Suburban/Absurd: Subjects of Anxiety in the Fiction of John Cheever and Richard Ford.

<p>One aspect of the common ground between the work of Richard Ford and John Cheever is their careful depiction of domestic life. It was this attention to the middle class suburbs of America that led some of Cheever's contemporary critics to dismiss his work, seeing his subject matter as inappropriate to serious critical enquiry. By altering the terms on which Cheever's work is approached, and reading Cheever's and Ford's suburban fiction in light of some of the tenets of existentialism, post-structuralism, and neo-pragmatism, it is possible to affirm their works as central to contemporary concerns surrounding subjectivity, identity, and agency.</p>

Suburban/Absurd: Subjects of Anxiety in the Fiction of John Cheever and Richard Ford.

<p>One aspect of the common ground between the work of Richard Ford and John Cheever is their careful depiction of domestic life. It was this attention to the middle class suburbs of America that led some of Cheever's contemporary critics to dismiss his work, seeing his subject matter as inappropriate to serious critical enquiry. By altering the terms on which Cheever's work is approached, and reading Cheever's and Ford's suburban fiction in light of some of the tenets of existentialism, post-structuralism, and neo-pragmatism, it is possible to affirm their works as central to contemporary concerns surrounding subjectivity, identity, and agency.</p>

Slavery as national trauma in Richard Ford’s “everything could be worse”.

This article explores slavery as a national trauma in Richard Ford’s 2014 novella “Everything Could Be Worse.” First, slavery is conceptualized as trauma, emphasizing its role in the formation of contemporary Black identity in the United States. The categories of ‘postmemory’ (Marianne Hirsch), ‘phantom’ and ‘crypt’ (Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok) are presented, as they facilitate the study of multigenerational oppression and the transmission of trauma. Then, a brief discussion of the race question in Ford’s fiction and nonfiction contextualizes the analysis of the novella. In “Everything Could Be Worse,” which resembles a ghost story as well as a session of psychoanalysis, the intergenerational effects of trauma affect the descendants of both victims and perpetrators of slavery. Finally, it is concluded that, despite certain shortcomings, Ford’s approach to racial difference is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Este artículo explora la esclavitud como trauma nacional en “Everything Could Be Worse” (2014), de Richard Ford. En primer lugar, se lleva a cabo la conceptualización de la esclavitud como trauma, prestando atención a su papel en la formación de la identidad negra estadounidense contemporánea. Las categorías de ‘posmemoria’ (Marianne Hirsch), ‘fantasma’ y ‘cripta’ (Nicolas Abraham y Maria Torok) se presentan para facilitar el estudio de la opresión multigeneracional y la trasmisión del trauma. A continuación, una breve discusión de la cuestión racial en la ficción y no ficción de Ford contextualiza el análisis de “Everything Could Be Worse.” En esta novela corta, los efectos del trauma intergeneracional se perciben en los descendientes tanto de las víctimas como de los perpetradores de la esclavitud. Por último, se concluye que, a pesar de ciertas limitaciones, resulta evidente la creciente sofisticación con la que Ford trata la diferencia racial.

Sex and Text: Queering Older Men’s Sexuality in Contemporary U.S. Fiction

This paper will explore the representation of men’s aging experiences in contemporary U.S. fiction. While most gender-ed approaches to aging have focused on women, which has contributed to the cultural invisibility of older men, this study focuses on men’s aging experiences as men, thus challenging the inverse correlation between masculinity and aging. To do so, the study draws on a selected number of contemporary U.S. male-authored fictional works, which question the widely-held assumption that aging is a lesser concern for men, or that men and women’s aging experiences may be simply defined as opposed. The literary corpus includes male authors from different backgrounds so as to illustrate how (self-)representations of aging men vary according not only to gender but also class (Richard Ford), race (Ernest Gaines), and sexual orientation (Edmund White), amongst other factors. The presentation will thus end up challenging the conventional equation of men’s aging processes with (sexual) decline, exemplifying their plurality as well as irreducible contradictions.

“No Ways Tired”

We have witnessed a resurgence of mass demonstrations and other public forms of political protest in the Trump era, but are protests becoming less effective and delegitimated—counterproductive, even—precisely because of their frequency, as Richard Ford maintains in “Protest Fatigue”? Granted, more and more of us may be, in the immortal words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “sick and tired of being sick and tired” and, at marches against ever more virulent manifestations of sexism and racism, signs like “I Can’t Believe I Still Have to Protest This Shit” evince a certain weariness and frustration among the dissenting masses. But, in this chapter, I argue that more, not less, protesting—by more people, in more places, on more occasions—is what we need now, since it can have a galvanizing, reinvigorating effect and be no less legitimate than past protests such as demonstrations for women’s suffrage and the March on Washington. Especially in the digital age, mass protests, far from sapping our energy and yielding diminishing returns, have the potential to tap and replenish the ever-renewable resources of hope and solidarity.

Introduction

This introduction begins with a comprehensive analysis of the short story’s range, encapsulating a brief history of its practice and criticism from Poe onwards. As prelude to chapter analyses of four contemporary writers who have transformed the field, it offers an assessment of two exceptional stories focused on memory, by Richard Ford and Jhumpa Lahiri, before turning to Raymond Carver’s minimalism and issues raised by his stylistic alterations. The conception of “late style,” introduced by Theodor Adorno and revived by Edward Said in 2006, is then brought into question, along with the short story’s treatment as a distinct genre. A conclusion provides an overview of the book’s structure and rationale, outlining the distinctive storytelling qualities of the quartet of writers, as well as definitions of their late styles.

El léxico de la tauromaquia en Gatherings from Spain, de Richard Ford

El artículo desarrolla el análisis del léxico taurino utilizado en el español peninsular a través de su presencia en la obra Gatherings from Spain, publicada en 1846. El objetivo es doble: por un lado, determinar cuáles son los mecanismos lingüísticos de traducción usados por el autor para trasladar del español al inglés un campo léxico tan tremendamente enraizado en el acervo cultural español como es la tauromaquia; por otro establecer la relación entre el tipo de léxico original y el mecanismo utilizado, dependiendo de si se trata de un elemento terminológico o de léxico y/o expresiones populares no específicas pero que aluden al toro como referente cultural. En muchos casos, se observa la incorporación de estos elementos a la lengua de llegada a través de préstamos integrados o xenismos, dada la imposibilidad de alcanzar una traducción equivalente apropiada.