For Tuesday and Thursday of this week:
Make sure you have caught up on the readings of short stories... we will be discussing The Bound Man (in
Art of the Tale), and
A&P by John Updike. (<<< you can click on the link behind)
Assignment (due Thursday Nov 7th):
Take a cliché... such as "I'm tied up in knots" or "he was the cat's pajamas" or "he thought the world revolved around him"-- and write a scene or story that literalizes the figurative language.
This is probably NOT where "The Bound Man" came from--but it could have been. He was both "all tied up" and the woman in the story "cut him loose."
Clichés come from really apt metaphors that lose the concrete comparison over time. They are the fictions that "lie in the service of truth-telling." Your job is to re-investsome of this hackneyed language with meaning again.
Suggestions: use a phrase that means something to you now--or that you use often. Dig at why it works for you. Imagine the first story of its use (this is just one road you cd take... like the just-so Kipling stories "How the Leopard got its spots" etc. You cd write "how 'right as rain' came to be)... or not.
As always, this can be part of a longer project you are working on, or it can be a stand alone piece.
Good luck.
