D. J. Reddall
Bio
I write because my time is limited and my imagination is not.
Achievements (14)
Stories (878)
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The Leaf Bath
Harold was not really into these visits with his grandfather. Once a month, no matter what he was doing or how he felt about it, his mother drove him to his grandfather’s lame, smelly apartment in the sad neighborhood where she had grown up. Harold couldn’t really understand why his grandfather still lived there. He wasn’t like, really poor or whatever. Harold and his parents had a nice place in a sweet neighborhood on the south side. His grandfather must be living like this by choice, which had to show he was crazy or like, really challenged, you know?
By D. J. Reddall2 years ago in Fiction
An Education in Alienation. Top Story - April 2024.
It might seem odd to conjure the ghost of an ancient Greek philosopher the better to try to understand and appreciate a 19th Century tale of thrilling horror with his help. I was moved to do so because I am the sort of silly idealist who believes that anything encoded by a human mind can be decoded by one, to echo David Lodge’s irascible Morris Zapp, provided sufficient energy and attention are devoted to the cause. After all, I have had the privilege and pleasure of teaching this novel to hundreds of students. When I have done so, I have repudiated charming customer service and power point karaoke in favor of close reading of the text and texts about it. The latter have both preserved and provoked a scholarly and critical conversation about tragedy in general and this novel in particular. Aristotle was the first to contribute a systematic theory of tragedy to this conversation, in the 4th Century BCE. Walking anachronism that I am, I understand it to be my duty to prepare my students to understand the text and said conversation in order, in however modest and provisional a way, to contribute to it themselves. If the aims of a university are not to preserve, create and disseminate knowledge, by these and other means, what could they possibly be?
By D. J. Reddall2 years ago in BookClub
