ESSAY CEMETERY

Themes ·        Storytelling ·        Linear traditional stories vs. non-traditional stories ·        Conservative themes vs unorthodox themes ·        Generation gap ·        Metaliterature ·        Story within story Style and devices ·        Humor ·        Story within story ·        Dialogue Keywords ·        Story ·        Tragedy ·        Junkie People and places ·        de Maupassant ·        Chekhov ·        Manhattan ·        Turgenev ·        Lower Manhattan ·        Coleridge ·        Leary ·        Antonioni ·        East Village Grace Paley

The narrator's father is sick. He asks his daughter to write him a simple story like Maupassant or Checkhov, with a linear plot. She doesn't like to but tries in order to please him. She writes a story, based in reality, about a young man who becomes a junkie and his mother who becomes a junkie to keep him company. After a while the boy is disgusted and leaves. The story is short and without details. Her father asks for more details. He is not happy with the story. He is upset that the woman in her story has a child out of wedlock. They discuss storytelling technique and what the author does when she has difficulty inventing an end for her stories. The author tries again. She injects more details into the story, more psychology and humor and causal connections. The mother in the story joins her son because she prefers to be with the young generation than her own. She ends her story with the son moving out, sober and the mother alone and unable to overcome the addiction