The Three Horsemen, by G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton at the Wikipedia

Review

The Paradoxes of Mr Pond at the Wikipedia

Audiobook (part 1. From minute 3)

Audiobook (part 2. From minute 3)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, by Lídia Gàllego

 

BIOGRAPHY

 

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in Campden Hill in Kensington in 1874. He was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the “prince of paradox”. He wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown and its writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour.

Chesterton was a large man, standing 1.93 m tall and weighing around 130 kg, who became fascinated with the occult and, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards. He was educated at St Paul’s School, then attended the Slade School of Art to become an illustrator. Chesterton also took classes in literature at University College London, but did not complete a degree in either subject. He declared himself agnostic in matters of religion.

He married Frances Blogg in 1901. Chesterton allowed Frances to lead him back to Anglicanism, though he later considered Anglicanism to be a “pale imitation” of Catholicism. He entered full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in 1922. The couple never had children.

In September 1895, Chesterton began working for the London publisher George Redway. One year later, he moved to the publishing house T. Fisher Unwin, where he remained until 1902. During this period, he also undertook his first journalistic work, as a freelance art and literary critic. Early on, Chesterton showed a great interest in and talent for art. He had planned to become an artist, and his writings show a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images.

Chesterton was part of the Detection Club, a society of British mystery authors founded by Anthony Berkeley in 1928. He was elected as the first president and served from 1930 to 1936.

Chesterton died of congestive heart failure on the14th June 1936, aged 62. Near the end of Chesterton’s life, Pope Pius XI invested him as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great. The Chesterton Society proposed his beatification.

 

The Three Horsemen

Mr. Pond, a government official and old friend of the author’s father, explains, in a meeting between acquaintances, a case he had to solve a few years ago: Marshal Von Grock, who leads a regiment of Prussian hussars in occupied Poland, considers that Paul Petrowski, a Polish poet and singer, must be executed because his public demonstrations of patriotism are a danger. For this reason and considering that the poet is about to be released, he sends a messenger, Lieutenant Von Hocheimer, with precise orders for his execution shortly before the arrival of the Prince. The Prince knows that this act would have international repercussions, would make Petrowski a martyr and would cause them a lot of trouble, so he decides to send a messenger with a pardon to stop the marshal’s order. Nevertheless, the marshal remains convinced that Petrowski must die for the safety of the Prince and the homeland, so he secretly sends a third messenger, Sergeant Schwartz, to prevent the pardon from arriving. Eventually, no messenger will arrive, and the poet Petrowski will be released. Mr. Pond tells his acquaintances why he thinks it happened so.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters:

-Mr Pond

-Paul Petrowsky. Why is he dangerous (for the Prussians)?

-Marshal Von Grock: physical appearance and personality.

-Lieutenant Von Hocheimer

-His Highness

-Arnold Von Schacht

-Sergeant Schwartz. Why did Grock choose him for the mission?

What is a paradox? Can you give some examples?

What in life is a lot but never too much? Why?

The narrator say that Captain Gahagan seems to belong to a past when being a duellist was more common. What duels in fiction do you remember the best?

“It was his one compliment to poetry.” What do we have to understand by this sentence?

Grock says they must serve (different from obey) His Highness? What does it imply?

What do you know about the Ems telegram (or dispatch)? So when do you think the story is situated?

What is the meaning of this sentence: “Death is the fact of all facts”?

What is the relation between Goethe and Weimar?

“The world is changed not by what is said, but by what is done”, said Grock. Do you agree? Why?

Why does the narrator use this image: “The sergeant felt vaguely the presence of some primordial slime the was neither solid nor liquid nor capable of any form”?

What do you know about Rops?

What does that mean: “an act is unanswerable even when it is indefensible”?

 

VOCABULARY

creepy, dapper, random, owlishly, abreast, couriers, laid waste, wilderness, spick and span, baldric, reprieve, asinine, scoff, thwarts, chargers, Fatherland, overriding, orderly, marksmanship, scum, etcher

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

Mary Postgate, by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling at the Wikipedia

Mary Postgate, analysis

Mary Postgate, essay

Audiobook

RUDYARD KIPLING

 

BIOGRAPHY

 

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865. His family were very important people, and they were related to politicians and artists of the time, people that belonged to the Establishment.

When he was five, he was taken with his sister to the UK, where they were left with some cruel relatives. There he went to a poor boarding school, where he had to endure its military discipline.

When he was sixteen, he went back to India, where he worked as a journalist because he couldn’t be a soldier as he was short-sighted. But, thanks to his job, he could make himself deeply acquainted with the true Indian life.

While working as a journalist, he wrote his first poems and short stories, and those were widely read. So, when he went to England at the age of 24, he was already a well-known author. His stories were very popular because people liked exotic countries and because his style was lively and brilliant, something he undoubtedly learnt from his job as a journalist.

When he was 27, he married Carolina Balestier, sister of an American publisher, and the couple settled in Vermont. They travelled a lot, but, four years later, they returned to England because Rudyard couldn’t cope with the American lifestyle.

When he was 42, he got the Nobel Prize for literature, and he was the first English writer to get it.

During the WWI, he was pro-war and lost his son in the trenches. Then he worked in an official institution in nationalistic propaganda to support the army in the conflict; he wrote things like “Germans aren’t human beings, they are beasts”. From then on, he began to lose popularity because his topics started to be too fantastic and difficult.

He died in 1936, when he was 71 years old.

He wrote about his childhood and teenager experiences in Stalky & Co. His novel Captain Courageous is very famous for the film adaptation starring Spencer Tracy; it’s also famous Kim, the narrative about an Irish orphan having to earn his living in India. But Kipling is better when he writes short stories, like the Jungle Books. It’s also well-known the film adaptation of The Man that would be King, with Sean Connery and Michael Caine. A very interesting collection of stories for children is Just so Stories where he explains fabulously the mysteries and wonders of the nature, as for example, why the elephant has a trunk, or why the cheetah has stains in its skin.

You also have to know the poem If, because a president whose name it’s better not to remember, said he liked it.

If-, by Rudyard Kipling

 

 

MARY POSTGATE

This is the story of Mary Postgate, a very simple-minded servant who is contracted to work for Miss Fowler, a rich old spinster. Some time after starting her job, Miss Fowler has to adopt a nephew because his parents had died, but Mary Postgate is who takes care of him, protects him, defends him and indulges him. However, this nephew, Wyndham (Wynn), treats her very badly, although she doesn’t seem to notice, or she doesn't hate him for it. Then the WWI breaks out, and Wynn enlists as a pilot. He dies in a training flight, but Mary never shows her sorrow, she only wants to do practical things. Miss Fowler asks Mary to burn almost all his possessions. And then, when she is making things ready for the fire, there is a shocking incident: a barn has collapsed and has killed a girl. People think about a bomb dropped from a German plane, but the doctor says the barn was already decaying and that it collapsed by itself. Short after this, when Mary lights the fire, he sees an aviator badly injured in a tree nearby.  Is he German, French or English? Has he dropped a bomb? Is he going to die? Is Mary going to help him or call the police?

 

QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters

Mary Postgate

Miss Fowler

Wyndham (Wynn) Fowler

What do you know about the WWI?

What are Taubers, Farmans and Zeppelins?

Why does Miss Fowler ask Mary, “What do you ever think of, Mary?”, and on what occasion?

What is Contrexéville?

Explain Wynn’s accident and the women’s reaction to it.

Miss Fowler said, “Old people and young people slip from under a stroke like this [her nephew’s death]. The middle-aged feel it most”. What is your opinion?

Why did Mrs Grant say, “he’ll be practically a stranger to them”?

What do you do with the things of a dead person, a relative?

What nationality was the agonizing pilot in the tree? How do you know?

What would Wynn have done with the injured pilot?

Did this aviator kill Edna with a bomb? How do you know?

How did this pilot die?

Was it justice or revenge?

Was any love between Mary and Wynn? Why do you think so?

What is the meaning of these questions: “Mary, aren’t you anything except a companion? Would you ever have been anything except a companion?”?

Why is Mary “quite handsome” at the end?

 

 

VOCABULARY

unflinchingly, slander, odd, cliques, unitemised, shamble, butt, gazetted, bouts, cassowary, bathchair, stinking, tow, buttoned up, fended her off, wailed, gaudy, barrow, goloshes, assegai, O. T. C., pewter, unearthed, fret-saw, condemned, paviour, char

Gimpel the Fool, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer at the Wikipedia

Gimpel the Fool at the Wikipedia

Sumary

Analysis

Audiobook

Adaptation for theatre

ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER, by Aurora Ledesma

Biography

Isaac Bashevis Singer, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature, was one of the most admired Jewish writers of the Twentieth Century, as well as an important figure of Literature written in Yiddish, the language in which his books were published throughout his career. His writings describe Jewish life in Poland and the United States.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was born on the 11^th of November 1903 in Leoncin, Poland, and died the 24^th of July 1991 in Surfside, Florida. He was the fifth of six children, of whom only four survived. His father was a rabbi, and his mother, the daughter of the rabbi of Biigoraj. His sister Hinde Esther and his brother Israel Joshua, became writers as well and played prominent roles in his life and served as models for a number of his fictional characters. His younger brother, Moishe and his mother both died in the Holocaust.

His family moved to Warsaw, Poland, when he was four years old. Singer was also educated in a strict spiritual practice. He received a traditional Jewish education at the Warsaw Rabbinical Seminary. But singer preferred being a writer to being a rabbi. In 1925 he made his debut with the story In Old Age which he published in Warsaw. His first novel, Satan in Goray, was published in Poland before he migrated to the U.S.A in 1935.

He was married in Poland and had a son, but, when he moved to New York, he left them and, then, in 1938, he met Alma Wassermann, a German Jewish refugee, and married her.

He settled in New York, as his brother had done a year before, and worked for the Yiddish Newspaper Forvets and he also translated many books into Yiddish from Hebrew and Polish, and some books by Thomas Man from German.

Although Singer’s works were now available in their English versions, he continued to write almost exclusively in Yiddish until his death.

Singer has popular collections of short stories translated into English, one of the most popular around the world is Gimpel the Fool. His short stories are saturated with Jewish folklore, legends and mysticism.

Among his most important novels are The Family Moskat, The Magician of Lublin, Enemies, A Love Story, which have been adapted into films. The most famous story adapted to a film is Yentl with Barbra Streisand.

He also wrote My Father’s Court, an autobiographical work about his childhood in Warsaw.

 

THE STORY: GIMPEL THE FOOL

Gimpel, who has had the reputation of being a fool since his school days, is the narrator of his own story. Gimpel is an orphan who was being raised by his sickly grandfather. He lives in a town called Frampol and works as a baker. He believes everything he is told, trusting that even strange and crazy things are always possible. His neighbours convince him to marry Elka, a local prostitute, whom he believes to be a virgin, even though she already has one child and is pregnant when they marry. When Elka gives birth only four months after their marriage, she convinces Gimpel that the boy was born prematurely. Gimpel grows to love the baby and cares for Elka. One day, he discovers Elka with another man in their bed. Gimpel goes to the town rabbi to seek advice, and the rabbi tells him that he must divorce Elka and stay away from her and her two bastard children. Gimpel starts to miss Elka and the baby, and he retracts his declarations to the rabbi, believing Elka when she tells him he was simply hallucinating. Years later, Elka gets very sick, and, before dying, she confesses the truth to him: none of the ten children she had are his.

One day, a short time later, a demon visits him in a dream and persuades him to get revenge on his neighbours by putting urine in the bread dough and selling it in the bakery. However, before the bread can be sold, Gimpel buries all of it underground. Then he packs his things and leaves the town of Frampol forever. He continues travelling around the world as a beggar and storyteller for the rest of his life, determined to believe that everything is possible. At the end of the story, Gimpel says that, when he dies, he will do it so joyfully, as death and the afterlife cannot deceive anyone. 

 

QUESTIONS

Did you use to give nicknames to your schoolmates? Can you tell us about one that was original and caught?

What do you know about the Golem?

Do you think that the jokes that Gimpel’s mates played on him would be called “bullying” now?

What do you think about practical jokes played on the beginners?

What do you know about The Wisdom of the Fathers?

What is your opinion about this sentence: “Better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil”?

Is it a good idea matchmaking? And what about webs or applications to meet people?

“When you’re married, the husband’s the master”. Is this machismo, or we cannot use this term for a different society or for a different time?

“You cannot pass through the life unscathed”: what is the meaning of this philosophy?

What is “bear-baiting”?

What is the meaning of this sentence in context: “No bread can ever be baked from this dough”? Can you give some examples?

How they justify that Elka delivered a boy four months after the wedding?

Did Gimpel love people, or was he only a fool?

What’s the meaning of “Shoulders are from God, but burdens too”?

The story is situated in Frampol. Where is it? And Lublin?

“He found an obscure reference in Maimonides that favoured him”. What is for you the value of tradition or classical books for science?

 

VOCABULARY

hee-hawed, lying in, all the way to (Cracow), made tracks, pranksters, yeshiva, candle-dipper, cat music, took me in (take in), fined, hand-me-down, sexton, hallah, revels, burrs, Tishe b’Av fast day, kneading trough, galore, rooked, beat it, welkin, colicky, bear down, serve, louts, loudmouths, going over, take stock in, dybbuks, leeches, cupping, bill of goods, spin yarns, outlandish, hovel, shnorrer

A Lecture Tour, by Knut Hamsun

Knut Hamsun at the Wikipedia

A Lecture Tour: analysis

Knut Hamsun, by Dora Sarrión 

Biography

 
Knut Hamsun was born as Knut Pedersen in Lom, in the Gudbrandsdal valley of Norway, in 1859. He was the fourth of seven children. His family were very poor, so, when he was three, they moved to Hamarøy in Nordland County, to farm a land of an uncle.
At the age of nine, he was sent to live with his uncle Hans Olsen, who used to beat and starve him. Later, Hamsun stated that his chronic nervous difficulties were due to the way his uncle treated him.
In 1874, he escaped from his miserable life, back to Lom; for the next five years he did any job for money: he was a store clerk, peddler, shoemaker's apprentice, sheriff's assistant, and an elementary-school teacher.
At 17, he became a ropemaker's apprentice; and, although he had almost no formal education, he started to write. He asked the businessman Erasmus Zahl to give him monetary support, and Zahl agreed. Hamsun later used Zahl as a model for the character Mack appearing in his novels Pan (1894), Dreamers (1904), Benoni (1908) and Rosa (1908).
He left Norway for the United States twice: once in 1882, and again in 1886. There, he travelled and worked in various jobs, falling in every project he began. His bitter experience in the American territory led him to write in 1889 a book full of negative comments about the life in that country, From the Spiritual Life of Modern America.
Although this was his first writing, it wouldn’t be released until his next novel, Hunger, was published in 1890. This semi-autobiographical work described a young writer's descent into near madness as a result of hunger and poverty in Kristiania (now Oslo), the Norwegian capital.
Hunger introduced the typical structure of Knut Hamsun stories: a nomadic protagonist who does not fit in with the people around him, who seeks to return to his origin, drawing inspiration from his own experiences.
Following the success of this novel, there were many other interesting works: Mysteries (1892), Victoria (1898), Under the Autumn Star (1906), A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (1909) and Wayfarer (1929).
Hamsun achieved his greatest popularity in 1917 with his publication The Blessing of the Earth. Thanks to this work, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1920.
In 1898, he married Bergljot Göpfert, with whom he had a daughter, but the marriage ended in 1906. Three years later, he married Marie Andersen, who was 23 years younger than him. They had four children.
Hamsun had strong anti-English views, and openly supported Adolf Hitler and Nazi ideology. Due to his professed support to the German occupation of Norway, he was charged with treason after the war. In 1948, he was briefly imprisoned, and his assets were seized by the state. He died penniless in 1952. 
During the more than 70 years in which he was writing, he published more than 20 novels, a collection of poetry, some short stories and plays, a travelogue, works of non-fiction and some essays, and some of his works have been the basis of 25 films and television miniseries adaptations.
Hamsun is considered to be “one of the most influential and innovative literary stylists of the past hundred years” and “the father of the modern school of literature in his every aspect—his subjectiveness, his fragmentariness, his use of flashbacks, his lyricism. The whole modern school of fiction in the twentieth century stems from Hamsun”. He pioneered psychological literature with techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue.
 
A Lecture Tour
 
The story, written in first person, is about a professor of Literature who was short of money and decided to go to Drammen, to give a lecture about the novelist Alexander Kielland, one of the most famous Norwegian writers of the 19th century, to earn some extra money.
After reaching Drammen and looking for a hotel, he visited an editor and a lawyer. Both of them put him on the alert that there wasn’t much interest in literature in the city, and he probably would lose money on his business. Furthermore, the same day that he scheduled to give his lecture, an anti-spiritualist was doing his show with apes and wild animals, and it would attract a crowd.
Despite these warnings, he rented one of the pavilions, he paid for an insertion in the newspaper giving the date, place and topic of his lecture, and hired a man to hang cards with publicity around the city, advertising the event.
By chance, both the narrator and the anti-spiritualist stayed in the same hostel.
Each of them talked about what their show was like, and the anti-spiritualist asked him to work on his show because he needed a man to introduce the animals. The narrator didn’t accept it because he thought the anti-spiritualist “was afraid of the competition and was worried that he would steal his audience away from him”.
The day of the show, only the lawyer came to the lecture on literature because almost everybody was watching the show with apes and wild beasts.
When the narrator got tired of waiting for his spectators, he returned to his hostel ashamed and disappointed and aware that he didn’t have any money for the train going back home.
In the middle of that night, the anti-spiritualist, after his show was finished, came into the narrator's room and inquired him about how his lecture had gone. With a bit of embarrassment, he said that he had cancelled it. After that, the anti-spiritualist gave him details about how many problems he had with his presenter that evening and offered him once again the occupation as a presenter of the beasts.
One more time, the narrator found this offer offensive. “Never would I be a party to such vulgarity!!! A man had his honour to consider”, he thought.
The following day, the anti-spiritualist offered him some money if he looked over the speech about the beasts, correcting the grammar and brushing up the language.
It was impossible for the narrator to refuse this offer because “he was doing the man a favour really, and it was, after all, a service in the cause of literature”, and, the most important, he needed the money.
Not only he remade the speech from the beginning to the end, but also accepted to do the speech during the show.
Although the show ended up being a success and the anti-spiritualist was pleased and thanked him warmly for his support, he refused to pay him unless he accepted to appear in his show the next evening. But the narrator decided not to continue with this business and return to his city.
In our story, the protagonist believes that literature itself can bring great benefit to people's souls, and that it doesn’t matter what their real needs are. But the harsh reality shows him that his work can only be successful if it’s adapted to the tastes of the people who are going to receive it.
The citizens of Drammen work hardly during all day, and, in their free time, they only desire to entertain themselves with any activity that will help them forget about their daily routine. They don’t want to be educated.
The protagonist failed his initial approach on his literary tour and was wildly successful when he adapted to the crowd, but I'm not sure if he learned anything from this experience.
I wonder what the real usefulness of literature in our current world is, and if different types of literature are necessary, depending on the social or cultural class of the person.

QUESTIONS

Who was Alexander Kielland?

What’s the present name of Kristiania?

How did the porter guess that our protagonist was a poor man?

What other lecture was taking place at that moment in Drammen?

How can they warm the blankets?

What did our protagonist do to leave the posh hotel?

Where did he want to give his lecture?

What did the anti-spiritualist offer him at first? And what was his answer?

The literary lecture: how did it work? Why?

Why, according to the anti-spiritualist lecturer, cannot a local man present the beasts in the lecture?

Why did our protagonist accept to give the lecture about animals at the end?

This lecture was a serious exposition or only quackery? How do you know?

Was the lecture a success or a failure? How is it described in the text?

What happened with the hyena?

“That’s the power literature has to move men’s minds”. Do you think literature, or a book, or some books can change your life (remember Werther)?

How do you feel when you read something worth of reading, and you know its author is a Nazi?

 

VOCABULARY

took stock, befitting, catered, outgoings, carpetbag, touting, venue, furrier, outlay, swarming, foreboding, posh, butt, dozed off, breeding, scoffed, pelting, standing-room, badgers, marten, Jack of Clubs, mangle, houses, undertaking