Raymond Carver insisted that his iconic masterpiece “Cathedral” was not based on a lesser-known D.H. Lawrence story entitled “The Blind Man,” and that he had not read the story prior to writing “Cathedral.”
Bret Anthony Johnston’s “Boy” is very much an homage as well as a companion piece to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl.” The ways in which Johnston chose to mirror Kincaid’s piece show us the gender, class, and race equivalencies. Both Kincaid and Johnston are most interested in gender and the lessons passed from parent to child.
Could there be a better way to pay homage to an author than to include the writer as a character in the fiction? In Ali Smith’s story “The Ex-Wife,” included in her collection Public Library and Other Stories, the writer Katherine Mansfield is the other woman.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and remains a staple of early feminist fiction. In 1983, Doris Lessing responded to Perkins Gilman’s classic story with “To Room Nineteen,” in part to point out how little had changed in the lives of women.
While Cheever pays homage to James in both the themes of change and loss, as well as in the construction of his story, he uses the differences between the two stories to critique the mid-century American way of life.
The narrator in Rivka Galchen’s story “The Lost Order” is akin to Walter Mitty, the protagonist in James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” who sees himself as defined only in his dreams, not by the man he is in real life. They are both negative images.
Based on a Ray Bradbury short story, Elton John’s “Rocket Man” was released the same week as the Apollo 16 launch, and echoes of the story can still be found on the surface of the moon.
There’s something wonderful in the thought of the subconscious of James Joyce meeting with that of Joyce Carol Oates to create her story “The Dead,” a response to his story of the same name.
Examining Mary Robison’s “Widower” and Amy Hempel’s “Today Will Be a Quiet Day” will consider the ways in which Hempel responded to Robison’s story and how a story’s meaning shifts when a connection is known.
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