WHAT JADE SAID

Last Tuesday, Mr. Lowney lead us up to San Francisco to the Clay Theatre where we were fortunate enough to watch Spike Lee's documentary on Hurricane Katrina.
We were asked at one point to consider what we would say if we had to choose one word to describe the misfortune and experience of those affected by the hurricane. I chose "desperation." I figured this was appopriate after watching the film. I had barely seen any footage of the wreck before this, and I was overwhelmed with the hardships these poor families faced.
I cannot imagine having everything torn out of my life, especially the people that I love most. I cannot imagine not being able to say goodbye to my grandma, grandpa, cousins, sisters, brother, or parents. The scene that hit me the hardest was when the film showed the mother at her daughter's funeral. It's not supposed to go like that. You are not supposed to bury your daughter. I find it horrible that this poor mother was not even given the chance to say goodbye.
The victims of this awful hurricane can't put it into words what they went through; it was undescribable. Homes, businesses, and families were destroyed. Lives were destroyed.
The fortunate part of this film showed us that the spirit of New Orleans still lives on with the people. They celebrate Mardi Gras with thankfulness to be there, and the men who travel with their band show that the spirit continues.


Thanks Lowney for giving us this oppurtunity.

STILL FEELS GOOD

Country? Pop?? What are you, Rascal Flatts? FINALLY, my favorite COUNTRY band, came out with a new CD two weeks ago. But fans, and non-fans are confused: Are the boys playing country or pop music?

In my opinion, they plays country music. I can understand why some may think that there is a pop vibe to it, but it is truly country. If you simply listen to one song, you will hear lyrics relating to the countryside and sunsets and "sitting on porches." I don't think pop music would have lyrics such as these.

Among my favorite songs is one entitled "Here's to You," on their "Feels Like Today" album. The band chose to devote a song to their fans, and they describe how the fans camp out the night before the release of their tickets, and go crazy at their shows, which makes what they do so much fun for them.

The new album is going to need time with me. I am in love with and addicted to every other Rascal Flatts album, and this one hasn't drawn me in too much so far. I'm sure that over time I will be loving it as well. Along with a new album means a new tour, which is exciting news for me. After going to two of the most amazing concerts in my life, I am sure that they will pull through with the Still Feels Good Tour. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK BOYS!

Katrina: You %itch

Spike Lee is a genius when it comes to film. He made sure to show that Katrina affected more than just a certain demographic. He showcased that pain that accompany such a horrific disaster. Act 3 ends with a woman walking away from her 5 year old daughter’s funeral crying out in anguish. The pain was tangible, the anger palpable. The government didn’t fulfill its duties to these people. They all kept saying, “Where is FEMA?” That’s a good question. Where was Bush? What took him so long? Well if his mama had anything to with it, its probably better that it took him three weeks to get to New Orleans because she felt that the whole thing “worked out very well” for the evacuees. I believe its safe to say the entire Bush family is insane. But I digress.

Which brings me to my next point. They were evacuees, not refugees. I would be pissed if my fellow countrymen were referring to me as a damn refugee, a person without a nation. These people had lost their homes, their livelihood, their families, and then their country, too?

Lee also gave us a little history lesson on New Orleans and its jazz roots. I love how he tied the music into the film. Jazz is the underbelly of New Orleans. It was brilliant how he showcased the jazz funeral. I’m sure many people had never heard of a jazz funeral. It’s a beautiful and rich tradition unique to New Orleans.
Katrina, like 9/11, affected this entire country. All I can say is: F you, Katrina!

THe Fieldtrip

I didn't realize how pissed I was until I really thought about this moment again. After waking up late, being unsure of the what time I needed to be at the train station, riding the train to the last stop in SF, nearly falling to my death while getting on a bus because the bus driver was "in transition," if you know what I mean, and decided to take it out on her unsuspecting passengers, and trekking uphill in 4 inch heel boots, I was bombarded with ignorance. Before we were allowed into the theater, other schools started to arrive. There was a group of "urban youth," my peers if you may, that looked at me with complete disdain. Here I was: the only black kid in a group of interesting looking white kids with our preppy-looking white teacher. It didn't help that I was wearing a leopard print blouse. Now, this is a look I've grown all too familiar with. I will admit that I'm different from the stereotypical black youth. But, so what?

At first I thought that I was overreacting, simply projecting my paranoia on this group of students that embodied everything that most people accept as black. After years of having my blackness questioned, you can understand my suspicion.
But I wasn’t wrong. While I was talking with Madelyn, I could hear this black girl talking to her Latina friends about me. Words like “whitewashed” and “sellout” came up. They would look at me and sneer. And I was pissed. Who the hell were they to judge the extent of my blackness? Who crowned them rulers of all things black? So what if I don’t like every single rap and R&B song? So what if I don’t rock the new Jordans and Girbaud everyday? So what if I’d rather code-switch than explain the phonetics of Ebonics to the white people I associate with everyday? That doesn’t make me any less black than them. Let me say that they are extremely fortunate that I was on a school fieldtrip because I would have shown them just how “black” I can be. And what really pushed my buttons was the fact the little Latina girls thought that they could educate me on the art of being black. I wanted to say, “Look here, chicas. The last time I checked ustedes son Mexicanas, not black.

Still stuck on this concept of “what is black,” I couldn’t enjoy the student film that came before “When the Levies Broke.” I just couldn’t get pass the names: Quaneecha, Ramisi, and others of the sort. During the short film, I kept thinking to myself, “ God, what the hell is wrong with black people? Why can’t they name their children something that the kids can spell? Why do they have to be so damn ignorant? And why does everybody think that wearing baggy jeans, being able to quote to newest rap song, and saying ‘yo’ a whole bunch of times makes you black? News flash people: it doesn’t!” I was still caught up in this train of thought when the movie started.

Poem: Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit

The author, Deborah Warren, writes with a tone of dissapointment. She writes as though she wants exciting things to happen but she does not do anything to spark that want. The dreams that she wants entail a "psychic workout, romance, close escapes" and they are not being fulfilled. How she analyzies dreams is very true in a way because we cannot actually do anything in our sleep so our entertainment is all dependant on our dreams. The author needs to take action if she wants her dreams to have excitment. It is always fun to wake up when you've had a good dream; it always starts your day off nicely.

Nature Writer

The story "Among the Animals and Plants" by Andrei Platonov portrays nature as a blissful exsistance to the world. When the hunter only came home with a baby hare, his wife wasnt pleased. She feels that hunters are not serious and that they just "sprawl about..wandering about under oak tress." Her statement gives hunters an inferior image to the rest of the world and that they just go into the forest to just be free in a way. From this situation, the wife is reality and the husband/hunter is in bliss with nature.

Cover Art from Sept. 3&10

The way in which Wayne Thiebaud uses pastel colors I think is amazing. Usually people would not even think to paint a shadow with that shade of blue, usually only in a black or gray, but Thiebaud shows that this effect works really well. Another aspect to the painting that I really liked was the fact that you could see the brush strokes of his paint brush. This technique that he uses shows a sense of texture and depth in his piece. The style of his piece is somewhat idealistic but he still manages to keep a sense of reality with the whole fifties diner theme. This cover has been particularly my favorite.

"I smell like B.O. and feet"

As the field trip was coming to an end we all got on the 33 towards the train station. As it happened the people stopped and i ended up standing near a homeless name who said something along the lines of; you dont want to stand near me, I smell like B.O. and feet. I was like, ok?
Besides the weird homeless guy freaking me out and the other students around me, all in all I really enjoyed the field trip and the movie. It opened my eyes to the truth of Katrina, and informed me of the truth the media did not show us. Thank you Lowney for bring us to this movie and giving us the chance to learn about the Katrina.

Vogel: Black & White

There is no such thing as gray area and no one knows this better than the magnificent playwright Paula Vogel. Unfortunately, there are many people who are too blind to see this truth. They blur their minds with details that are deemed important when in reality they just don’t matter. In the plays “How I Learned to Drive” and “The Mineola Twins,” Vogel explores the most controversial extremes of today’s society, ranging from homosexuality, abortion, and sexual promiscuity. Interestingly enough, Vogel does not provide us with any answers, just questions: Who really is right in our society? And who has it all wrong? It’s up to us to decide. Vogel doesn’t make this easy for us though. She loves juxtaposition and masters it flawlessly. She makes all the characters who represent the extremes in society look just as ridiculous as the characters representing the polar opposite view. I think the point Vogel is trying to make is exactly this: if we concentrate too much on one element, no matter if we couldn’t be more right; we just end up looking absurd. People just need to accept others and realize that everyone is different and if they choose to live their lives in a way that is different than how we would, than that only makes sense. People enjoy complicating their lives; I must admit to being guilty of doing so myself. At the same time, we need to be capable of stepping back from the overwhelmingly colorful hectic world we live in and just see things how they really are: black and white.

todays feild trip

i first want to talk about all we saw and did. i dont know about you but it was my first time using that much public transportation in San Francisco. wow i so much went on, but my favorites were

rob being told (thats mine thats mine) by an old Asian woman
or jade being told (i smell do you really want me to rob against you) both amazing

i also enjoyed the train when a random person jumps in to our conversation it was great she took us by surprise but the french girls kinda shut them out by mumbling (i dont speak english) i felt kinda bad but did not know how to express it

it was amazing and next time i hope more people come like the rest of my class

The movie was interesting i never thought it would talk about how the hurricane actually caused more damage in other states. i also thought it was unfair that people jumped to the conclusion the government does not care about black people you cant just do that if 80% of the people your talking about are black. its racist just saying its racist. there had never been anything like it before what were the people in the movie comparing it to. the movie did not move me as much as the musician. being able to hear the sadness in his voice helped me have empathy. i dont know what relevance their having been jazz musicians had though.
all in all it was a good trip the people who did not come missed out

Three Riffs on When the Levees Broke

#1

I loved Act 3 of Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke. How did he make this material dramatic? The underlying fact is static: the city's in ruins. Rather than do the Ken Burns slide show of heaping piles of garbage, Spike Lee mixes up the standard documentary fare--talking heads in chiaroscuro lighting--with short stories about people going home or looking for family members or deciding to stay away or making music or burying loved ones. I'd heard about Kayne West before, and I'd heard about the guy telling Cheney to F himself, but I was still interested to see the footage for myself. What was most powerful for me, though, were the scenes of parents and children: the mom on a cell phone making first contact with her lost kids; that same mom reuniting with her kids in the airport; the man who breaks down in tears in the Houston convention center when he tries to talk about his nieces and nephews whom he has raised like a father; and the funeral for the little girl--Serena?--whose body was found months after the storm. I have been trying to think of what word fits the sound that Spike Lee records as the mom walks away from her 5-year-old daughter's grave. She is neither crying nor screaming. Wailing is not right either. Lamentation, perhaps. It is an archaic sound, a grief out of Greek tragedy. You'd need a heart of stone to listen to her with dry eyes.

#2

Because my kids have been watching High School Music a lot recently, I've been thinking about the representation of Black people in American media. The Blacks in HSM strike me as culturally white: they speak the crisp, Standard English of TV newsreaders, and they all engage in activities, like science contests and baking, that evoke the white America of the 1950s. I credit Disney with combating the negative stereotypes and vile caricatures of Black America so often recycled by the US media (often with the participation of Black gangsta celebrities); but they do so by implicitly endorsing the equally absurd stereotypes of white goodness and innocence.

I was thinking about this again today when we saw the short film "Children of the Storm." I jotted down the names of the kids interviewed: Queeneachia, Taaqua, Janique, and Hakira. (Okay, there was a kid with beautiful eyes named Donald, too.) These kids did not have much to say. It's different, or, we're going to stay somewhere else, or it was creepy. Their names--the impulse toward Africanist recovery or invention--and their inarticulateness reminded me constantly that I was watching and listening to Black kids who were poor and uneducated.

Then Spike Lee's movie comes on, which is supposed to be about how America abandoned a city full of poor Black folk. But most of the Blacks interviewed at length were extraordinarily well-educated and highly articulate. They provided the film's narrative drive. The things they had to say--a lawyer with a MBA talking about what it is like to lose everything, or a Harvard MD talking about post-traumatic stress disorder--were very persuasive. If I were Spike Lee, I would have used this footage, too. I can imagine him thinking about representation of race as he made this film. When educated white folk hear these educated Black folk talking, they can relate; they identify. But Lee's rhetorical success regarding race comes at the expense of class. It is as though he knows that poor people, white or black or brown, just don't count. We see pictures of them, but we don't hear much from them. If you want to sting the conscience of America--or at least that part of America with access to political power--tell a middle class story. This rhetorical choice is not really about appeal to conscience, but self-interest. You hear a Black journalist or lawyer talking, and you think, wow, this could happen to me. The middle-class conscience is closed to verbal style of poor people. This is not so much a criticism of Spike Lee as it is a critical comment on America's indifference to poor people's stories.

#3

I loved the music, the culture of New Orleans. Spike Lee tells a powerful story about creole popular culture. Perhaps the music, dance, and festivals are the narrative arts of the poor?

More later, maybe.

The Maserati Years: short and sweet

The Maserati Years is another short story that contends with human emotion and the cold world that is embraced by those who lack essential parts of human emotion. In "sin Dolor" Boyle constructs a pain-free world for Damaso, and shows the real pain of his life, lacking a basic human principle, a basic human element. In the Maserati Years, Maxim Biller attempts to do the same in much less space (only two pages), by portraying a heartless figure who has no drive or passion in his life.

Biller himself is a German writer, born in Prauge, and this particular short story is translated from German.

In The Maserati Years, diction and imagery create a bleak scene that makes the reader cold just glancing through the short pages. The main character is a void, completely lacking emotion or impetus to live his life. The story begins with a message from a lover, who is unmistakeably not loved, proclaiming a pregnancy. The main character watches his day pass by through a series of text messages, a symbol of the disconnected life he lives.

This story is an interesting reflection on the void that human emotion can sometimes be, but reading it was a somewhat depressing few minutes. I would still reccomend anyone to read The Maserati Years, for its quick, concise precipitaion of themes reguarding the lacking intimacy in modern culture, but I don't feel strongly about this short story.

"Sin Dolor" Evokes mi amor

What is it like to live a life without pain? In his short story, "sin dolor" T. Coraghessan Boyle attempts to answer this question.

Boyle himself, a American man, has been widely published with fiction, nonfiction, short stories, and essays. He has been published in magazines from breasts to playboy to the New Yorker. He attended The State University of New York at Potsdam and University of Iowa, Iowa City. He received his PhD in British Literature. He has also appeared in an Absolut vodka add. He was originally named Thomas John Boyle, but changed his middle name to Coraghessan when he was 17. Quite a profile.

The Main character of "Sin Dolor" is a doctor, and describes himself descriptively and concisely as, "...no longer as young as I once was and the Hippocratic frisson of healing the lame and curing the incurable had been replaced by a sort of repetitious drudgery—nothing a surprise anymore and every patient who walked through the door diagnosed before they’d even pulled up a chair." His experience has led him to become bored with his profession, and as he diagnoses several different patients in the opening of the story in a series of digressions, Boyle takes us along for the ride of his last amazing diagnosis: a boy who feels no pain, Damaso Funes.

In Sin Dolor, Boyle does a good job of keeping my attention. the story flows chronologically through the tale Damaso and grapples with the question: is it a blessing to be free of pain? The doctor ignorantly remarks that it is, "a kind of medical miracle" that the boy feels no pain, but Boyle takes us on a trip through the sporadic visits the boy makes to the doctor, and the random encounters the two have, and shows the reader that pain, is in fact what makes us human. Damaso lives a life of mediocrity and oppression from his father, and he reveals in the end the he in fact does feel the pain, on a level aside from the physical pain a normal person incurs.

I enjoyed this short story a lot because it was engaging and well written. Boyle is an expert at story telling, and employs irony, varied syntax, and thematic shifts throughout the story brilliantly to demonstrate his belief that pain is central to the human existence, and a life without pain is in fact not worth living.

My favorite of the short stories so far; a great read.

Nawabdin looking for money?

Daniyal Mueenuddin, the author of “Nawabdin Electrician”, manages a farm in Khanpur, Pakistan. And he formerly practiced as a lawyer in New York City. The fiction piece is about an electrician who cheats the electric company. He goes around fixing things and saving peoples money on electricity. In the middle of the story he gets a motorcycle that gets him around quicker then his bike. Nawabdin is the father of big family of girls, and tries to take care of them as best he can, however when he gets shot by a man who wants to steel his bike, Nawabdin sees death in the face. However, does not die nor forgive the robber who shot him in the end. He is known throughout the towns for this ability to cheat the electric company and give people more power for their money. Mueenudin uses a mixture of dialogue and descriptions to create the story of Nawabdin. He intertwines he writing with these two characteristics brings a common way of writing to the story, a type of writing style most everyone knows. The story being told through Nawabdin lets us relate to his actions and daily activities, and in the end relate to the protagonist. He is a good guy who helps the people, something everyone wants to do, especially if they are not rich since as in Robin Hood and how he takes from the rich and gives to the poor. Thus in the end Nawabdin helps those who are in desperate need of help, while leaving the rich feeling like most poor people do, deprived. Being able to retell this story in such a way children can understand it is remarkable since children our the next leaders of the country, and without them we are at a loss when we are old and can no longer stand up for ourselves. This story brought out some interesting points. For example, people say that cheating is wrong, however do not mind it when it helps them out. I enjoyed reading this story and felt like I could relate to Nawabdin since he tries to help everyone, not just the ones who have money.

"Luda and Milena"

Lara Vapnyar, the author of “Luda and Milena,” emigrated from Russia to New York in 1994 and began publishing short stories in English in 2002. She lives on Staten Island and is pursuing a Ph.D. in comparative literature at CUNY Graduate Center. The story “Luda and Milena” is about two female Russian immigrants named Luda and Milena who partake in an English as a second learning class with other people of different countries. One man, Aron, about there age fancies these ladies throughout the weeks of class. However he only talks to one of the two ladies each week, and he decides who he talks to by which dish he likes better. Each week during the class everyone brings in a dish from their country to introduce what they have to bring to the United States. Aron ends up dieing because of either a dish Luda or Milena made when they brought the same thing. Luda was sad when they heard that news of Arons death, and Milena was indifferent. Vapnyar writing style demonstrates how she is an immigrant through her ideas about the United States culture. When the Chinese couple brought McDonalds to the pot luck because they wanted to show how American they are. She also uses her knowledge about different cultures to aid her in her writing since she can use different perspectives to enhance the readers read. For example when Luda views the cooking shows and the hostess who is usually petit compared to what she was used to in Russia. Vapnyar also includes blunt dialogue to signify a point. There is little literary merit with in the story since this story is not an extension of any other story I have read. It does not possess an underling story that can be retold throughout time, as does how Romeo and Juliet for example is retold through the story West Side Story. “Luda and Milena” is a simple narrative of two women who gain affection from a man by their cooking. However I enjoyed reading this story since it was an effortless read, and kept my interest throughout.

the cold one

Maxim Biller, a German writer, sets his short story, The Maserati Years, in an apartment in Berlin. A few hours of a man's life are chronicled through clouds of cold breath, missed phone calls and messages, and getting up either to fix the drapes or go the bathroom. This man is void of any emotion or feeling; his emotional range is between hot and cold. He cannot commit to a real relationship whether it with a woman or whether it business (acting) related. All the action is contained within this one man's thought process, which does not connect to the outside world. The story begins with one of his lovers leaving a message to tell him shes pregnant and ends with her texting him it was a cold joke; that is the extent of his emotions and communication. Maxim Biller uses little breath clouds to divide the story into sections or stream of thought and simple syntax to emphasize the uncomplicated selfishness of his life. In such a short piece of fiction, Maxim Biller opens his readers eyes to a kind of despicable life, one almost not worth living. This man is living a wasted life and Maxim Biller makes that clear. You cannot live a fullfilling life only through physical connections with the world such as sex and money. I really enjoyed this story because it portrayed a stereotypical movie star and his demeanor in thought through, to the point, intriguing prose. The concept of a commercial/high end product like a maserati pulled all the aspects of the story into one concrete object, emblemtic of his life style.

MARRIED LOVE

The short story "Married Love" by Tessa Hadley appeared in the October 8, 2007 issue of The New Yorker. Tessa is the author of two highly praised novels and lives in Cardiff, Whales where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

This fictional story, which follows the life of a young girl who falls in young love with her professor, is about the childish notion of love, and the long journey of life with a husband from another generation. Lottie's husband Edgar writes music. She says at one point that she believes he writes music FOR her, but not ABOUT her. This young girl who thinks she has found it all when she marries the man of her dreams, soon finds out the harsh reality. The story beings with Lottie talking about how she is in love and is getting married. In the midddle of the story the tone changes dramatically from excitement to dull and poignant. The tone of the story is somewhat symbolic of what is actually going on in the story. She is excited to get married to this older man whom she thinks she loves, but as she gets older and has kids, he begins to be more and more distant and spend more and more time at his ex-wife's house. The story ends with Lottie listening intently to the sounds in the kitchen, seemingly looking for "her" music.

Sin Dolor

Sin Dolor is the tale of boy who lives a life without pain. Written by T. Corahessan Boyle and published in the October 18th issue of the New Yorker, this story illustrates the values of a culture much different from that of which we are used to. This idea of cultural difference may come from the fact that Boyle was born and lives in Germany and Sin Dolor has been translated from German.

In this story, the main character Damaso, is born into a life in which he feels no pain. As this is remarkable medical miracle, the narrator is left intruiged in the life of this boy Damaso. Because of his extraordinary gift, Damaso is used by his father as a sideshow in order to raise money for the family. Damaso does not complain about this as he knows it is in the best interest for his family and feels like he owes it to them. This constant abuse and explotation eventually leads to the death of Damaso. Although the narrator says he truly cares about the well-being of Damaso, he actions do not reflect his words. Just like the father, the narrator also uses Damaso trying to get a DNA sample out of him to send away to a medical lab. One aspect of the story that stood out to me was Damaso compliance with his father's wishes. Not once does he speak up and continues to do "what is best for the family." This value is not seen in American culture and the cultural difference is expressed well in Sin Dolor.

Orhan Pamuk

lets learn a little more about tomorrows speaker

noble prize winner
he was born in istambul in 1952 to a rich family bourgeois family going through a hard time
he started schooling as an architect but dropped out and studied journalism after he graduated he lived with his mother until he was 30
he uses his brother as a character sometimes
Cevdet Bey and His Sons was published seven years later in 1982 it was his first novel published
works

The White Castle

The Black Book

The Black Book

The New Life

My Name is Red

Snow

Istanbul : Memories and the City

october 15 new yorke cover

anyone know what it is is it the giving tree
if so why did JJ Sempe title it Higher Still

because of the title i would think it means that the person sitting on the limb has a lot more to grow and reach for in all aspects of life and hes just letting the tree get him there
he should get off the tree and get a ladder lol
i must say im probably saying that because i feel like the little guy and the im letting the tree pull me up and the ladder is what i should do

Aubade in autumn

i read this poem thinking it should have been written by a young man someone who is still looking up at his father someone who lives with his father and not someone who is reminiscing about it from far back, but then i saw this

Everwine, Peter
	Peter Everwine has been a dominant force in American poetry for more than five decades. This volume features a group of new works, as well as selections from four previous collections, which capture the quiet intensity of his calmly dazzling work.

it was kinda a let down i got the author completely wrong
"Listening to my father making the joyful sound on the mirror as he shaves"
i read that hoping it was a kid talking about his recent experiences
i guess it did feel like the writing of an old person reminiscing but it would be interesting to see the same poem written by a teenager

A little info on Michael Ondattje

Born in Sri Lanka in 1943
Moved to england in 1954 and canada in 1962
studied at bishop university then University of toronto and got his MA Queen's University
He then began teaching at the University of Wester Ontario in london
The english patient won the brooker prize
he began as a poet and then became a novelist

he is the author of three collections of poems — The Cinnamon Peeler, Secular Love and There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do — and four novels: In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and The English Patient

Our teacher met him when he was promoting his film

TC Boyle: The Addict sin dolor

TC Boyle is possibly everywhere. In the span of his 30+ year career, he's published eleven novels and more than 60 short stories. His everywhere-ness is a probable sign that TC Boyle has an addiction, to writing.
Be that as it may, his stint in this week’s New Yorker was one of the few enjoyments. T.C. Boyle's Sin Dolor is the story of exploitation and a young boy's extraordinary inability to feel physical pain. It’s told from the pint of view of a small town Mexican doctor who’s bored with the grotesque defects and mutations his patients face. A bit snobby, he finds his chance at medical fame through this medical marvel, Damaso. Even though his father brutally and very publicly exploits his son, the doctor lures the boy in with kindness and attention, aspects he can’t find at home, only to use him to boost his medical status.
The interesting thing about the story is that you can almost instantly tell how it might end, the probable path it’ll take. The story seems to fit into a perfect literary landscape. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good story.

"Luda and Melina"

Lara Vapnyar came to the United States from Russia in 1994. She moved to New York and began publishing short stories in 2002.

"Luda and Melina" appeared in the New Yorker Magazine's September 3rd edition. Written by Lara Vapnyar, another name not new to the New Yorker, it tells the story of two women with the same name who met at a free ESL class. Together, the bring the word competitive to a new meaning. Always trying to one-up the other, Milena said that Luda “looked like Saddam Hussein with bigger hair and a thinner mustache.” At the same time, others said they saw “a striking resemblance to the young Elizabeth Taylor.” As two desperate women would seemingly do, both Luda and Melina laid eyes on Aron, and spoiled him with their best home-cooked foods and lavish conversation. The ESL class that the women are taking is supposed to help them converse with others better in English, and Luda seems to be trying. Melina, on the other hand, is short with people and only really talks to Aron.

What disturbed me the most about this short story was Melina’s reaction to Aron’s death. Her comment to his death was that it was “an enviable death. Quick and easy. And he died happy, didn’t he?” I found this perplexing since Melina had seemed to have been interested in Aron and her comment suggests that she did not care as much as I had thought she did. Over all I found this story entertaining, but sad. It showed the pathetic life of two old women who fight each other for a man who doesn’t care about them except for their food.

The Maserati Years have come to an end...

The Maserati Years written by Maxim Biller was issued in the New Yorker's fiction on September 24. The author Maxim Biller is German and has lived in Prague and Deutchsland. This story was written in German and then later published into english. The story is about a man, whose proffession is not known, but suggested to be successful actor or model. It seems that his life is not all glamorous due to the way he is living. He is living in the cold and dark house all alone, choosing not to communicate with the outside world. His true person is revealed by his tone of solitude which adds to the already sad story. His girfriend is pregnant and he obviously cannot deal with the stresses that life puts on him. Although a pregnant girlfriend is important, he chooses to only think about his Maserati. This luxiourious car is his life prize and without it he has no recognition of what life is. Biller wrote this story very well and captured the true essence of loneliness and life stresses. I thouroughly enjoyed the story because of its realness and rarity of plots. What was even better is that is was a short simple story with a meaning left to be interpreted by the reader. My interpretation was work hard and don't get lazy.

I Wish I Had a Maserati

The New Yorker from September 24 contains Maxim Biller's short story "The Maserati Years." Biller is considered a German writer even though he was born in Prague and lived there for the first ten years of his life before moving to Deutschland. He wrote "The Maserati Years" in German before it was translated to English. The story is about a man who wakes to find that his girlfriend has made the house extremely cold and she tells him that he got her pregnant. He also has text messages from his boss telling him that he better get to work or else. He could care less about the freezing house, his pregnant girlfriend, or his job. All he can think about is his Maserati. They cost tens time more than your average car and he can't help but think that he is going to have to sell it because his girlfriend is pregnant. He frets all day over this and in the end, she isn't pregnant. Biller, I thought, wrote the story very well. He kept everything about the story in the same mood. The room was freezing cold, he was depressed at the thought of selling his car, and his boss was pissed at him. Everything was in a bad state for the main character throughout the whole story. I enjoyed the story. It was short and sweet and that's what I like.

"Sin Dolor"

T. Coraghessan Boyle, whose fiction "Sin Dolor" was featured in the Oct. 15th edition of the New Yorker, has spent most of his life in the classroom. He has been teaching for many years and is currently an English professor at the University of Southern California.

"Sin Dolor" is a story of a young boy, Damaso, with a genetic mutation that does not allow him to feel pain. After being rushed to the emergency for severe burns one day, Damaso meets a doctor, bored by his profession, and eager to examine this eccentric condition. The doctor becomes caught up in this miraculous medical messiah and treats Damaso with a lack of empathy. As the story progresses, the doctor comes to understand this young boys struggles and trys to ease his pain--a feeling Damaso is unable to associate with or understand.

Pain is a protective sense, and protects us from further pain and harm. It is the prick on the finger that tells us to let go, or the burn on our skin that tells us to back away. Pain is a reflex, a shield, and without it, Damaso ironically cannot defend himself from the bruise, scar, or burn. These wounds, which cause him no physical harm, become overwhelming and begin to pain his inner, psychological self. I thought this story was interesting becuase it is an actual true medical problem. I remember flipping through the channels and stumbling on a clip on Oprah about a documentary film featuring children who cannot feel pain.

Here's the website if you feel so inclined... http://alifewithoutpain.com/about.php
There's even a video clip!

"The Maserati Years"

Maxim Biller's "The Maserati Years" was the featured fiction in the Sept. 24th edition of The New Yorker. Maxim Biller published his first novel Esra in 2003. In addition to the "Maserati Years, Biller's "The Mahogany Elephant" was also featured in The New Yorker in July of 2007.

The story follows the early morning of a young actor no longer living in the luster of the limelight. His morning revolves around his waking up, smoking a cigarette, and falling back asleep. After receiving a text message from his girlfriend informing him that she is pregnant, the protagonist chooses to ignore it, and goes back to sleep worried that he will have to sell his beloved Maserati.

"The Maserati Years" is written with an oddly distant tone. Biller successfully employs the use of a third person narrative and he detaches the reader with his listless, lethargic tone. There is also no dialogue in this story—only a text message, an impersonal, distant form of communication. Suspended in time and setting, the “Maserati Years” seems to depict a lucid dream--a surreal and illusory reality.

Con Dolor

T. Coraghessan Boyle, whose short story "Sin Dolor" was published in the Oct. 15th 2007 edition of the New Yorker, has devoted many years to teaching. He taught at the high school level after graduating from college and has gone on to be a professor of English at the University of Southern California.

The relationship between Damaso, the boy who feels no pain, and his doctor seems at first to be modeled after a relationship between a teacher and student, a relationship that Boyle is presumably very familiar with. This relationship is juxtaposed with the relationship between the boy and his father, who shamelessly exploits his son's genetic mutation for profit. Despite the subjectivity of the narration (the story is told by the doctor), it became clear to me that the doctor is just as guilty of exploitation as Damaso's father.

Although the narrator does not see it this way, his determination to present Damaso's DNA to the scientific community to "make [his] mark as one of the giants of [his] profession" is even more despicable than the actions of the boy's father. While Damaso views his public displays of his lack of feeling as "[his] duty" to serve his family, there is absolutely no justification for being the doctor's genetically mutated guinea pig.

Damaso spends his entire life surrounded by people who see him as nothing more than a vehicle of profit. Although the boy cannot feel physical pain, it is my impression that he lives the entirety of his short life in a constant state of a more profound pain, the pain he describes as being in his heart.

Daddy Issues

“Married Love” is a story about Lottie, a young girl who falls in love with her professor who is forty five years her senior. By marrying and starting a family of her own, Lottie hopes to find some sort of meaning in her life. In the end, however, she does not find meaning nor does she find happiness. Tessa Hadley, the author of “Married Love,” is a professor at Bath Spa University College and teaches literature and creative writing. Throughout the story, Hadley uses simple vocabulary and straight-to-the-point sentences to show the ordinary nature of the family and of Lottie. The young girl does not in fact love her older professor, Edgar Lennox. She is using him to gain the love and support her own family failed to give her. In short, the girl has got Daddy Issues. Instead of trying to fix her relationship with her family, and primarily her Father, Lottie looks for an older man to take her father’s place and give her the love she feels she deserves. Piece of advice, honey, marrying the equivalent of a father-figure will not fix your life. The only thing that will is finding satisfaction in your own life through a passion such as music.

In the September 24th edition of the New Yorker, the short story "TheMaserati Years" by Maxim Biller is about a young actor no longer in the spotlight who ignores all meaning in his life. Even when faced with the surprise of having fathered a child, his mind does not focus on the positive aspects of the future, but on the negative of the present: a child requires a lot of money that can only be gotten by selling his beloved Maserati. Using very simplistic writing, Biller achieves a sense of mellow indifference to emerge from the story. I must admit that because of my car-obsessed nature, I understand how mortifying it would be to be faced with the necessity to sell a Maserati. On the other hand, it is impossible not to feel genuine pity for a man who worries more about his car than his own child. Priorities man, it's all about priorities.

In the September 17 issue of the New Yorker, Paul Theroux created a monster in “Mr. Bones.” As most of the New Yorker fiction stories are, this was just a WEIRD story.

"Mr. Bones" is the name of a father who demands his family and children to call him by. He progresses from being a family based father to being a distant man who has no interst in his children, and only concentrates on being a masked image of a father.

It was strange to see the conversion at the end of thsi story from this distant man to be coming back into the family.

I enjoyed this story only because of his strange plot. I loved the masked image of a man who needed to go through a transformation in order to come back to his family and stop cracking these strange jokes.

Sin Dolor is the tale of boy who lives a life without pain. Written by T. Corahessan Boyle and published in the October 18th issue of the New Yorker, this story illustrates the values of a culture much different from that of which we are used to. This idea of cultural difference may come from the fact that Boyle was born and lives in Germany and Sin Dolor has been translated from German.

In this story, the main character Damaso, is born into a life in which he feels no pain. As this is remarkable medical miracle, the narrator is left intruiged in the life of this boy Damaso.

seena's the Maserati years

Maxim Biller (born 1960) is a German writer.

Born in Prague to Russian-Jewish parents, he emigrated with his parents and sister to Germany in 1970, when he was ten years old. After living for a long time in Munich, he now lives in Berlin.

In 2003 his novel Esra excited attention when its sale was prohibited shortly after its release. Two persons had a provisional order obtained, because they claimed to have seen themselves reflected in characters in the book. A German court obliged their request to take the book from circulation on these grounds.

He'd have a cigarette, but he didnt have any left
this line repeats throughout the story
a cigarette is a crutch to get people through the day and he does not have the crutch anymore

Daniyal Mueenuddi's “Nawabdin Electrician”

Daniyal Mueenuddin is a Pakistani man who formerly practiced as a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton, a New York law firm. He graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and received his law degree from Yale. His mother, Barbara Thompson Davis, is a writer in New York. His father, the late Ghulam Mueenuddin, was Secretary of Pakistan's Establishment Department. Mueenuddin has been featured several times in The New Yorker, and his collection of short stories In Other Rooms, Other Worlds had led to unprecedented interest from 10 US publishing houses. He currently manages a farm in Khanpur, Pakistan.

Nawabdin Electrician is the story about a rural Pakistani electrician named Nawab. The father of twelve daughters, he is a man who takes his job seriously and is well-known for his “local genius for crude improvisation”. Yet, he takes advantage of his ‘good reputation’ – one that is actually based on stealing electricity – in order to attain what he desires, such as a new motorcycle from his employer. Riding home one night, a poor man asks for a ride into town. At first unsure, Nawab becomes convinced to help the stranger when the he says he is from Kashmor, and Nawab remembers that he had been treated like an honored superior by the poor people living there. His trustworthiness almost costs him his life, as the man ends up shooting Nawab in an attempt to steal his “bike, his toy, his freedom.” In the hospital, the attacker, on the verge of death, confesses that he is destitute and begs forgiveness. Nawab, however, refuses, and the reader is left to superficially conclude the Nawab is a hypocrite, as he fails to see that there is little difference between him and his enemy.

While some might see him as a swindler, I thought Nawab’s corruption was justifiable in light of the fact that has to support a family of fifteen and pay twelve dowries for his daughters. Any other man in the same situation might have already given up on life, “but not Nawabdin. The daughters acted as a spur to his genius, and he looked with satisfaction in the mirror each morning at the face of a warrior going out to do battle.” Mueenuddin therefore succeeds in making Nawab a sympathetic character, one who is favored over the common thief. Initially seen as weak, Nawab becomes a mercilessly strong individual in the eyes of the reader. Mueenuddin’s serious, straightforward tone utilizes minimal adjectives and metaphors that do not detract from his skill as a writer. Additionally, his descriptions of the landscape are an integral part of the story that give insight into life in Pakistan. The story becomes a transition between life based around nature and life in a technological civilization. Industrial developments are not the only advancements in the story; Nawab is additionally elevated to a superior status because of his motorcycle, a tool that “gave him weight, so that people began calling him Uncle and asking his opinion on world affairs”. In emphasizing this division of class in Pakistan based on material possessions, the author succeeds in creating a culturally authentic story.

Luda and Milena

What would I say if I were asked to respond about the short story, “Luda and Milena?”

I would say that I thought this short story was nothing but weird. Luda and Milena were two lonely women, desperately fighting over the love of a man who seemed to be so shallow that he would be enticed by one meal. In my eyes, there is something wrong with this.

Luda and Milena struggle in a competition to impress Aron by bringing him various types of food. Not only does this show the desperation of Luda and Milena in their pathetic lives, but also shows how shallow Aron actually is, to be judging his relationship interests on the quality of a woman’s cooking.

Although I did not appreciate the plot and context of this story, I do think that Lara Vapnyar did a wonderful job showing Russian culture.

WOMAN: “Watch it, asshole!”
LUDA: “No, it is you asshole!”

This manner of speech shows the speech differences after being fluenty Russian and trying to adapt to our slang language. I found it interesting that Vapnyar included this piece of speech, even though we know the author knows how to write in English.

Yet the most alarming aspect of this story was when Milena reacted to Aron’s death by simply saying “’Quick and easy. And he died happy, didn’t he?’” Not only was this weird, but we also found out that Milena did not actually care for Aron the way we thought she did.

Seena's Sin Dolor

Thomas John Boyle was born December 2, 1948 in Peekskill, New York. He grew up in the small city on the Hudson River; he regularly fictionalizes it as Peterskill (as in widely anthologized short story Greasy Lake). Boyle changed his middle name when he was 17 and exclusively used Coraghessan for much of his career, but now also goes by T.C. Boyle.

I wanted to cry out the shame of it, but i held myself in check.

this line portrays the thoughts the nurse has towards Damaso. He stats to have some feelings towards him but holds them back. He does not want them to show. He is not letting his feelings get in the way of his work.

his writing seems to be simplistic in a way easy to read but filled with descriptive adjectives.

the painless one

All I know about Boyle, the author of "Sin Dolor" is that he has had a crazy hairstyle for most of his life, making him distinct or different from the rest of the population just like his main character Damaso, a boy incapable of feeling pain. Through the narration of a male doctor, we witness the brief life of this "immortal hero" which begins with his unusual birth and ends with his sudden death after being paraded around by his father as some sort of "freakshow". Because Damaso had to come to the clinic to get his various wounds and broken bones healed, the doctor develops a relationship with the boy, acting almost as his father figure. The doctor's fascinating scorpion collection brings them together. The doctor, who is also the narrator interupts his prose with personal opinions or comments such as advising the reader not to visits Damaso's family's taco stand. He also let the reader have insight into his thoughts with internal monolgues such as questioning God's existence and wondering "how could one feel sadistic if the victim felt nothing?" His writing was the perfect combination between a diary, medical journal, dialogue and narrative. With an outcast as the protagonist, failure in the end and an overall message that pain is not just physical, the author holds true to the form of a short story. I personally grew attatched to Damaso and felt his "pain" along with him. As I am currently crippled with a torn planterfacia, this story allowed me to observe true pain, a pain of the heart. Physcial pain is not nearly as unbearable and destructive as emotional hurt. However, Damaso also claims the "family comes first"
putting his pain aside for the sake of the family just like Vogel claims "family is family". Maybe we have lost this sense of loyalty and complete devotion to our family and put our individual expression and self first and literary writers are trying to address the issue and restore our familial faithfulness.

"Nawabdin Electrician"

A Pakistani man who was formerly a lawyer at Debeoise and Plimpton, Daniyal Mueenuddin currently manages a farm in Khanpur, Pakistan. He graduated magna cum laude from Darthmouth College and went to Yale for law school. I read his short story the "Nawabdin Electrician" which was featured in the August 27th edition of the New Yorker Magazine. He is not a new name to the New Yorker and has published a collection of short stories, "In Other Rooms, Other Worlds".

Mueenuddin's story the "Nawabdin Electrician" begins with the background of it's main character, Nawab the electrician. Through cheating and guess work, Nawab is able to provide electricty to his customers "to the hundred-rupee note" which optimizes monthly savings. Nawab returns to a poverty striken home full of the women he loves, but must return to work for long hours every day. His homelife provides insight into what is really important to him displays the ambiguous meaning of modernization on his life. Armed with a "hammer dangling from his hand like a savage's axe" Nawab slaves to provide for others while getting little in return. His boss, K.K. Harouni, provides him with a motorcycle so that he may spend more time at home with his family and less on strenuous travel between the lands on his bike. With the motorcycle comes freedom, free time, and transition. Nawab's life is now based on technology and not on nature. One night, when riding home, Nawab comes across a poor man who askes for a ride into town. Nawab is a trustworthy man, and his kindness almost costs him his life. When lying in the hospital, Nawab refuses to forgive the man who shot him, thinking him unworthy of the apology.

Mueenuddin throws a twist ending to the story in having Nawab not forgive poor man. As the reader, I was shocked when I read the ending, because I did not think it fit with the rest of the characters development.

Tessa Hadley's “Married Love”

Tessa Hadley was born in Bristol and studied English Literature at Cambridge. She now teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University College and lives in Cardiff. Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Her special interests in English are the novelists, particularly Jane Austen and Henry James, and also early twentieth century writers including Elizabeth Bowen. She has had stories published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Guardian, and has had two plays broadcasted on a British radio station, the latest in autumn 2006.

In her latest New Yorker fiction, Hadley writes about Lottie, a nineteen year-old misfit in a liberal British family who escapes her household by marrying her forty-five year-old, already married music teacher. Though no one believes the marriage will last, time passes and the odd couple has children. However, burdened by the tasks of motherhood, Lottie is forced to forgo her dream of becoming a violist, and consequently, is left longing for more out of life.

I personally enjoyed reading Married Love because it portrayed the quiet desperation of family life while maintaining a comical element. The narrator is companionable and astute, wanting to tell you about the important things about ordinary life.

Moreover, Hadley is a detail-oriented writer who precisely depicts the everyday life of a typical liberal British family. Her observations of women’s aspirations and simultaneous confusion are spot-on, as she chronicles Lottie’s life from a frustrated, yet confident teenager into a cynical, fatigued adult. Hadley's sentences are also beautifully weighted and controlled. With sentences that range from simple and matter-of-fact – “Lottie announced that she was getting married” – to romantically deep – “She had a gift of vehemence, the occasional lightening flash of vision so strong that it revealed to others, for a moment, the world as it was from her perspective”, Hadley proves that she knows how to tell a good story. Overall, her keen prose and flawed characters make Married Love a compelling piece. It is not doubt that Hadley’s ability to “pull real life into writing” won her the Guardian First Book Award.

Look at Me!

Tessa Hadley's Married Love looks at the pathetic life of Lottie. The black sheep of the family, Lottie longs for the attention her family generally believes she doesn't warrant. This is a story of a girl’s fight to no longer be ignored and overlooked. The only action drastic enough to grab her family’s attention is her marriage to a man old enough to be her father. Edgar appears everything that Lottie’s family is not; a man who values free artistic expression, a man who must submit to “the erotic drive [that] was a creative force.” She is first drawn to him for these reasons. He nourishes her music creativity. She is his muse. Lottie tries to escape the chaos of her own family, but ends up creating her own. Instead of creating the harmonious married life she wanted with Edgar, she is thrown into the world of overstressed motherhood, no longer her husband’s muse. She never finds and maintains the attention she believes she deserves.

An Inaccessible Past

Roberto Bolano, author of "The Insufferable Gaucho", never stayed long in one place in the years of his childhood. He was constantly on the move, living in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, and France before finally settling in Spain. His literary works draw inspiration from the great Spanish and Latin American writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, who's short story "El Sur" serves as a model for "The Insufferable Gaucho." Bolano tells the story of Hector Pereda, who abandons a comfortable life in a city to live a life of the past as one of Argentina's gauchos.
inaccessible
I read the the short story in the October 1st edition of The New Yorker three days after reading Borges' short story "El Sur". Hecter Pereda's yearning for the past which drives him out of the city is exactly the same as the yearning that propels Borges' Dahlmann into his delirium of the past. Bolano says of Pereda:" For a moment, he thought that his destiny, his screwed-up American destiny, would be to meet his death like Dahlmann in "The South"". My understanding of the parallel between "The Insufferable Gaucho" and "El Sur" transformed what was a long tedious story of a pathetic protagonist into an illuminating story about our obsession with progress that prevents us from seeing or even being able to experience the glory of the past. The copious presence of rabits in the country that Peredea sees instead of the cows that should be there signify this fall from Argentina's glory days. It is a bias of the past that prevents Pereda's son from recognizing his father after he has been living in the country, because he is now and "old man in bombachas with a beard long tangled hair, and a bare chest tanned by the sun."

Pereda's immersion into his gaucho lifestyle causes an acute hatred for things modern, a hatred which ultimatly inspires him to stab a coked up author.

JHO's LEGIT REVIEW

In The Maserati Years by Maxim Biller (September 24, 2007), the protagonist goes through a nightly routine of waking up to go to the bathroom or to look for alcohol in the kitchen. Biller was born in Prague to Russian-Jewish parents. One of his novels, the Esra, attracted a lot of attention when it came out in the year 2003. The Masertai Years makes me feel melancholy after reading it. The protagonist always wants to get alcohol but can never get any which gives the story a sad quality. It seems like his goals are never achieved. The darkness also adds to the effect of sorrow. I did not understand the text messages that the protagonist keeps checking. It makes me feel that Biller tried to break up the story by adding them in.

In the Nawabdin Electrician by Daniyal Mueenuddin (August 27, 2007), displays a novel which centers around a character named Nawab who could not forgive a thief who tried to steal his motorcycle. The author, Mueenuddin, manages a farm in Khanpur, Pakistan. He formerly practiced as a lawyer in New York City. I think the story is about how technology interferes with human relationships, whether it is from the master to Nawab or from Nawab to the thief. Technology has always been a factor in their relationship

Maserati or Love

Born in 1960 to Russian-Jewish parents, Maxim Biller has written many controversial novels including "Bernsteintage" (2004), "Moralische Geschichten" (2005)and "Esra" which was pulled off the shelves shortly after publication. His story "The Maserati Years", published in the September 24th edition of The New Yorker, is about German actor who lies in bed all day with the balcony door open, as he makes small clouds over and over with his breathe. He seems to live by the "if I don't see it, it didn't happen" moto when he ignores all the text messages he gets from work. His only reason for not wanting to get up is it is simply too cold, figuring they can't do anything without him. I really enjoyed Biller's alternative writing style and distant tone, a tone that is listless and lathargic. The actor is displayed as a typical actor lacking motivation and emoboding a selfcentered ego. He thinks about the fact that he may very well ahve to sell his car when he thinks he may be having a child. The story contains actual exchange of dialect which I believe was used by Biller, along with the absent kiss by his girlfriend, as symbols of the German's isolation. I throughly enjoyed this unique take on life, that lesson that we all hate to recognize that we have to do things we don't always want to.

ABARCA'S SICK REVIEW

“Nawabdin Electrician”

Daniyal Mueenuddin manages a farm in Khanpur, Pakistan. Daniyal Mueenuddin formerly practiced as a lawyer in New York City.

The “Nawabdin Electrician” story published on the August 27, 2007 edition of The New Yorker is about an electrician named Nawbdin in the Pakastani desert. Nawabdin flourished materially because he was able to cheat the electric company by being able to slow down the revolution of the meters. After awhile he acquires a motorcycle and one day during the middle of the night he is mugged and robbed, but Nawabdin does not let himself get robbed so he gets shot while the burglar is physically damaged and after awhile dies because of the wounds.

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s writing makes Nawabdin be a likeable character who is inventive and also a good husband who lives with his wife and kids. Daniyal Mueenuddin makes a shift from writing Nawabdin life as simple then it turns to a materialistic life and the shift not only makes Nawabdin’s life different, but it also changes him into a not likeable character.

At the end of the story I thought that Nawabdin would be able to forgive the thief because Nawbdin payed close attention to the man’s features and realized the thief was no different than he was. Nawabdin could not show the compassion his master gave him to the thief because he did not want to give the thing that gave Nawabdin a second chance in life. Nawabdin realized that if the thief would have taken the motorcycle he would not be able to keep food on the table because it would be the end of his transportation.



“Maserati Years”

Maxim Biller was born in Prague. Biller was born into a Russian-Jewish and in the 1970’s he emigrated to Germany when he was 10 years old. Maxim Biller now lives in Berlin.

“Maserati Years” was published on the September 24, 2007 edition of The New Yorker. The “Maserati Years” is about a man who lives in Germany. The man’s job is being an actor and during one particular day he lies in bed because it is a cold day. The man felt sick because he received news about him going to be a father and he thought he would have to sell his Maserati to be able to support his family.

Maxim Biller’s style of writing makes the story have a sad and melancholy tone. Biller writes about darkness, which adds much sorrow to the story because throughout the whole story the protagonist is surrounded by darkness.

The merit Maxim Biller has received was after his success when he wrote the novel, Esra. The novel attracted many readers on the date of release in 2003.

At the end of “Maserati Years” I felt that the man took a shower to be able to relax after hearing that he was not going to be a father and was not going to sell his most prized possession, his Maserati.

Pain, The One Thing That Saves Us

Boyle in his sixties seems to show no sings of slowing down when it comes to being a published writer. In 1977 Boyle received a Ph. D in Nineteenth Century British Lit from the University of Iowa. Along with being published in numerous prestigious magazines, he has written many novels such as After the Plague and Talk Talk. Currently he lives in Santa Barbara with his wife. In the October 8th edition of THE NEW YORKER, Boyle writes “Sin Dolor” a story set in a small town, about a Mexican doctor who tends to a child incapable of feeling pain. When the doctor first examined Damaso the first and only thing that could describe such injuries was child abuse by his father Francisco and mother Mercedes. This doctor appears to be some what of a prick, no longer intrigued by his work, focused solely on a the little cottage him and his wife have put aside. However the doctor is able to see the boy grow older, aging very rapidly (although only thirteen) as he becomes a freak show to his father, a means for profit. Damaso comes to his fatal end when he takes a challenge to jump off a building. The doctor uses Damaso as a project, similar to the boy’s father did, simply a way for him to become famous, a vechile for making a name in the medical world. Absence of pain to the doctor seems as though it would serve as a great solution to munerous things, but in reality absence to pain makes Damaso more vulberable. Pain is actually what saves us, is the foundation of all decisions. I liked the narration of this story; it seemed to have fluidity throughout even though time seemed to pass rather quickly. The dialogue in this stroy feels as though it could go straight to play, its very visual.

SIN DOLOR

The short story Sin Dolor by T. Coraghessan Boyle appeared in the October 15, 2007 issue of the New Yorker. T.C. Boyle has written over sixty short stories and nineteen novels. He has won many awards, and is currently a professor of English at the University of Southern California, and lives with his wive and three children.

"Sin Dolor" is a story about a young boy named Damaso who can not feel pain, and the people in his life, a doctor and his family, who want to use him. The doctor takes care of him, plays with him, watches him, but ultimately wants to use him for medical purposes. Because of his bizarre condition, his father uses him as a show to make money. He forces Damaso to burn and cut himself in font of an audience. Because Damaso does not feel pain, he feels that he should do this for his family and his father, because he owes them that much as they gave him life. The doctor, in the beginning seems to want to use Damaso just as the father ends up doing in the end. After the doctor sees Damaso and his father in front of the crowd, he realizes that Damaso is a person with feelings too.

The doctor tries to make himself look like a better person than the father, when in fact, he had the same intention. Maybe not quite as extreme, but he wanted to use Damaso’s condition for his own benefit. This story shows the change and realization of this doctor from being bored and thinking he has seen it all, to realizing all the people he treats have true problems, and are real people.

Sin Dolor

The author of the fiction story "Sin Dolor" in the New Yorker magazine of October 15, 2007 was written by none other than T.C. Boyle. Boyle, currently a professor at University of Southern California, was born in the United States and is known for his 60 short stories and eleven novels. In "Sin Dolor" the narrator is the Doctor who claims to have witness every unique and abnormal patients. This makes the Doctor seem bored or uninterested in his work because he says that " He diagnoses his patients as they walk in...". As the Doctor keeps saving for his retirement house by working numerous hours, he meets a young boy named Damaso Funes. Damaso has burns on his hands and immediately the Doctor assumes that he has been abbused by his parents. The Doctor soon learns that Damaso is truly gifted and could be his answer to living a glamorous life that will never get boring. As the Doctor wants to expose Damaso's gift to the world, Damaso's father starts to expose his talents locally for money. Although Damaso can not feel any physical pain, his emotional pain is greater than any pain a regular person can even dare think to bare. T.C Boyle uses his pain as the zinger of the story. In the end, Damaso's emotions overwhelm him and cause him to test his limits. He succeeds, he finds that his limit is death and the only thing that will satisfy his soul is to rid his painful life. I enjoyed this story because of the expected plot and the way Boyle made Damaso deal with his pressure.

"Married Love"

Tessa Hadley's short work of fiction, "Married Love," ran in the New Yorker's October 8 issue. Hadley herself is an established English writer. In addition to numerous short stories, Hadley has written a book on Hnery James's novels.

"Married Love" is a stark portrayal of middle-class English life. Hadley skillfully tells the story of a young girl, Lottie, who falls in love with her music professor while she is at university. Lottie and her teacher, Edgar, marry after he divorces his previous wife. Initially, Lottie is happy and excited with her new, "grown-up" and artistically stimulating world, but the glamour soon fades when their flat is filled with screaming children and Edgar is spending increasingly more time at his ex-wife's house.

The tone of the story shifts drastically as Lottie's happiness and excitement steadily decline. While Lottie's character entered the is filled with beautifully written descriptions of everyday objects throughout. Whether she is describing Lottie's sister's "hooded, poetic eyes" or the flat that Lottie and Edgar share, filled with the "landlord's furniture," Hadley's story is a sterling example of literary restraint; her portrayal of a young woman who has been let down by her overly-romantic expectations shines through the bleakness of the setting overall.

Con Dolor

In the October 15 New Yorker our Fiction, T.C. Boyle, a U.S. born English professor at the University of Southern California, wrote this wonderful story called "Sin Dolor." In "Sin Dolor" a doctor who claims to have seen it all, including a faceless newborn, takes serious interest in a little boy, Damaso, who feels no pain. The doctor is very bored with his practice, but Damaso relieves him of this ennui. Now all the doctor is concerned about is getting Damaso's DNA and hopefully creating the DNA so that no one will feel pain. The doctor wants to make himself think that he really cares about Damaso, but really he is just like his father who uses Damaso's painless for themselves. The doctor wants to be a doctor legend and not just so regular old doctor. In reality both the father and the doctor and hurting Damaso in an area where every human feels pain, the heart. I really liked this story but I don't believe that the doctor had any intent to help Damaso. He, as much as his father, contributed to Damaso trying to impress other boys with his painless body. Evnetually he jumped to death from a three story building and it seemed that no one truly cared that Damaso was gone. I was led to believe that they were upset that they could no longer make a profit off of him. The one thing that did not impress me was the way it was written. It was very ordinary, nothing creaive or experimental. It was written well, but it would be nice if the New Yorker found some stories that are different than the regular ones we get every week.

The Maserati Years

Maxim Biller was born in Prague to Russian-Jewish parents and ten years later, in 1970, he emigrated to Germany with his family to live in Munich. Now living in Berlin, Biller finds himself writing contemporary novels and stories. In 2007, Biller wrote "The Maserati Years". This story is about an actor who wants to escape the world, or at least hide from it. This man misses calls and texts from his phone, and always feels the need for either a cigarette or alcohol. The people who keep calling him are the people from the set of the film that he is suppossed to be at. The fact that he does not take any information that his phone feeds him is a matter of him hiding from his duties. Cigarettes and alcohol, for some people, are a way of temporarily ridding the mind of all worries, duties and thoughts, etc. The actor in this story seems to be doing just that. I feel that he does not like the life that he lives and so he tries to hide from it. I actually liked this story and thought that the 'randomness' of this man to be quite humourus. Although he may be able to live the way he is right now, he cannot go on through his whole life in this matter. He seems to have become a successful man and I feel that he should not just throw it all away right now. I think the author should write a follow up to this story about the life of this actor.

Sin dolor

Sin Dolor was the short fiction story published in the most recent issue of the New Yorker, October 15, 2007. Damaso can’t feel physical pain, the doctor wants to find the clues in his genes to this evolutionary trait. He later comes to appreciate him as a human not as a subject. Francisco Funes gets mad and takes back his son Damaso. Damaso is seen later as an attraction, he demonstrates his gift by sticking knives, metal, etc. into his body. He dies from jumping off of a third story building, it seems since he has not felt pain he does not know his body’s real limits. Damaso is forgotten quite quickly and it seems his family never saw him as one of their own but only as an income resource.

T. Coraghessan Boyle – 19 books of fiction
He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. He now works at USC and lives in Santa Barbara married with three kids.

He wrote Sin Dolor as the main character and narrator, he also includes many Spanish words and places that make readers think he is of Hispanic origin. The story is set in a town somewhere along the lines of Guadalajara or Jalisco and the fact that only two doctors are even mentioned in the town illustrate its size and standing.

I thought the concept of this new “power” was intriguing but was saddened by the fact that Damaso didn’t seem to accomplish his full potential. He grows in strength, intellect, and develops family values; but this proves his downfall since he doesn’t leave a life of depravity and subjectation for one with the doctor.


Nawabdin Electrician

Nawabdin Electrician is a work of literary fiction published in the August 27,2007 edition of The New Yorker. Nawabdin makes a living by “stealing” electricity. He rigs machinery to register energy used as less than in actuality. He makes extra money by using a motorcycle (a tool given to him by his boss) to travel and do more work. One day a hitch-hiker tries to rob Nawabdin of this prize and shoots him, Nawabdin is saved by townsfolk and brought to a doctor where he is healed, he doesn’t feel remorse or pity as the attempter of the crime dies a painful and lonely death.

All I found was that Daniyal Mueenuddin manages a farm Pakistan and that he was a lawyer in New York City. He obviously writes short stories, this one having been published in The New Yorker.

I remember the ambiguity of Nawabdin, our class debating whether or not he is the good guy, or if the robber is actually the one who deserves the pity. Nawabdin is seen as ambitious and hard-working yet his own job is essentially stealing and lying.

His work makes it seem like not only can we not formulate the correct views of life in the story, but that because of social and economic differences in our own lives we shouldn’t. Who are we to judge what we don’t understand?

Confusion Between Good and Bad?

Paula Vogel is a writer of brilliance. She presents very difficult and usually sensitive subjects in a humorous, almost relaxed manner. Her themes of pedophilia and extreme hated between sisters in her Mammary Plays are intricate and intense, yet exciting and hilarious. One of her reoccurring ideas is the undefined characteristics of her “good” character and her “bad” one. In both her Mammary Plays, Vogel declares one character as the “good” one and one character as the “bad” one.

In How I Learned to Drive, her play about a girl named ‘Lil Bit and her pedophilic uncle Uncle Peck, the beginning leads you to hate Uncle Peck and think of him as a creep and a loser, and you pity ‘Lil Bit; however as the play progresses, you being to feel more and more compassion towards Uncle Peck. He seems more useless than ‘Lil Bit. Likewise, in the play The Mineola Twins, the “nice” twin Myrna, seems like a perfect child in the beginning of the play. You pity her as her “evil” twin Myra has sex with Myrna’s boyfriend. As the play goes on, and time advances, Myra turns from a crazy slut to an eccentric liberal, and Myrna stays the same. She still, forty years later, refuses to forgive her ex boyfriend who cheated on her. She finds fault in everything that has changed from when she was growing up. We learn to accept Myra more so than we accept Myrna, which is a big change from the beginning of the play.

Vogel’s remarkable writing forces you to realize that initial judgments don’t always last long. Both of her plays lead you to sympathize with one character in the beginning, and then slowly, or suddenly, change your mind. Her intense themes mixed in with her extreme characters makes for a great play, and a very enjoyable read.

Background Info on the Poet of Karmelicka

Adam Zagajewski is a poet, novelist, essayist who was born in Lwów in 1945. He spent his childhood in Silesia and then in Krakow, where he graduated from Jagiellonian University. Zagajewski first became well known as one of the leading poets of the Generation of '68, or the Polish New Wave; he is one of Poland's most famous contemporary poets. His poems and essays have been translated into many languages, and have been routinely featured in The New Yorker. His poetry often deals with his generation's ideas of speaking the truth about the public realities around him. Zagajewski's standard poetic themes include a constant questioning of the biographical-existential role of the protagonist of lyric poetry, and a praise for life viewed in "its changeability, its pulsation, its ambiguity,” as he wrote in Solitary and Solitude (1986).

I found out that Karmelicka Street is a famous road in Krakow, the old capital of Poland. In the The Pianist, a Polish musician named Władysław Szpilma describes Karmelika Street in grisly terms:

“To get to the center of the ghetto, you had to go down Karmelicka Street, the only way there. It was downright impossible not to brush against other people in the street here. The dense crowd of humanity was not walking but pushing and shoving its way forward, forming whirlpools in front of stalls and bays outside doorways. A chilly odour of decay was given off by unaired bedclothes, old grease and rubbish rotting in the streets. At the slightest provocation, the crowd would become panic-stricken, rushing from one side of the street to the other, choking, pressing close, shouting and cursing. Karmelicka Street was a particularly dangerous place: prison cars drove down it several times a day. They were taking prisoners, invisible behind grey steel sides and small opaque glass windows to [the] Gestapo centre, and on the return journey, they brought back what remained of them after their interrogation: bloody scraps of humanity with broken bones and beaten kidneys, their fingernails torn out. When they turned into Karmelicka Street, which was so crowded that with the best will in the world people could not take refuge in doorways, the Gestapo men would lean out and beat the crowd indiscriminately with truncheons.”

This memoir describes how Szpilma survived the German deportations of Jews to extermination camps, the 1943 destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising during World War II. His description perhaps refers to the “armored divisions enter Poland” that Adam Zagajewski details in his poem.

At the turn of the 20th century, Karmelicka Street was changed into a fashionable boulevard.

Vogel: A Genius

Vogel took me completely by surprise the way she combined humor and delicate topics in her "Mammary Plays." Both “How I Learned to Drive” and “The Mineola Twins” explored the power and importance of family. Li’l Bit finds the security of familiarity in the pedophilic Uncle Peck. Peck takes advantage of Li’l Bit’s vulnerability and isolation. He manipulates her entire being, from her thoughts to her “celestial orbs”. However, there is a shift in power from Peck to Li’l Bit as Peck’s dependency deepens. Despite its disturbing nature, “How I Learned to Drive” is a love story. Li’l Bit finds the nurturing love she’s missing in her home in Uncle Peck. He finds the adoration he needs in her.
In “The Mineola Twins,” Vogel plays with the meaning of family through the realm of sibling rivalry. Myrna and Myra foil each other which results in a rivalry with biblical connotations. They personify the two American extremes of the time periods. This play has many biblical allusions. Vogel “remixes” two very infamous biblical stories, giving them a modern twist causing a loss of their intended value and meaning. She retells the story of the prodigal son and of Jacob and Esau, both of which are about, or touch on sibling rivalry.
Sex also plays an important role in the plays. Sexual tension permeates and intensified Li’l Bit and Peck’s relationship. Sex is damaged the already tattered relationship between Myrna and Myra. Their opposing views on sex deepen the hostility between them. Myra works at Planned Parenthood, whereas Myrna, the “Puritan,” is against “tofu-eating-feminazi-fetus-flushing” women of the era.
Breasts also are quite important in the two plays. Li’l Bit is both praised and ridiculed for her “celestial orbs.” It’s Myrna “all-American knockers” that set her physically apart from her twin, Myra.
Vogel’s “Mammary Plays” are absolutely amazing in their ability to mimic an art only seen in novels, getting into the characters minds and thought processes.

My First Blog: Mammary Plays

The Mammary Plays by Paula Vogel has been quite fun to read. There were comedic parts in the book and also serious issues that were addressed. I thought that the twins in the Mineola Twins were perfect examples of how people can change overtime and also show the negatives and positives aspect of human beings. This book is all about human relationships. Whether it is Uncle Peck to Lil’ Bit or Myrna to Myra, the relationships are truly realistic. It is about the social institutions in society and how the status of your family can impact an individual. Just like how Myra’s dirty acts impacted Myrna. I feel that as a school book, these plays are definitely worth reading. It is a kind of entertainment and it has deep meaning in it. I do not like some of the format of the plays such as the format in How I learned to Drive. The bolded phrases of “Idling in the neutral gear” and “Driving in first gear” really confuses me and drags me away from the true meaning of the text. It breaks up the rhythm of the flow that a reader would be in once he or she is engaged in the book. Maybe that is the effect that Vogel wants to imply. The short phrases are supposed to be breaking up the rhythm that the reader is in to display another significance of the play.

Questioning the Traditional Family Ideal...

Paula Vogel’s “The Mineola Twins” stood out to me as being the far more interesting play out of the two in the book, The Mammary Plays, for a few reasons. First and foremost, the play examines personal relationships within a social context by introducing elements of the era in which they take place. The situations in America during the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush administrations develop a social context and each of the characters is infused with some sort of societal norm that amplifies their unique personality. Myra, for example, is the archetypical, liberal type. Her little “rap session” over a joint with Kenny projects this anti-authoritarian nature. Myrna on the other hand represents the super-conservative, pro-life spokeswoman. Other than bombing abortion clinics owned by her sister, she also enjoys bashing on lesbianism and isolating herself from her son. These two extremes are what make this story enjoyable. The fact that Myra and Myrna come from the same simple background as twin sisters, yet have developed into completely different people, plays against the traditional idea of human relationships. One would expect the two twins to grow up as similarly minded people, yet Vogel squashes this misconception with humorous dialogue and crazy situations. By looking at this relationship through the context of the eras in which the play takes place, we gain a greater understanding of the complexity of human interactions.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "The Mineola Twins" and was pleased to find parallels between this play and “How I Learned to Drive”. In both plays, Vogel questions the traditional family ideal, attacking the central idea of familial tension from an original point of view. I was left contemplating the various relationships that I have with my family members.

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Finding humor in controversy

In The Mammary Plays, Paula Vogel uses many literary devices to scrutinize the socially accepted taboos that dominated the 1950’s, including pedophilia, homosexual relationships, and the role of women in society. At times I felt queasy reading this sensitive material because of the extraordinary use of imagery that revealed the problems in society that are graced over. In the first play, How I learned to drive, the topic of pedophilia is explored when Li’l Bit, a young teenage driver is taking lessons from her Uncle Peck on how to drive. Although learning to drive is an important skill to learn, Li’l Bit determines life lessons on based on her peculiar relationship with Uncle Peck about “what not to do.” Vogel uses modifiers and cataloging in the first play to add moments of satisfaction and understanding of a deeper meaning. With deep understanding, comes deep responsibility with the language. Her sexual humor tends to cross the line, going back and forth between comfort zones to awkwardness. Yet, it is this shift that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat undoubtedly waiting for the next climactic moment to appear. Also included in The Mammary Plays, The Mineola Twins is about the different roles women could have during the 1950’s and how they can challenge the standard stereotypical issues. Paula Vogel uses the twin sisters Myrna and Myra as a juxtaposition of women. As a young teenager, Myrna is a pure woman who aspires to be the perfect housewife and perfect spouse to her husband. While on the other side of the line, her sister Myra is ready to make a name for her, stepping outside of the typical role of women and become something unique that satisfies her rebellious self. These plays were not only a great entertaining read, but they examined the society during the 1950’s with careful scrutiny regarding the topics of pedophilia and women’s lifestyles.

Laughing at Controversy

I have never seen a class more entyced by a class text. Paula Vogel isn't afraid to address controversial subjects such as pedophilia and incest. Uncle Peck is the antagonist who wants to "experience" Li'l Bit and normally a pedophile is looked down upon and despised, but Vogel was able draw sympathy from our class for him. The relationship between Li'l Bit and her uncle wasn't the only thing out of the ordinary. Conversations within the family members were just as controversial. The talk of sex between Li'l Bit and her grandma made all of us cringe. The unusaul thing is that readers are able to adjust and laugh at the conversations because Vogel utilized humor to lighten to mood and subject. Vogel's writing has a shockwave effect, when you read it, your jaw is wide open but when you realize and interpret what happen you are left saying "I want more."

(Under Contruction)

In Paula Vogel’s play, How I Learned to Drive, she demonstrates the universal idea that “family is family, however you may not always associate yourself with them”. The main character, Lil Bit, is thrown into a world of incest and pedophilia thanks to her Uncle Peck. Lil Bit literally leanrs how to drive and at the same time learns about life and its obstacles, thanks to her friendly Uncle. At times this play was interesting to read because the reader was acquainted with the strongly passionate relationship between Lil Bit and her uncle. Vogel wanted to cast Uncle Peck’s character as someone who would have played Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird”. (develop idea more)
Although both characters loved each other and trusted each other, there were some instances where things became slightly awkward between Uncle Peck and Lil Bit. There was a moment when Uncle Peck wanted to put Lil Bit in the Playboy Magazine – but she did not want to be and that was the moment when she lost the love and trust for her uncle. Overall, I enjoyed the play except the awkward moments; however life is sometimes awkward in itself.

Vogel does not present the relationship between Lil Bit and Uncle Peck as the exclusivly unhealthy relationship that is the common preception of a pedophillic relationship. While Vogel's characters are not replused by their relationship, the situations that she described made me, the reader, uncomfortable.

Rolly Backpacks Are the Best

When you hear the word backpack you think exactly that a pack that you wear on your back. But someone tried to reinvent the backpack by outing wheels on it allowing it to roll. Of course it seems so practical, saving kids backs from the weight of all that homework teachers are now assigning. The funny thing is once one person get one everyone has to cause that’s what everybody is doing. I can remember it was in my fifth grade year when this fad of “rolly” backpacks hit. At the beginning of the school year I got a blue one I was so excited I thought I was pretty much the ‘shit’. After I started using them I realize how truly impractical they really were. Our whole school and one stair case to use to get up to the classrooms, and let me inform you it wasn’t very big, everyone rushing through with their rolly backpacks which took up twice the space causing the flow of kids come to a claws. Dragging the backpacks, which might have well of been suitcases, up the cement stair sounded like a stampede of bulls ready to tackle anything in their path. Oh, and trying to get these things in and out of the car was a nightmare, you try to be fast because you are all ready embarrassed of being dropped off by your parents but these bricks just add to the embarrassment factor. All I have to say is GOOD TIMES!

I loved How I learned to Drive, by Paula Vogel. She puts a humorous spin on the painful concept of sexual abuse within a family. Peck, Lil' Bit's uncle by marriage, teaches Lil' Bit to drive, a lesson that all must learn in time. Peck gives Lil' Bit a series of lessons all of which have the underlying theme of staying control. Lil' Bit finally applies her uncle's wisdom when finally she sits in the driver's seat alone.


I felt contridiction when reading this play. I feel that Peck is to blame for abusing his niece, but somehow Lil' Bit was often a willing participant. Is it that Lil' Bit has a distorted view of abuse with the initial sexual abuse by her uncle? Or is Lil' Bit in complete control and knows exactly what she is doing to her uncle?


Lil' Bit, a very intellegent, very mature young girl who seems to be confident with her self, has a sexual relationship with her uncle. Vogel uses Peck, the infatuated uncle, as a way to defend Lil' Bit by creating him in a way that forces the reader to find fault easily in him. I feel that her sense of humor allows us to talk about the play in a lighter tone rather then if we had to take the situation more seriuosly. It's interesting how Vogel uses this metaphor of learning to drive which can be applied to many situations in life, just as many refer to the metaphor of learning how to ride a bike. At first you have to get a sense of balanace and after that everything just flows. I think Vogel uses the driving metaphor as a reference for family relationships, loving for who they are no matter how disfunctional they may be. It shows us that those who may hurt us may actually be the ones that love us the most. At times this play is hillarious, other times heart wrenching and touching.

Vogel's "Mammary Plays" as an Effective Tool for Social Commentary

Paula Vogel’s acclaimed plays, "How I Learned to Drive" and "The Mineola Twins" explore two socially sensitive topics – pedophilia and women’s roles throughout the last 50 years. Though these topics both contain the possibility to become didactic, severe riffs on the social state of our nation, Vogel conquers the issues with an easy grace and a sharp wit.

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning play “How I Learned to Drive,” Vogel carefully presents the relationship between Li’l Bit and her Uncle Peck as one full of emotional depth and gray areas rather than one with a clear line between predator and victim. In addition to presenting her characters in a surprisingly sympathetic light, Vogel interjects her plays with occasional moments of humor and lightheartedness. She utilizes a number of popular songs of the day in order to liven her settings and presents a number of moments that easily relatable (what adolescent girl has not felt uncomfortable at having her grandparents remark on every aspect of her changing body?).

“The Mineola Twins” also succeeds as a sharp social commentary full of lighthearted moments. Though Vogel examines the role of women on the political spectrum throughout the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush administrations, she makes her point through comically obtuse characterization. True, one might never meet a woman as staunchly conservative as Myrna or one with the same affinity towards family counseling as Myra, these extremes offer an amusing look at the social structure of the United States during recent history.

Vogel’s voice is a distinct one – her tendency towards using humor and colorful dialogue in her plays makes for an effective manner for her to explore a number of pressing social issues.