English Language and Literature Commons^™

Making Connections, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

Last summer as instructors at a creative-writing conference, we had an experience that made us better writers. While critiquing a promising piece of fiction, we became frustrated because we couldn't put our finger on why the story didn't quite work. The tale, which centered around a young soldier's baptismal firefight in Vietnam, at first seemed solid. The main character was believable, the setting was described in gritty realism, and the plot had a beginning, middle, and end. But although the story was technically correct, it didn't really capture our interest. We found we couldn't get involved with the writer's grunt …

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Making Connections, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Charlie Sweet

Last summer as instructors at a creative-writing conference, we had an experience that made us better writers. While critiquing a promising piece of fiction, we became frustrated because we couldn't put our finger on why the story didn't quite work. The tale, which centered around a young soldier's baptismal firefight in Vietnam, at first seemed solid. The main character was believable, the setting was described in gritty realism, and the plot had a beginning, middle, and end. But although the story was technically correct, it didn't really capture our interest. We found we couldn't get involved with the writer's grunt …

Tales Of The Unexpected, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Charlie Sweet

No abstract provided.

Reader As Author In Tristram Shandy, Nicholas Roberts

The Corinthian

In a letter dated June 1764, Laurence Sterne wrote to Elizabeth Montagu, "I am going down to write a world of Nonsense" (467). He was referring, of course, to Tristram Shandy, a popular sensation from the time the first two volumes appeared four years earlier. Despite Samuel Johnson's prediction that "nothing odd will do long" (qtd. in Sterne 484), Sterne's masterpiece has maintained its prominence, appearing in our own time as the most modem of the eighteenth-century novels. In this essay, I am concerned with Sterne's use of asterisks and blank pages-literary devices leaving gaps in the text-to engage …