Authors I
"He knew without the slightest doubt that he would not leave the island, that somehow he would stay forever on the island. He managed to imagine his brother, Felisa, their faces when they found out he had stayed to live off fishing on a large solitary rock. He had already forgotten them when he turned over to swim toward the shore."
Julio Cortazar
To show that something weird is happening before the surprise is revealed
On-ramping
“My father's circumstances had changed already; well-shaven, neatly barbered, smart new clothes. A frosted glass of sparkling wine sat convenient to his hand beside an ice bucket. The Beast had clearly paid cash on the nail for his glimpse of my bosom, and paid up promptly, as if it had not been a sight I might have died of showing. Then I saw my father's trunks were packed, ready for departure. Could he so easily leave me here?”
Angela Carter
The Left Hand of Darkness might be found on a shelf belonging to this genre
Science Fiction
Theorized that power is shifty and always changing
Michel Foucault
My name is August Epp—irrelevant for all purposes, other than that I’ve been appointed the minute-taker for the women’s meetings because the women are illiterate and unable to do it themselves. And as these are the minutes, and I the minute-taker (and as I am a schoolteacher and daily instruct my students to do the same), I feel my name should be included at the top of the page together with the date. Ona Friesen, also of the Molotschna Colony, is the woman who asked me if I’d take the minutes—although she didn’t use the word “minutes” but rather asked if I would record the meetings and create a document pertaining to them."
Miriam Toews
Three levels of the immersion pyramid
High Immersion
Moderate Immersion
Low Immersion
"Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. 'I'm glad I have lived to see this,' he said. I felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
Ursula Le Guin
A “super category for all genres that deliberately depart from imitating ‘consensus reality’ of everyday experience."
Speculative Fiction
Literary technique that presents common things in an unfamiliar and strange way
Defamiliarization
"One knows what to expect from a man who wears a blazer, for the blazer is designed to announce the wearer’s unassailable authority. The brass buttons and double-breastedness confer both authority and probity upon the wearer, and what is more, they
keep a man on his toes. The double-breasted blazer does not brook investigation. Just as it does not permit slouching, a leaning this way or that; rather, it bellows a no-nonsense clarity of purpose guaranteed by the combination of sober navy-blue with sportive brass buttons that declares its difference from the staid traditions of the suit. Thus does the blazer blaze the wearer’s ready-made integrity."
Zoe Wicomb
A technique that describes the different versions of characters and events in the fiction of Alice Munro
Layering
“The bearded man stepped back and watched the driver gesture threateningly, watched him shout in wordless anger. The bearded man stood still, made no sound, refused to respond to clearly obscene gestures. The least impaired people tended to do this—stand back unless they were physically threatened and let those with less control scream and jump around. It was as though they felt it beneath them to be as touchy as the less comprehending. This was an attitude of superiority, and that was the way people like the bus driver perceived it.”
Octavia Butler
Anton Chekhov uses this form in short stories like, "Man in a Case"
Frame narrative/Nested stories
The signifier is the sound/image (C-A-T). The signified is the concept image. The object in the real world...
Referent
"He understands that this is death, and isn't in the least disturbed by that either. And he remembers that Nikita is lying under him, and that he has got warm and is alive, and it seems to him that he is Nikita, and Nikita is him, and that his life is not in himself but in Nikita."
Leo Tolstoy
The two types of Narrative Engines
External (Form/Plot)
Internal (Mood) (Language)
"It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile’s face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;"
Gustave Flaubert
Four types of discourse one may find in an Edward P. Jones short story?
Indirect
Free indirect
The two terms that refer to the story (what) and its structure (how)
Fabula (Story)
Syuzhet (How)
"In all financial matters, Louise was bound to the rows of numbers in her account books. These account books were wrapped in patent leather, and came from a certain shop in Melbourne; our father's ledgers had never been bought in any other place. The columns were headed 'Paid' and 'Received,' in the old-fashioned way, but at the top of each page our father, and then Louise, crossed out the printed words and wrote 'Necessary' and 'Unnecessary.'
Mavis Gallant
Name four types of time
Vertical, horizontal, set clock, time off page, future imagined, past imagined, imagined parallel, uncertain time, lateral time
“Enough of this madness! Let me return home now. I reach for the glass of water in front of me. It shatters in my hand. Vincent comes running up, folds up the tablecloth, making sure none of the water falls on me. He seats me at the next table and brings a coffee without my having to ask. I sit there trying to compose myself, sipping the coffee at intervals with some determination. As he’s passing by on his way to another table, Vincent says, ‘Sir, you may want to wash your hand. There’s blood on it.’”
Vivek Shanbhag
The four elements of fairy tales
Flatness, Abstraction, Intuitive Logic, Normalized Magic
Refers to the increase texture of life likeness in text
Reality Effect