person until you’ve been a partner in a card game with them”. What do you think?

Do you like poetry? What kind of poetry do you read? What is your opinion about Tom’s poem in the story?

What is the meaning of the last sentence, “Why, Tom!”

What do these names refer to?

Black Oxen

Bryn Mawr

Irving Berlin

Gershwin

Jack Kearns

Humoresque

Indian Love Lyrics

Ed Wynn

The Fool

Lightnin’

Robert Chambers

Irving R. Cobb

VOCABULARY

on the wagon, drop, limelight, dumb, fooled, raved, worm things out, nine, half-back, tackle, had it in for, whose lead?, odd, wild, put on the Ritz, dummy, overbids, raise, run for mayor, lumbermen, janitor, it's all apple sauce, bashful, ace, sloppy, mushiest, T.L., pull, bell-boy, lobby, paging, the inside ropes, pull

The Runaway, by Morley Callaghan

Morley Callaghan at the Wikipedia

The Runaway: summary

The Runaway at the "Esquire"

Morley Callaghan, by Roser Gelabert

BIOGRAPHY

Morley Callaghan was born in 1903, in Toronto, into an Irish Roman Catholic family. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1925. During his college years, Callaghan held a summer job as a reporter with the Toronto Daily Star, where he met Ernest Hemingway. The two exchanged stories, and Hemingway encouraged Callaghan in his writing. In 1925 Callaghan enrolled in a law school at Osgoode Hall, in Toronto, and was admitted to the Ontario Bar in 1928, but he did not practice law.

Callaghan’s career as a writer began in 1921, when he sold a descriptive piece to the Toronto Star Weekly. In 1926 published his first story in the Paris magazine, This Quarter and started on his first novel Strange Fugitive, and his stories began to appear regularly in American and European magazines. Callaghan married Loreta Dee in 1929 and went to Paris for eight months. There he was part of the great gathering of writers in Montparnasse that included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce. He recalled this time in a memoir, That Summer in Paris, 1963; in the book he discusses the famous boxing match between himself and Hemingway, and, being Callaghan a better boxer, he knocked Hemingway to the floor.

The 1930s were an active and prolific period for Callaghan. His work was strongly affected by the experiences of the Depression. He published four novels, and he produced a second collection of stories, Now that April’s Here and Other Stories. And wrote two plays in 1939.

During World War II, Callaghan was attached to the Royal Canadian Navy and served on assignment for the National Film Board of Canada. He also become a well-known radio figure.

Callaghan’s novels and short stories are marked by Roman Catholicism, often focusing on individuals whose essential characteristic is a strong but often weakened sense of self.

Callaghan was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1960. In 1982, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

A long time Toronto resident, Callaghan remained independent until the end of his life. He broke a hip in 1989 at the age of 86, but still persisted in walking to his neighbourhood grocery store to do his shopping. He died of natural causes in Toronto on August 25, 1990.

 

THE STORY

The protagonist in this story is an adolescent boy named Michael. He is younger than some of his friends he is much bigger physically. His life is divided between the pleasures of childhood, the problems at home and the pangs of love. Michael's behaviour is affected for these tensions. It is due to these tensions that at first jumps down on the sawdust and the same tension disallows him to jump down the second time, while all other boys are able to do, so he becomes a subject of jeer. Only to stablish his superiority, he goes out to fight with a coloured boy, but then he makes friends with him and finds several qualities in the opponent. He loves his father and also his stepmother, he has a soft corner for his stepmother, but is unable to establish a good relationship with her because she reprimands him, though for his own good. What disturbs him more is that his father and stepmother quarrel all the time, and that makes Michael feel unhappy and sorrowful. He is also ashamed that their hot arguments can be heard by the passers-by and those living in the neighbourhood.

Added to this tension is the fact that he is unable to stablish communication with the girl he loves. He can’t find the right words to talk to her. One of the major reasons for him to decide to escape is when he realizes that she is in a relation with another boy.

He feels trapped in a society where everyone knows everyone and a family where his father had constant arguments with his stepmother.  He wants to be with unknown people, but then he is going to his uncle in the city. Thus, we see that he is suffering from contradictory feelings all the time, unable to decide clearly what he wants.

It is then not a surprise that Michael feels the need to escape, to run away from everybody and visit “places with beautiful names, places like Tia Juana, Woodbine, Saratoga and Blue Bonnets.”

Michael, however, is not an irresponsible guy, he has plans to settle with his uncle in the city he plans to write his agony to his father from the city. The story ends with a wide-open future to the young boy.

 

CONCLUSION

Adolescence is the most difficult stage of life. Teenagers are difficult to manage. They can be very sensitive, perhaps too sensitive on some occasions. They are often contradictory. It is hard to understand what they are going through; and due to this, they are likely to do strange things, which are done by Michael in this story.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters:

>Mike / Michael

>Father

>Mother / Stepmother

>Helen Murray

>Art

Teenagers:

>What characteristics define a teenager?

>What is the meaning of “adolescence”?

>Teenagers now, are they the same they were in “our time”? Why?

>Doing something risky, or difficult, seems to be the typical challenge for teenagers, like a rite of passage. Do you remember some anecdote / story related to it?

>Do you remember any other short stories or novels where the teenagers are the stars, e.g., The Lord of the Flies?

>Do you think Mike’s feelings for his parents reflect the typical teenager feelings for theirs?

Fighting: is it a way to make friends? (Remember The Quiet Man and Women in Love)

Why was Mike worried when his father didn’t go out of the shed?

Why do you think at a moment the narrator says “Heavy clouds were sweeping up from the horizon” (384, 4)? And what about “The moonlight shining on the hay” (390, 2)?

At the end, Mikes to look for the places he mentions because of the beauty of the names: do you know something about the chapter in Proust “Names of countries”?

VOCABULARY

lumberyard, sawdust, whitecaps, stump, yellow, coaxing, fob, lick, humoring, cinder path, flour-and-feed, loafers, crony, glumy, roughcast, shack, coon, snowball's chance, pop, clucking, stoop, woodpecker, pocket, shipyard, dogged, clover

The Monkey's Paw, by W. W. Jacobs

W.W. Jacobs at the Wikipedia

The Monkey's Paw at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

Movie

Study guide

W.W. JACOBS
By Aurora Ledesma

BIOGRAPHY
 
William Wymark Jacobs was born on September 8^th, 1863 in Wapping (London). The eldest son of William Gage Jacobs, and his first wife, Sophia Wymark, who died when Jacob was very young. Jacob’s father was the manager of a South Devon wharf, and young Jacobs spent much time with his brothers and sisters among the wharves, observing the comings and goings of the ships and their crews.
The Jacobs were a large poor family and; young W.W. as he was called by his friends, was shy and had a fair complexion. Jacobs attended a private school in London and later went to Birkbeck College (now part of the University of London). In 1879, Jacobs began work as a clerk in the civil service, in the Post Office Savings Bank, and by 1885 he had his first short story published, but success come slowly. Most of his work was humorous, and his favourite subject was marine life. His first collection of stories “Many Cargoes” shows the lives of men who go down to the sea in ships.
Jacobs is remembered for a macabre tale, “The Monkey’s Paw”, which was published in 1902 in a short-story collection, The Lady of the Barge, with several other ghost stories.
Another collection of short stories, Sea Urchins, made him very popular. From October 1898, Jacob’s stories appeared in the Strand Magazine, which provided him with financial security almost up to his death.
By 1899, Jacobs was able to quit his job at the post office and finally begin making a living as a full-time writer. He married Agnes Eleanor Williams. The couple had five children, though their marriage was considered an unhappy one.
In his late years, Jacobs wrote dramatizations and adaptations of his existing stories. Jacobs’s legacy remains solid: he continued Dickens’s tradition for sharing working class stories in authentic vernacular.
Jacobs died in a North London nursing home on September 1st, 1943 a week prior to his 80^th birthday.

SUMMARY

On a dark and stormy night, the family Mr. & Mrs. White and their son Herbert, are enjoying a cosy evening around the fire. A family friend, Sergeant - Major Morris arrives for a visit and tells them stories about his adventures during his military service in India. He shows them a monkey’s paw and tells them that it has the power to grant anyone three wishes. Mr. White is interested in buying it; however, Morris says that people have bad luck after their wishes are granted. When he was about to throw the paw in the fire, Mr. White grabs it from him.

After Morris left, the family discusses the wishes. Mr. White, following Herbert’s suggestion, asks for 200 pounds which he can use to pay off his mortgage.  The family waits, but nothing happens. Next day, Herbert goes to work and does not return. In the evening, a person from his company comes to their house and tells them that their son has had an accident with the machinery and died. He says that the company is not responsible for the accident. However, as compensation the company gives the family a check of 200 Pounds.

Mr. White goes to identify his son’s body and bury it. After a short discussion, Mrs. White orders his husband to make a wish to see her son alive. After a while, somebody knocks at the door, and she goes to open it. Mr. White remembers his son’s mutilated body during the burial and makes the third wish. The knocking at the door suddenly stops, they open the door and find no one there.

The Monkey’s Paw is a very popular story. A lot of films, T.V. series and plays have been made about it. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador made a chapter for the TVE series “Historias para no dormir”.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters
>Mr White

>Mrs White

>Herbert White

>Sergeant Morris

>The man from Maw & Meggins

Mrs White tries to calm down her husband when he's lost the game. What do you usually do to calm down another person?

Let's talk about superstitions, magic, talismans... Do you have any anecdote about the topic?

What do you think about fate? Do you believe in fate? Do you think there is a relation between cosmos and people?

Can you imagine which were the sergeant wishes?

And the first man's wishes?

What did Mrs White wish for the house?

If you had three wishes, what would you wish and why?

Do you remember other ways of saying wishes? Can you explain them?

Do you think Mrs White would accept her son as he was after the accident?

Would you do the same as the father with the third wish? Why?

Can you imagine another ending for the story?

VOCABULARY
knitting, grimly, mate, slushy, condoling, beady of eye, doughy, offhandedly, spell, jarred, sensible, henpecked, marred, squatting, wholesomeness, disown, bibulous, silk hat, dozed, fitfully, bracket, mantelpiece, china, screwing up

Guests of the Nation, by Frank O'Connor

Frank O'Connor at the Wikipedia

Guests of the Nation at the Wikipedia

Guests of the Nation at encyclopaedia.com

Analysis

1935 Movie

TV Movie

Film adaptation

Irish Wars movie

Michael Collins movie

BIOGRAPHY

Frank O’Connor is the pseudonym of Michael Francis O'Connor O'Donovan, he was born in September 17, 1903 in Cork, Ireland, only child of Michael O'Donovan, labourer and sometime British army soldier, and Mary (‘Minnie’) O'Connor, domestic servant. He was raised in an extremely chaotic and poor environment and his early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, debt, and ill-treatment of his mother. His childhood was shaped in part by his mother, who supplied much of the family's income by cleaning houses, because his father was unable to keep steady employment due to his drunkenness. O'Connor adored his mother and was bitterly resentful of his father.

He has recounted the early years of his life in one of his best books, An Only Child, a memoir published in1961 and continued his autobiography in his book, My Father's Son, which was published in 1968, posthumously. In his memoirs, he recalled his childhood as "those terrible years” and admitted that he had never been able to forgive his father for his abuse of himself and his mother.
He received little formal education in Saint Patrick’s School in Cork, but his family's poverty forced him to leave school aged fourteen. As a child he was taught briefly by Daniel Corkery (1878–1964), who was also a later mentor and encouraged his learning Irish.
In 1918, he joined the First Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and served in combat during the Irish War of Independence. He opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joined the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War, working in a small propaganda unit in Cork City. He was imprisoned in the Gormanston camp between 1922 and 1923.
After this episode he turned against republicanism and political violence generally. His experiences in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War are reflected in The Big Fellow, his biography of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, published in 1937, and one of his best-known short stories, Guests of the Nation (1931), published in various forms during O'Connor's lifetime and included in Frank O'Connor-Collected Stories, published in 1981.
Between 1924 and 1928, he taught Irish in country schools, worked as a librarian in Wicklow, Cork, and continued to train himself for a writing career. In these years he adopted pseudonym “Frank O’Connor” to keep his position as a librarian and retain independence as a writer. He published stories, reviews and translations in The Irish Statesman, Dublin Magazine, The Tribune.
With Sean Hendrick, founded the Cork Drama League to stage continental playwrights such as Chekhov and Ibsen. In 1928 he moved to Dublin to become librarian of Pembroke Library in Ballsbridge.
From 1935 to 1939 he was a director of the Abbey Theatre and worked in close contact with W.B. Yeats, its founder. Two plays were produced by him in the Abbey: In the Train (1937) and Moses Rock (1938). He became best known for his short stories publishing a several number of collections from 1936.
In 1937, he made his first broadcast on Radio Eireann.
In 1939, he married Evelyn Bowen. They had a son and a daughter, and they were divorced in 1953.
In 1941, he produced, The Statue's Daughter, at the Gate Theatre and began working with the BBC in London. Many of his stories, like Midnight Court, were later banned.
During World War II (1939 to 1945), he worked as a broadcaster for the British Ministry of Information.
Following the war, in 1945, O’Connor began a twenty-yearlong association with the American magazine The New Yorker. During this time, he had to readapt his narrative style and innovate some techniques to appeal to his new reading public.
At the age of 48, he became a teacher at Northwester University and Harvard.
In 1950, he accepted invitations to teach in the United States, and worked as a visiting professor. In this country many of his short stories had been published in The New Yorker and won great acclaim. He spent much of the 1950s in the United States.
He married, secondly in 1953 with Harriet Rich of Baltimore, whom he met while lecturing at North-Western University (Evanston -Illinois-). They had one daughter.
In 1961, he had a stroke while teaching at Stanford University and he returned to Ireland. He died from a heart attack in Dublin, Ireland on 10 March 1966.
O'Connor's literary career, which lasted more than 40 years (1922-1966), was very prolific. He published over two dozen volumes of varied literary types: several plays in collaboration and alone, most of them produced at the Abbey Theatre, where he was once a director; translations from the Irish such as The Wild Bird's Nest (1932); verse such as Three Old Brothers (1936); local travel writing such as Leinster, Munster and Connaught (1950); criticism such as Mirror in the Roadway (1956); novels such as The Saint and Mary Kate (1932); short stories in several collections, including Crab Apple Jelly (1944); and the autobiographical volumes An Only Child (1961) and My Father's Son (1969). He also wrote about 300 known pieces of journalism, including many reviews, as well as articles on social, political, and cultural issues. He made about 175 radio and television broadcasts in Ireland and Britain and a few in the United States. 

Frank O'Connor Festival and Prize

Since 2000, The Munster Literature Centre in O'Connor's hometown of Cork has run a festival dedicated to the short story form in O'Connor's name: The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award which is awarded to the best short fiction collection published in English anywhere in the world in the year preceding the festival. The prize is also opened to translated works and in the event of a translation winning the prize is divided equally between author and translator. The award is described as "the richest prize for the short story form" and is one of the most valuable literary prizes for any category of literature.

 

GUESTS OF THE NATION 

Film Inspiration

Guests of the Nation has been filmed several times. The first film was a silent one, directed in 1934 by Denis Johnston and featuring Barry Fitzgerald and Cyril Cusack. The second one, was the Neil Jordan’s award-winning film The Crying Game (1992) which partially adapted the story for another period of Irish revolutionary violence called de Troubles in the 1970s and 80s

 Plot

Guests of the Nation is about two Englishmen, Hawkins and Belcher, who are held prisoner by Bonaparte, Donovan, and Noble, members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), somewhere in Ireland, during the Irish War of Independence in the early 20^th century. The story is told by Bonaparte, who recalls his time guarding both prisoners.
Belcher and Hawkins live in an old woman's house with the two Irishmen, Noble and Bonaparte, who are supposed to keep an eye on them. They all spend a lot of time together arguing, playing cards, discussing politics and religion as if they weren't part of the armed conflict that surrounds them. They have become true comrades and friends.
Donovan, the third Irishman, is the officer in charge of the small Irish group, and he is not so friendly with the Englishmen.
When Donovan informs Bonaparte that although Englishmen are prisoners, they are also being held as hostages, so if the English shoot any of their Irish prisoners, they are going to execute Hawkins and Belcher in revenge, Bonaparte is surprised by this news, and he says that he is not comfortable with the idea of killing them.

The next day, in the evening, while they are playing cards, Donovan asks for the two prisoners, then he notifies them that four Irish soldiers have been executed by de British, including a sixteen-year-old boy, so they are going to be killed in retaliation. They cannot understand what happen because they believe that a friend could never murder a friend they are all friends. Hawkins even offers to leave the British Army and join the Irish, in his opinion friendship is more important than a war. But Donovan ignores this and shoots him. Later, Donovan tries to excuse his action by claiming that he’s only doing his duty, but Belcher says that he is not agree with what duty means, however he doesn’t blame them, and call them “good lads”. Then, Donovan shoots Belcher and kills him, too.

After finishing their "duty" and burying the prisoners, Noble and Bonaparte return to the woman's house very sad. Their reactions to the traumatic experiences they have lived through are different. As Noble and the old woman fall to their knees in prayer, Bonaparte goes outside to look at the stars and listen to the birds, feeling far away from everything and a great loneliness.

This interesting and cruel story shows that people from different countries and with different views on life can be friends and live together in peace. But when it happens in a time of war and everyone has to do their duty, even if their hearts tell them otherwise, they should not put their friendship before their obligations.
We can find several other topics in this story, apart from duty, war and friendship, which are currently very present in our society, and which are sometimes a source of conflict, such as national identity, home and family, religion, spirituality and materialism.

https://www.dib.ie/biography/oconnor-frank-a6631
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/666705
https://www.irishplayography.com/person.aspx?personid=38813
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-OConnor
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Frank_O%27Connor
https://frankoconnor.ucc.ie/introduction_to_foc.php%3Fteanga=.html
https://prabook.com/web/frank.o_connor/3737936

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/guests-of-the-nation#context

QUESTIONS

Talk about the different characters

    Belcher

    ‘Awkins

    Noble

    Bonaparte (the narrator)

    Jeremiah Donovan

    The woman

Historical context: What do you know about the independence of Ireland?

    1916 Rising

    Bloody Sunday

    Independence War

    Civil War

What is the Stockholm syndrome?

What do you know about the Lima Syndrome?

What do the prisoners and guards do to pass away the time?

Jeremiah has all the time his hands in his pockets. What can this attitude suggest?

“Our lads didn’t dance foreign dances on principle” (372, 9-10). What do you think of this kind of “boycott”? Do you know another one that is curious or singular?

What is your opinion about “cursing and bad language”? Why do you think some people use a lot of 4-letter words?

What is the limit of duty? Can duty be an excuse in front of justice, or in front of your conscience?

They shot the two Englishmen as a retaliation for the shooting of four Irishmen. What is the difference between justice and revenge?

Do you think it would have been a better solution to accept the desertion of ‘Awkings?

How can the Irish Militia prove that they have shot the prisoners if they bury them?

What do you think Bonaparte is going to do after this experience? What would you do?

VOCABULARY

chum, produce, tray, stayed put, took to, arskin, tunics, crochety, hatchet, parlatic, platoon, fleeced, comedown, gulp, fust, strolled, spell, all and sundry, jest, arsk, bleedin', bumped off, put the wind up, hinder, gibing, shifted, sidled, bog, houseen, telling her beads, crabbed

Sinners, by Seán Ó Faoláin

Biography

Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1900. He studied in a religious school and his primary school was in Gaelic. As he was born as John Francis Whelan, we have to suppose he changed his name into Gaelic. When he went to university in Dublin, he joined the Irish Volunteers, and he fought for the Irish independence. He got disappointed with the outcome of the Independence War and the Irish Civil War and he went  to study in Harvard, in the USA, and then he worked in some high schools and universities in England where he taught Gaelic. He only came back to Ireland in 1933 where he worked in his short stories, novels and in literary magazines.

His most famous book is Midsummer Night Madness, a collection of short stories about the Civil War.
For Irish people he’s a controversial figure, because some of his books were banned for indecency and because he wasn’t satisfied with the creation of the free Ireland as it was. He was very critical with some of conservative aspects of the Irish nationalism and the Catholic Church.
He died in Dublin at the age of 91.

Seán Ó Faoláin the Wikipedia

Plots of some of his stories

SINNERS

This is a story about a religious confession of an orphan girl. She was picked up at the orphanage by Mrs Higgins as a maid. Now she has to go on confession because her patron knows she has stolen her boots and wants to recover them by the way of her avowal to the canon confessor. Mrs Higgins has told the canon about the girl and her pair of boots and asked him to elicit the girl’s “sin” and then make her to give the boots back to her.

But the thing isn’t going to be so easy because there is the secret of confession, and, of course, it’s supposed the confessor cannot know the girl’s sins through another person; and also, because the girl is a simpleton and the canon has no patience with her. The canon is an old man and, after a life of confessions for no good, he is already fed up with the mean spirit of the people, his trivial problems and their failure in improving their morals. Will the girl confess her robbery? Will Mrs Higgins get back her pair of boots? Will the canon be in peace at the end?

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters in the story:

The canon

Father Deeley

The girl

Mrs Higgins

What does the canon do to control his anger? Do you know other ways to calm you down? Which one do you use?

It seems that in Ireland there are (or were) a lot of orphanages: Why do you think there were so many? Have you seen “Song for a Raggy Boy” or “The Lost Child of Philomena Lee”?

What is a Freemason? What do you know about the Freemasonry?

Do you think is it possible not to commit a “sin” in 5 years? What is the limit between a small “sin” and a big “sin” for you? Can be there a general rule or does it depend of every person in particular?

Do you think confession can help people (like a kind of psychological therapy)?

And penance? Can penance help you when you feel you’ve made a mistake?

The canon is old and Deeley is young. What advantage has an old person to a young person, according he canon? Do you think he is right?

Ambrose Bierce said that a secret is something you tell only to one person. Do you think is it possible to keep a secret? Even for a priest?

What do you think of the confession in general?

VOCABULARY

grille, restiveness, sigillum, pettish, shade, prevarication, forestalled, gospel, lattice, shudder, slur, wisha, gasped, flaking, wan, prying, poking, prodding, picking at, lashings and leavings of, starved, immodest, blunty, whimper, urchins, spittle, gabble, cross, cosily, cokalorum, jade

The Enormous Radio, by John Cheever

 

John Cheever at the Wikipedia

The Enormous Radio at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

Missoury Waltz, by Johnny Cash

The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

Whiffenpoof Song

Oranges and Lemons

Biography, by Begoña Devis

 

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. His father was the owner of a shoe factory, which went bankrupt with the crash of 29, and the family fell into relative poverty. After this fact, the father left the family, and the young Cheever lived for a time in Boston with his brother. During that period he survived by publishing articles and stories in various media.

He was expelled from the academy for smoking, which ended his education and this was the core of his first short story, Expelled, which Malcom Cowley bought for the New Republican newspaper. From that moment, Cheever devoted himself entirely to writing short stories that progressively found space in several magazines and newspapers, and finally in the famous magazine The New Yorker, with which he maintained, until the end of these days, an intense relationship.

He was called the Chekhov of the suburbs, because many of his stories occurred in the middle class neighbourhoods that were born around New York during the recovery of the economy after the Second World War.

In 1957 he won The National Book Award for his first novel, and in 1971 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his compilation of stories. He wrote primarily about the decline of the American dream, alcoholism and homosexuality, and sometimes his characters had dubious moral.

A movie was made from his short story The Swimmer in 1957, played by Burt Lancaster. At the time it was unsuccessful, but now it is considered a cult film by cinephiles.

John Cheever died in New York in 1982 at the age of 70.

The story

Many of Cheever's stories, like this one, revolve around the people who live in large cities in the second half of the twentieth century, and the particular strains this imposes upon them. In The Enormous Radio, Jim Wescott decides to buy a new radio as a present for his wife, without knowing the dramatic effect it would have on her life or what it would reveal about the lives of the people living in the same block as them.

QUESTIONS

In the first paragraph there are a lot of mentions to numbers, averages and statistics. What effect do you think the author wants to give?

What is your opinion about statistics?

The first paragraph defines the class which Jim and Irene, and their neighbours, belong to. But on page 3 there are more details: Can you tell us which are these other details?

Describe the main characters:

           Jim Westcott

Irene Westcott

Describe the new radio (appearance and “personality”).

How does the new radio change Irene’s way of looking at people? Give some examples.

Why do you think Irene Westcott went on listening to the radio?

When Irene saw a group of Salvation Army people in the street, she said they were much nicer than a lot of people they knew. What do you think she meant by this? Why are they nicer?

What do we learn from the story about the way of life of middle-class Americans in the 4os?

What differences in personality do you notice between Jim and Irene Westcott?

What worries them most: to hear the other people or to be heard by the other people?

How do you think you would react if you bought a radio like the one in the story?

Think about what can happen when you give a present and the person who gets it doesn’t like it, or the present turns out badly (e.g., a gremlin).

Irene tells her husband to stop a man beating his wife. Would you interfere? What would you do?

Give some information about the different families/houses.

What differences and similarities can you see between this radio and the screens in the novel 1984?

Can you give some information about...

           Schubert

Chopin
Missouri Waltz
Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo
Whiffenpoof Song
Oranges and Lemons
Salvation Army
Mayo Clinic
Ode to Joy
Il Trovatore

Nassau

 

VOCABULARY

fitch, Andover, handyman, uncrated, fuse, vacuum cleaner, whir, give them hell, nursery, station, overshot, overdraft, draft, forthright, overdrawn, halting, briefing, slipcover, Christly