Life Studies : An Analytic Reader

by Cavitch, David

• ISBN13: 9780312157142
• ISBN10: 0312157142
• Edition: 6th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-01
• Publisher: Bedford/st Martins

Table of Contents

TO INSTRUCTORS	v
FINDING A TRAIL: An Introduction to Reading and Writing Analytically, with Reflections on a Sample Essay, E. B. White's "Once More to the Lake"	1	(14)
1. SELF-IMAGES	15	(44)
INSIGHTS: D. H. Lawrence, Mark Twain, N. Scott Momaday (poem), Rom Harre, Fay Weldon, Rollo May, Golda Meir	16	(3)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	19	(1)
Nora Ephron
SHAPING UP ABSURD A successful writer tells of feeling tragically misfitted for life by the curse of flat-chestedness.	20	(8)
Terry Galloway
I'M LISTENING AS HARD AS I CAN A theater director and performer remembers how as a child she became deaf and considers the impact it had on her life.	28	(6)
Brent Staples
BLACK MEN AND PUBLIC SPACE A young black man explains how it feels to be "ever the suspect, a fearsome entity with whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact."	34	(4)
John Updike
THE DISPOSABLE ROCKET In a celebration of the male body, a well-known novelist explores what he sees as the destiny of anatomy: "the male's superhuman frenzy to deliver his goods" versus "the enduring female heroics of birth and nurture."	38	(4)
Scott Russell Sanders
VOYAGEURS On a canoe trip with his daughter, the writer observes otters in the wild and imagines crossing both real and imaginary boundaries.	42	(3)
Michael Dorris
LIFE STORIES A Native American writer reflects on how a seemingly haphazard series of summer jobs, full of missteps and adventures, formed an important rite of passage into his adulthood.	45	(6)
Jamaica Kincaid
GIRL (fiction) A daughter hears her mother's litany of instructions on how to become a lady, not a slut, and barely gets a word in edgewise.	51	(2)
Andrew Sullivan
WHAT IS A HOMOSEXUAL? A gay writer describes the common experiences that he believes give young gay men "an ear for irony and for double meanings."	53	(6)
2. FAMILY TIES	59	(54)
INSIGHTS: Robert Nisbet, Ferdinand Mount, Mavis Gallant, J. H. Plumb, Gloria Steinem, Robert Hayden (poem), Robert Weiss	60	(2)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	62	(1)
Thomas Simmons
MOTORCYCLE TALK The language of the garage and flat-truck speedway unites a father and son and becomes, at times, the words of love.	63	(4)
Raymond Carver
MY FATHER'S LIFE A successful writer who feels close to working people tries to understand the misfortunes of his ne'er-do-well father.	67	(8)
Calvin Trillin
IT'S JUST TOO LATE The increasingly wild and ultimately fatal behavior of a former "perfect child" is chronicled in this report of an accidental death: Many people are responsible for FaNee's tragedy-but who is to blame?	75	(9)
Leo Rosten
HOME IS WHERE TO LEARN HOW TO HATE We've got to learn somewhere that anger contributes to our sense of right and wrong, says the writer -- and there's no better place to learn than among our nearest kin.	84	(6)
Tillie Olsen
I STAND HERE IRONING (fiction) A mother who fought off poverty for her family ponders the dreams and expectations she had for her troubled first child.	90	(8)
Anndee Hochman
EXTENDING FAMILY Is it possible for a couple to remain friends, even family, after a break-up? The writer describes the difficulties and rewards of just such a proposition.	98	(3)
Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
WOMEN AND THE FUTURE OF FATHERHOOD Our culture's changing attitudes toward marriage threaten fatherhood more than motherhood, according to this social historian.	101	(6)
Amitai Etzioni
THE VALUE OF FAMILIES A sociologist criticizes the state of "community child care" in America and concludes that there is no substitute for parental attention.	107	(6)
3. SIGNIFICANT OTHERS	113	(58)
INSIGHTS: Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Simone de Beauvoir, Walker Percy, Selma Fraiberg, Francesco Alberoni, Sharon Olds (poem), D. T. Suzuki	114	(3)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	117	(1)
Susan Allen Toth
BOYFRIENDS Having a boyfriend was a requirement in high school -- but this one was special. An Iowa woman remembers her adolescence in the 1950s.	118	(6)
Stephen Dunn
LOCKER ROOM TALK After hearing a young man brag about his sexual exploits, a poet and essayist reflects on what men say to an all-male audience about the women in their lives, and what his own silences have meant.	124	(3)
Diane Ackerman
THE CHEMISTRY OF LOVE Chemicals produced by the body may help form our strongest emotional attachments. A poet and essayist explores the implications.	127	(4)
Eugene Goodheart
FAST FRIENDS A literary scholar examines the contradictions of intense friendship and the changing meanings of friendship in the course of a lifetime.	131	(9)
Patricia J. Williams
MY BEST WHITE FRIEND Getting ready for a party with a white friend, a black journalist discusses the fundamental differences that both threaten and cement their friendship.	140	(6)
Lindsy Van Gelder
MARRIAGE AS A RESTRICTED CLUB A lesbian journalist appeals for the right to marry her lover so that she, like members of the heterosexual community, can demonstrate genuine commitment to her partner.	146	(5)
Jonathan Rauch
FOR BETTER OR WORSE? Love is irrelevant to this journalist's argument for same-sex marriage; his defense hinges instead on the institution's social function.	151	(9)
Raymond Carver
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE (fiction) When the drinks begin to flow, two couples get more and more upset as they try to discuss what real love means.	160	(11)
4. GROUP PICTURES	171	(66)
INSIGHTS: John Donne, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodor Reik, W. E. B. Du Bois, Emma Lazarus (poem), Oscar Wilde, Alexis de Tocqueville, Judith Martin	172	(5)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	177	(1)
Maya Angelou
GRADUATION A commencement speaker's prejudice threatens, but cannot destroy, the pride of a black community.	178	(11)
Amy Tan
MOTHER TONGUE This prominent Chinese-American novelist considers the profound effects of the language she learned from her mother.	189	(6)
Maxine Hong Kingston
THE MISERY OF SILENCE The language barrier is the greater wall of China for an immigrant child who attends both Chinese and American schools in a small California city.	195	(5)
Richard Rodriguez
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LANGUAGE The author, raised in a home where Spanish was the first language, argues against bilingual education, considering what he gained as a child who was forced to learn English in school.	200	(6)
Arthur Ashe
Arnold Rampersad
THE BURDEN OF RACE When asked by a reporter whether AIDS was the heaviest burden he had ever had to bear, the tennis star's answer surprised even himself a little.	206	(5)
Shelby Steele
ON BEING BLACK AND MIDDLE CLASS Members of the black middle class, according to the author, are caught between opposing impulses: embracing middle-class individualism while giving their ethnic identity priority.	211	(7)
Barbara Ehrenreich
CULTURAL BAGGAGE Describing her ethnicity as "none," this essayist considers the legacy she is leaving her children.	218	(3)
Alice Walker
EVERYDAY USE (fiction) A daughter who has embraced a new identity returns home to claim her heritage but fails to understand what it means to her mother and sister.	221	(8)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
IN THE KITCHEN A scholar and writer looks at a longtime desire he has shared with many African Americans -- the desire for straight hair, "good" hair.	229	(8)
5. WORD POWER	237	(58)
INSIGHTS: Sheila Rowbotham, D. H. Lawrence, William Cory, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edith Hamilton, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Philip Levine (poem), Richard Wright	238	(4)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	242	(1)
Joan Didion
ON KEEPING A NOTEBOOK Considering "bits of the mind's string" that she finds in her journal, this writer traces what the details mean to her and how she has used them in her life and work.	243	(7)
Helen Vendler
KNOWING POEMS A prominent literary critic credits the Psalms with giving voice to her feelings of despair and anger in adolescence.	250	(5)
Deborah Tannen
TALKING UP CLOSE The act of arguing does not always signal disagreement, according to this well-known linguist and author.	255	(5)
Pico Iyer
IN PRAISE OF THE HUMBLE COMMA A writer cleverly suggests that commas have a life force of their own; like the gods, they "give breath, and they take it away."	260	(3)
Susanne K. Langer
LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT The ability to symbolize, says this influential American philosopher, frees human thought from the physical world and distinguishes us from animals.	263	(6)
Robert J. Sternberg
WHAT SHOULD WE ASK ABOUT INTELLIGENCE? Standard intelligence tests ask the wrong questions, according to this psychologist. Here he puts forth his own criteria for measuring intelligence.	269	(5)
George Steiner
BOOKS AND THE END OF LITERATURE Will current technology make books obsolete? A prominent literary scholar considers the question.	274	(7)
Ha Jin
OCEAN OF WORDS (fiction) A young soldier's future in the Communist Party is threatened by his love of books, until he is befriended by a superior officer.	281	(14)
6. WORK RULES	295	(66)
INSIGHTS: Vince Lombardi, Wilfred Sheed, Margaret Lowe Benston, Nikki Giovanni, Marie Curie, Vincent Van Gogh, W. B. Yeats (poem)	296	(3)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	299	(1)
Abigail Witherspoon (Pseud.)
THIS PEN FOR HIRE An insider reveals how both she and the students who hire her are compromised by the work she does for them.	300	(12)
Greta Foff Paules
HUMBLE PIE When the "Customer Is King," waitresses are the servants who must find ways to adapt to their subservient role, according to this anthropologist.	312	(8)
Gary Soto
BLACK HAIR A Chicano writer reflects on the lessons he learned as a teenage runaway working in a tire factory.	320	(8)
John Updike
A & P (fiction) A teenage grocery-store clerk puts his job on the line when three bikini-clad girls walk through the store and choose to check out at his register.	328	(6)
Peter Schwendener
REFLECTIONS OF A BOOKSTORE TYPE While working as a clerk at a Barnes & Noble, this writer takes notes on the business of selling not only books but the idea of culture itself.	334	(8)
Virginia Woolf
PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN To learn to write truthfully, this writer had to face inner obstacles that women entering any profession must strive to overcome.	342	(6)
Laura L. Nash
THE VIRTUAL JOB A writer examines the impact of two contrary trends emerging in the workplace: businesses providing more unusual and comprehensive employee benefits while expecting workers to act more like free agents.	348	(6)
Ian Angell
WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE INFORMATION AGE Information technologies, according to this graphic designer, risk making the rich richer, the poor poorer, government irrelevant, and social unrest inevitable.	354	(7)
7. POSSESSIONS	361	(50)
INSIGHTS: Matthew 19:24, Henry David Thoreau, Edna O'Brien, Henry James, Colette, Paul Wachtel, Andrew Carnegie, John Kenneth Galbraith, Richard Wilbur (poem)	362	(3)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	365	(1)
Harry Crews
THE CAR A Southern writer recalls the period when his automobiles seemed to organize his activities and define his personality.	366	(5)
E. M. Forster
MY WOOD An English novelist finds that owning a stretch of forest changes his view of it; being a landowner brings unwelcome changes in himself.	371	(3)
Holly Brubach
MAIL-ORDER AMERICA Popular mail-order catalogues appeal to more than our fashion sense, according to this journalist; they reveal what Americans want in a community, at home, and in love.	374	(12)
Richard Panek
SUPERSTORE INFLATION A journalist examines the overwhelming proliferation of superstores and how consumers have changed their habits, leaving malls and mom-and-pop stores in the dust.	386	(5)
William Ian Miller
GIFTS AND HONOR: AN EXCHANGE Even gift-giving has its own set of rules. This legal scholar describes those rules and considers why breaking them is so humiliating.	391	(6)
Toni Cade Bambara
THE LESSON (fiction) A tough-talking kid from the ghetto begins to understand that in this society money talks even tougher than she does.	397	(7)
Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat
CHOCOLATE AND DIVINITY A writer chronicles the history of chocolate -- as an obsession and a possession worthy of the gods.	404	(7)
8. MEDIA IMAGES	411	(56)
INSIGHTS: Mark Crispin Miller, Ruth Rosen, Gerald Early, Louis Menand, Louise Erdrich (poem)	412	(3)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	415	(1)
Louise Erdrich
Z: THE MOVIE THAT CHANGED MY LIFE A movie about a leftist peace leader gives a young woman her first liberating view of the world, and her life will never be the same again.	416	(6)
Kurt Andersen
ANIMATION NATION Animated cartoons, says this journalist, express what other art forms do not: sentiment and satire.	422	(3)
James B. Twitchell
"BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR" A writer finds the omnipresence of advertising -- from corporate-sponsored cultural events to magazine inserts -- responsible for the "dumbing down" of America.	425	(5)
Ellen Ullman
GETTING CLOSE TO THE MACHINE Writing "code" requires a computer programmer to immerse herself in the world of the machine at the expense of human interactions.	430	(5)
Wendy Lesser
THE CONVERSION A writer embraces e-mail as a new technology that gives us "the chance to gain a soul rather than lose one."	435	(7)
Robert Goodman
THE LUCK BUSINESS By advertising state-sponsored lotteries -- a form of legal gambling -- the government unwittingly assumes the role of more corrupt forces, playing on people's impossible fantasies of easy money.	442	(7)
Oscar Hijuelos
THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE (fiction) A boy watches his father, now dead, perform on a rerun of the I Love Lucy show and feels, fleetingly, the power of resurrection.	449	(5)
Andrea Dworkin
LETTER FROM A WAR ZONE A feminist sends an urgent dispatch from the front lines of a national battle over pornography.	454	(13)
9. DILEMMAS	467	(60)
INSIGHTS: E. M. Forster, Yitzhak Rabin, George Orwell, Karl Menninger, Margaret Mead, Robert Frost (poem), Agnes De Mille	468	(2)
FOCUSING BY WRITING	470	(1)
Sallie Tisdale
WE DO ABORTIONS HERE A nurse in an abortion clinic searches for a moral outlook that transcends simple judgments.	471	(8)
Peter Marin
THE PREJUDICE AGAINST MEN A writer examines society's anger and revulsion in response to homeless men in order to explain why there are no successful programs to help them.	479	(10)
Jonathan Swift
A MODEST PROPOSAL The great eighteenth-century satirist presents an extreme and shocking solution to the problem of poverty.	489	(8)
George Johnson
DARK MATTER LIGHTS THE VOID In a satire that calls into question astronomers' method of inquiry, this science writer entertains the perspective of extraterrestrials who are studying what humans have thought about the universe.	497	(3)
Bel Kaufman
SUNDAY IN THE PARK (fiction) A bully shatters a fragile peace, and everyone appears to do the wrong thing about it.	500	(4)
George Orwell
SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT When an incident that at first seems amusing gets out of control, a young Englishman learns a lesson about the fear, hatred, and suspicion that a colonial power and a native people feel toward each other.	504	(7)
John Hoberman
STEROIDS AND SPORTS As illicit performance-enchancing drugs are increasingly prescribed for therapeutic purposes, this scholar claims that the practice of "doping" in sports will become more difficult to protest.	511	(6)
Leon R. Kass
THE MORAL REPUGNANCE OF CLONING A critic of medical ethics examines the justifications for cloning and provides his own argument against this "pollution and perversion" of human procreation.	517	(10)
Rhetorical Index	527	(6)
Index of Authors and Titles	533