Here are the two extra credit stories I told you about. The first is called “Quiet Please,” by Aimee Bender. I will warn you it’s pretty dirty, but excellent. I just read it and liked it a lot.
The other is an excerpt from Jennifer Egan’s recently pulitzer prize winning novel The Visit From the Good Squad, and this story is called “Ask Me if I Care.” I’ve only read part of this one so far but it seems good as well.
If you are wanting to read something fun or to get “extra credit” I recommend you read one or both of these stories, and leave a thoughtful comment/analysis/critique of the work as a comment. Try to quote from the text and tell me something meaningful about the work and how it might relate to your own writing.
For Monday and Wednesday of next week:
I want to do in class conferences with you, so that means I’ll be pulling you up individually and talking to you about your portfolios. I’ll look at your work with you and answer any questions you have. So please, it’s important you bring your work with you to class and come prepared to talk about it.
People I plan to conference with on Monday are those of you who’s stories I’ve already returned. Everyone else will get their stories back Monday so it’s important you come to class to get it. If I’ve forgotten someone, assume you will also conference with me on monday. You are:
Breanna, Bill, Erika, Tori, Sofi, Stephanie, Mike, Angela…
Everyone else will be on Wednesday, and then remember that the portfolios are due on Friday of next week.
We are almost done, friends.
fiction 210 with Molly 
I really liked the story “Quiet Please”. I never knew what was going to happen next or who would be next on her list. i really liked this description: “She has her hair back and the glasses on but everyone has a librarian fantasy, and she is truly a babe beneath.” I thought it was a good and funny way to show the librarian. It also repeated that line a little ways down the page on the side of the story which caught my eye. I also like how the story ended talking about the mural and explaining why the fairy had no mouth. I enjoyed this story because it was easy to read. I thought it was similiar to my writing in one way and that was, it never used too many complex words.
“Quiet Please”. I definitely enjoyed this story, but it is driving me crazy to know what the significance of the fairy mural on the ceiling. That fairy with the purple eyes and no smile is hardly noticed as a rebel until the librarian draws a mouth onto it. After the smile is drawn, she notices how it is going “against the grain” of the dance and the rest of the fairies on the mural. I felt like that was a symbol of the librarian’s daily routine or just the representation that she ironically had mad sex with many men and was as quiet as she could be the entire time. Regardless I think the story was well put together and well worth the read.
“Ask Me If I Care” That was definately a random story to say the least, but I enjoyed how it gave the reader an idea of the time period with out blantly coming right out and stating it. Also the characters were very well portrayed as individuals due to their dialogue and also their actions. For example the statement:
“Jocelyn and I come last. She leans close to me, and inside her whisper I smell cherry gum covering up the five hundred cigarettes she’s smoked. I can’t smell the gin we drank at the beginning of the night, taking it from my dad’s hidden supply and pouring it into Coke cans so that we could drink it on the street.”
This statement gives the reader a great image of how the main character, Alice is as a person and also sets the mood for the relationship between Jocelyn and Alice too. The subtle love triangle was also a great attribute to the story. It was overall.
I really did not know what to think about “Quiet Please”. I can honestly say that I was not fond of the story at first. I thought it was choppy and random and had no point. I thought that descriptions that were told later in the story could have been put at the beginning at appropriate places and not just randomly through out the story. I really liked the line “he makes one tentative step forward and then he’s on her like Wall Street rain”. I thought it was a good metaphor which almost sounded poetic in a way. But I really didn’t like the story until it turned around when she noticed the fairy. I got the feeling that her and the fairy were alike in many ways and could relate perfectly. That turned the story around for me and I ended up really liking it, especially because I felt the tone was very poetic.
“Ask Me If I Care” was also a very random story. Once again I thought some things could be put in a different part of the story then where they were. For example “Bennie has light-brown skin and excellent eyes, and he irons his hair into a Mohawk as shiny black as a virgin LP” was a description that could of been made when Bennie was first introduced into the story. I am surprised to say that I really enjoyed both stories because of their descriptions and poetic feel. They were different and therefore I was really interested in them. I enjoyed both stories a lot even though they were very random.
“Quiet Please,” was pretty dirty like you said. At first I thought she was going to get/take all her misery of her dad’s death and frustrations out on the men she was having sex with and that would be it. But, then, the story took a crazy turn and a man held her up while she was sitting on a couch and walked her around the library! Ha!! (I can’t remember the term you used, but you talked about it in class where a story is normal and real for the most part, except for one thing that is unnatural or even supernatural). I found the story very amusing. My favorite part was “The morning goes by like normal except she fucks three more men, sending them out periodically to check her desk, and it’s all in the silence, while people shuffle across the wood floor and trade words on paper for more words on paper.” So much is going on with this woman, not just physically, while the rest of the library has no idea. Then, she sends the men out to check on her desk. Awesome.
“Ask Me If I Care,” threw me off guard. I had to re-read paragraphs to piece together who was who and what was what. I really enjoyed reading it, actually, though. It went on and on about these people’s lives and the band and the love triangles, but when I say it went “on and on,” it happened in a good way, where I continued to keep on reading and continued to stay interested in the story until the end.
“Ask Me If I Care,” is one of those stories where I would never read on my own free will, but after I did, it was refreshing to read something different and out of my comfort zone of genres and authors. The writing seemed different from what I’m used to and unconventional, but it worked so much that the story just flowed. (ha! I hope that makes sense…bottom line, I really enjoyed reading the story).
The beginning of “quiet please” was pretty intense but i feel like it served a purpose in this story. I liked the line “You are not Cleopatra! he says, and she ducks and screams, then clamps her hand over her mouth.” This is when the man is yelling and throwing books at her. Once her father died, she began looking for a replacement it seemed and without even thinking about it. Why? She is not lying when she argues that every guy has a librarian fantasy, which you can see in this story, clearly. hah. The circus man did a good job of snapping some sense into this woman while the other men waited around for a round 2 with the librarian. This story kind of seemed purposeless until the part when she draws a mouth onto the angel. What was the purpose of this? The man lifting the couch must have been extremely strong and tall to make it possible for her to touch the ceiling… But i think the mouth on the angel was a sign for her to be done being promiscuous. I feel like the mouth also meant that you can choose how to feel about anything that happens to you. I enjoyed reading this story.
“Ask Me If I Care” was a good story except i feel like it took too long to get started and was boring in the beginning. Although this was a different story it was nice to get a change in pace. I liked how it went through the thoughts of this kid, it seemed so real. The characters were awesome and i liked this story a lot
“Quiet Please” Was about a very emotionally disturbed woman who was feeling the loos of her father and in the process of her grief she tried to replace him. A downward spiral like that is usually triggered by something extreme, but a fathers death? Strange. The writing style was a bit to dry for my taste. It was a good read but I felt the whole situation, especially the part with the circus guy was very strange yet endearing. All in all I liked it, but at the same time I felt it left many questions unanswered. The mural on the ceiling seemed a bit…out of place. Over all very raunchy!!