(no subject)
In my seminar yesterday on the development of the American short story--we were discussing A Curtain of Green and other stories by Eudora Welty. The deliberate and single-toned manner in which all my colleagues speak started to remind me of the thousand-yard stare of a war veteran or some other type of person who has no feeling left in them. These are stories of suffering, for the most part, real human suffering. It occurred to me more clearly than ever before that, for the most part, that's what I'm studying. There is so much real human suffering, and I don't feel much real human understanding. It's getting harder and harder to keep reading.