https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/files/2015/08/Simpson-I7.pdf Sara Kornfeld Simpson “ Alcohol, Emotion, and Tension in Raymond Carver’s Fiction ”( excerpt) In “The Art of Evasion,” Leon Edel complains that Ernest Hemingway’s fiction evades emotion by featuring superficial characters who drink: “In Hemingway’s novels people order drinks—they are always ordering drinks—then they drink, then they order some more . . . it is a world of superficial action and almost wholly without reflection” (Edel 170). If Edel fails to recognize the deep emotional tension in Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” where one of the characters reflects critically, “that’s all we do isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks” (211), then one can only imagine the qualms he would have with Raymond Carver’s stories. As Charles May notes in “‘Do You See What I’m Saying?’: The Inadequacy of Explanation and the Uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver,” literary “critics often
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My Father's Corpse by Andrew Hudgins He lay stone still, pretended to be dead.
My brothers and I, tiny, swarmed over him
like puppies. He wouldn't move. We tickled him
tracing our fingers up and down his huge
misshapen feet — then armpits, belly, face.
He wouldn't move. We pushed small fingers up
inside his nostrils, wiggled them, and giggled.
He wouldn't move. We peeled his eyelids back,
stared into those motionless, blurred circles. Still,
he wouldn't, didn't move. Then we, alarmed,
poked, prodded his great body urgently.
Diddy, are you okay? Are you okay?
He didn't move. I reared back, gathered speed,
and slammed my forehead on his face. He rose,
he rose up roaring, scattered us from his body
and, as he raged, we sprawled at his feet – thrilled
to have the resurrected bastard back.