Re: de daumier-smithh
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Sat, 08 Aug 1998 10:12:19 -0600 (MDT)
Boy, I'm behind the time and my email inbox isn't getting me offline and
mowing saturday grass but maybe this is about "mulching" anyway...
I love DSBP too--I've felt it's a story that can guide artists. The
"deal' with the nun may be that artists always attempt what is impossible
(giving life to paper and ink or electrons in writers' cases for example,
is an impossibility that art transcends) and DeDaumier Smith must learn
what his art (and love) can and can't do...by the end of the story he has
shed much of the pretension I'm afraid I'm still working on, will
On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Andrew Jaw wrote:
> Hello all,
> Though I'm new to this list i've been lurking for awhile and am happy to
> see such a good level of meaningful conversation (as compared to some
> lists I've been on)
>
> Well to get to the point, my favorite in Nine Stories is De-Daumier
> Smith's Blue Period. As enjoyable as the subtle language, wry humor and
> amusing twists of fate are, I feel like I'm missing something from it.
> The meaning of the scene with the woman falling in the store window
> baffles me. Also why was the man without a nose "pregnant with meaning",
> not to mention the Yoshotos night moanings.
>
> And what was the deal with the nun? My feeling is that she was really old
> (not young and beautiful as he fantasized) and that his letters were
> getting too intimate, thats why they were cut off (but I'm usually wrong
> about these things).
>
> Perhaps I'm reading this all wrong and there is no real meaning behind it,
> perhaps Smith is just shallow pseduo-intellectual wrought in a world of
> high expectations, who thinks and hopes he is more important than he
> really is...
> Please some input.....
>
> -Andrew
>
>