Bordan Deal, 10/12/22-1/22/85: Born in Ponotoc Mississippi and grew up
during the Depression; his family lost their farm. Bordan attended the
University of Alabama. Deal considered himself a writer of the “real South..the
ordinary practical lives of contemporary Southerners.” Deal was a prolific
novelist and writer of short stories. “The Taste of Watermelon” was written in
the 1940s.
H. G. Wells (England) 1866–1946, writer of visionary science
fiction
• In 1895, Wells became an overnight literary sensation with the
publication of the novel The Time Machine.
• The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
• The Invisible Man (1897)
• The War of the Worlds (1898):
A novel about an alien invasion, later caused a panic
when
an adaptation of the tale was broadcast on
American radio on
Halloween night of 1938. Orson
Welles went on the air with his
version of The War of
the Worlds, claiming that aliens had landed in
New
Jersey.
• “The Door in the Wall,”1906, just after the end of the Victorian Age,
preceding the Modern Period/modernism and World War I, an
“exploration fantasy” in which characters transitioning from traditional
ordered times to stressful situations of war and technology seek
“existential detachment” (Higgins 469).
Frame Story: A story that contains another story; usually the
frame story explains why the interior story is told
• Works of the time: The Wizard of Oz (1900), Peter Pan (1902)
Raymond Carver, in full Raymond Clevie Carver, (born
May 25, 1938, Clatskanie, Oregon, U.S.—died August 2,
1988, Port Angeles, Washington), American short-story
writer and poet whose realistic writings about the
working poor mirrored his own life. “Elephant”
“The Happy Prince,”
is a satirical fairy tale, written “to mirror
modern life in a form remote from
reality”(Wilde) to expose the hypocrisy
and exploitation of the Victorian era.
Ted Hughes, 1930-1998
• Considered one of the
greatest writers of the 20th
century
• England’s Poet Laureate
from 1984 – 1998
• Married to Sylvia Plath,
American author of The Bell
Jar
• “The Rain Horse, 1960, one
of Hughes’ first short stories
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P. G. Wodehouse, British
humorist, widely read in the 20th
century
“The Custody of the Pumpkin,” a
chapter from the novel Blandings
Castle: satire/comic fiction
Recurring character: Emsworth
Blanding, Lord Emsworth
Satirizes fading WWI British upper
class
Depicts class differences via
irony, dialect/slang