ENG 321 2/1

• Sarah Azizi visits:  Poets and Writers:  Sarah Manguso  Fri 2/4 SUB Acoma A&B  7PM
• Reading Response Examples
• My Checkmarks / My belief in staples
• Exercise 1:  No judgment
• Exercise # 2:  How did it go?  Swap the exercise with one of your peers.

• How is the Writing Process Going? 

• Discuss "Cathedral" and your Reading Responses

Assignment for 2/3

• Read your peer's exercise:  come back on Thursday and talk with them about it for a few minutes.

• Re-Read:  Carver’s “Cathedral”  (YGRT)

• Write:  A Reading Response

A)  What are your impressions of the story now that we've talked about the story in class and you've re-read it?  What struck you as notable this time that you didn't notice before?

B)  A story is a record of choices.  The writer Elizabeth Bowen says this:  "Action is the simplification of complexity.  For each one act, there are x number of rejected alternatives.  It is the palpable presence of alternatives that gives the action interest.  For each of the characters, the play of alternatives must be felt."   What choices do the characters in Cathedral make?  What were their alternatives?  Which of these choices, for each of them, was the hardest?  How are these choices central to the story's turning point / climax / crisis / reversal?

What choices, in your own story draft, do your characters make?  Are the choices easy or difficult?  Do they make good choices?  Are these choices central to the crisis or turning point (reversal / climax of the story?)

C)  The film director and playwright David Mamet says, "Good stories have problems that are rooted in character.   Our hero, Dumbo, has big ears.  That’s his situation.  His real problem is not his ears, it’s how he feels about his ears.  He wants to not have big ears, and what he wants isn’t necessarily what he needs."  In Cathedral, the situation is that a blind man is coming to spend the night.  But that's not really the narrator's problem.  What is our narrator's problem that is rooted in character? 

 Look Ahead:  Yikes!  Story Drafts Due to Small Groups on Thurs, Feb 10.  Bring 3 copies.  (One group will need to bring 4 copies).