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 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