Notes on the brief final presentation.
For this in-class presentation, your main task is to introduce us to a particular
short story writer via a single collection of the author’s work. You will want to
pick a writer who really interests you, for whatever reasons.
For example, I might decide that I really like Alice Munro. I would choose one of
her collections, Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, probably. It has
thirteen stories, but I would likely settle on half a dozen favorites in it (after
reading the whole collection).
First, I would briefly recount the common themes that appear in the stories. In
this case, the stories I most enjoy feature women and often they are looking
back over great stretches of their lives. I would describe the basic features of
these lives, the sense of vulnerability, the depth of experience, the puzzlement
and surprise of the main characters as some person or event has brought them
to a crucial focus. I would, perhaps, zero in on a couple of these women, like
Edie, in “How I met my husband.” She has an innocent fling with an
adventurous young pilot and realizes that the man will never return to her little
town and never write a promised letter to her. She also realizes that all over
the world there are women like her waiting by mailboxes for letters. She
chooses another man and the last sentence of the story evokes a great stretch
of time: “He [her husband, who is not the pilot] always tells the children the
story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, and naturally
I laugh and let him, because I like for people to think what pleases them and
makes them happy.” I would also select a few of the clear simple evocative
passages that Munro turns out story after story and read them to the class.
Students usually do this with Prezi or PowerPoint but a decent handout works
well also. Either way, I would like a copy. It’s a good idea to run through your
presentation a time or two before class. It should be about 8 minutes long with
two minutes for comments and questions from the class.