StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach.

What do you get when you combine time travel, intriguing literary history, Paris, and romance? Why, Cynthia Morris’s novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, of course!

I know Cynthia from participating regularly in what she previously called Free Write Flings, month-long excursions that have “flingers” writing freely for fifteen minutes each day in response to various “promp...

This week on StoryWeb: James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare.

It has been more than 25 years since I read Rev. James H. Cone’s book Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. I was teaching an English 101 course focused on the writing of the Civil Rights Movement, and I wanted to learn more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X and to understand better the relationship between t...

This week on StoryWeb: Malcolm X and Alex Haley’s book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Malcolm X wrote his famed autobiography in collaboration with African American journalist Alex Haley (most famous for his epic book Roots: The Saga of an American Family). If you are one of the many Americans who believe Malcolm X espoused violence, even hate, I urge you to read this compelling book. It reveals Malcolm X as a much more nuanced t...

This week on StoryWeb: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

In April 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was in Birmingham, Alabama, protesting racism and racial segregation in the city. He was arrested on Good Friday for demonstrating, which a circuit court judge had prohibited. While he was in solitary confinement, Dr. King wrote what is arguably the most important letter in American history. It was a...

This week on StoryWeb, Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles.

Born in 1876, Susan Glaspell was a prominent novelist, short story writer, journalist, biographer, actress, and, most notably, playwright, winning the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Alison’s House. She and her husband, George Cram Cook, founded the ground-breaking Provincetown Players, widely known as the first modern American theater company. In fact, it was Glaspel...

This week on StoryWeb: Elizabeth Strout’s book Olive Kitteridge.

Has there ever been a grimmer, more taciturn main character in a book than Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge? We’ve all known someone like Olive, someone who looks like she’s just bitten into a lemon, someone for whom a kind of self-righteous grumpiness rules the day. What’s so unlikely is to have such a Gloomy Gus serve as the focal point of a book.

And it must be ...

This week on StoryWeb: Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –”

For Patricia and our students

Emily Dickinson’s Poem 372 is not – technically speaking – a story. And Dickinson is not a storyteller per se. But her nearly 1,800 poems speak deeply and powerfully to the human condition. They give a still unparalleled account of what it is to be human.

Poem 372 does have some elements of storytelling. Ins...

This week on StoryWeb: James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.”

James Joyce’s “The Dead” is widely considered to be his best short story, called by the New York Times “just about the finest short story in the English language" and by T.S. Eliot as one of the greatest short stories ever written.

The storyline is simple enough: a long-married Irish couple -- Gretta and Gabriel Conroy – attend a lavish dinner party thrown by his aunts in...

This week on StoryWeb: Richard Thompson’s song “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.”

For Jim, in honor of his birthday

My husband, Jim, and I love this song by Richard Thompson and its signature line, “red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme.” In fact, the first concert we saw together was Thompson playing at the Boulder Theater, and of course, I sported a black leather motorcycle jacket. When Thompson sang the song, one of ...

This week on StoryWeb: Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

In honor of the winter solstice

Without a doubt, the most famous poem about winter is Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” In fact, Garrison Keillor says that this is perhaps the single most famous poem of any kind in the twentieth century. Frost himself called the poem “my best bid for remembrance.”

Written nearly in the blink of a...

This week on StoryWeb: Rick Nelson’s song “Garden Party.”

For Julia, in honor of her birthday

In 1972, my two-year-old sister could sing all the words to this Rick Nelson hit. Why she latched on to this particular song when it came on the car radio none of us will ever know – not even Julia. She would sit in her car seat – not one of the safety-conscious car seats of today – and practically dance in her seat, legs and arms bopping ...

This week on Story Web: the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo.

I suppose I must have a dark sense of humor indeed to think of the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo as a comedy – even if I do realize that it is a dark comedy. I mean, what can you say about someone who shrieks, then laughs uproariously, at the woodchipper scene?

Yes, Fargo is a weird and dark tale – from William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard, the pathetic car dealership manager who pa...

This week on StoryWeb: Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz,”

A story contained in sixteen short lines of poetry – that is Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz.” This autobiographical poem tells of a little boy dancing with his drunk father as his frowning mother looks on.

How to read this poem? Is the speaker a man looking back at his drunken father with affection or remembering the fear he felt at his father’s whiskey binges? ...

Lydia Maria Child: “Over the River and Through the Wood”

In the 19th century, Lydia Maria Child’s name was nearly a household word.

An outspoken abolitionist, women’s rights supporter, and crusader for Native American rights, Child was also a prolific author. A journalist and editor, she wrote novels and short stories (often using fiction to express her anti-slavery views), poems and children’s books, and domestic manuals for wives...

This week on StoryWeb: Lee Smith’s memoir, Dimestore: A Writer’s Life.

I first fell in love with Lee Smith’s fiction nearly thirty years ago when I was a cook at Le Conte Lodge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On my afternoons off, I’d sit on my cabin porch, reading first Lee’s novel Oral History, later her novel Fair and Tender Ladies. She created characters with such powerful voices – women and men of Appalachia who sp...

This week on StoryWeb: Jill Ker Conway’s memoir The Road from Coorain.

The Road from Coorain traces the unlikely story of young Jill Ker’s journey from a sheep station in the western grasslands of New South Wales, Australia, to the position of president of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Journeys of such epic proportions are rare even for the increasingly ubiquitous genre of memoir. But the young Jill – hemmed in by th...

This week on StoryWeb: Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven.”

For this spooky Halloween edition of StoryWeb, I’m featuring Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Everyone knows this haunting poem – but less well known is Poe’s essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which he explains how he quite methodically wrote the poem.

Now “The Raven,” you have to understand, made a splash. Poe was a relatively unknown writer when he published the poe...

This week on StoryWeb: Frida Kahlo’s painting The Two Fridas.

Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is known for her stunning self-portraits. You might not think of her immediately as a painter who tells stories through her art. Indeed, you could be forgiven if you think of her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, as the more narrative painter of the two. After all, his paintings told tales of the Mexican Revolution.

But Kahlo’s paintings tell a ...

This week on StoryWeb: The Partridge Family’s song “I Think I Love You.”

Fifth grade – and the song I can’t get out of my head is “I Think I Love You.” Every girl at Griffith Elementary School – make it every girl at schools around the United States – feels the same way. How we swooned over David Cassidy, the teen idol who played a made-for-TV band’s lead singer.

The fictional band was The Partridge Family, based loosely on the rea...