ENG356 Week 6 Discussion (dq1+dq2)

ENG 356 Week 6 Topic 6 DQ 1

In Grace Paley’s “A Conversation with my Father,” both the narrator and her father have specific conceptions of truth. Describe both characters’ conceptions of truth and discuss what comment the story seems to make about these versions of truth. Does the story itself seem to privilege one conception over the other? Explain.

ENG 356 Week 6 Topic 6 DQ 2

In Raymond Carver’s essay, “On Writing,” (in “The Story and its
Writer”) he states: “too often ‘experimentation’ [in writing] is a
license… to try to brutalize or alienate the reader. Too often such writing gives us no news of the world, or else describes a desert landscape and that’s all ? a few dunes and lizards here and there, but no people; a place uninhabited by anything recognizably human, a place of interest only to a few scientific specialists.” What extent does this critique of some forms of Postmodern fiction, those in which the authors are apparently more concerned with linguistic innovation than with conveying anything seemingly real or significant to a reader, apply to the fiction assigned in the Topic 6 Readings? Choose two of the assigned readings and explain why this critique does or does
not apply to these works.