ENCW 202 Spring 2020
Posted in Autonomy, Captivity, Consent, Desire, Desperation, Fantastic on Apr 6th, 2020
In “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” the narrator spends a lot of his time explaining things to “future readers.” In the first paragraph, he writes: Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes […]
Posted in Captivity, coronavirus, dystopia, Isolation on Mar 23rd, 2020
This morning I came across a brief article online about social distancing and its relation to Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police. Published at Slate, the article is titled “The Dystopian Novel for the Social Distancing Era,” and the author, a D.C.-based writer by the name of Joshua Keating, draws parallels between the permanent disappearances in Ogawa’s novel and the […]
Posted in Captivity, Desperation, dystopia, Fantastic, Isolation, Loneliness, Longing for Answers, Mystery, Obsession on Mar 19th, 2020
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” We’ve all heard of cabin fever. Well, welcome to self-quarantine during the Coronavirus, with social distancing and young folks who are being advised to stay far away from the Boomers. So far my room is clean; we created an at-home office for me in the old guest room; […]
Posted in Captivity, Desperation, Obsession on Mar 5th, 2020
In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” elements of the Fantastic exist right away. With the homely details of Pelayo and Elisenda’s life with Fantastic elements such as an “angel” being sent to heal a sick child. From the beginning of the story, Garcia Marquez’s style comes through in his unusual […]