“Less is More”: Simpleness and Richness in “Why Don’t You Dance”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/6g4k7483Keywords:
Minimalism; “Why Don't You Dance”; Line Drawing Sketch.Abstract
In 1981, the publication of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, a famous collection of short stories by Raymond Carver, saddled him with the term “Minimalist”. Based on former academic achievements on Carver's minimalist writing, this research analyzed the minimalistic techniques in “Why Don't You Dance” in order, namely omitted narration, line drawing sketch and repetitive narration and decoded their textual effects and author’s intention. Under minimalistic and detached narration of the story, Carver reveals implicitly the situations of lower working-class lives, expressing deep empathy for those who lost in alcohol, vulgar culture and indifferent humanity.
Downloads
References
[1] Aldridge, John W. “Less Is a Lot Less.” Talents and Technicians: Literary Chic and the New Assembly, 1992.
[2] Atlas, James. “Less Is Less.” Atlantic Monthly 247.6 (1981): 96–98.
[3] Brown, Arthur A. “Raymond Carver and Postmodern Humanism.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 31.2 (1990): 125-136. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.1990.9934689
[4] Carver, Raymond. “On writing.” Mississippi Review 14.1 (1985): 46-51.
[5] ---. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
[6] Clark, Robert C. American Literary Minimalism. University of Alabama Press, 2014.
[7] Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Cornell University Press, 1983.
[8] Gupta, Anil. “Minimalism”. Philosophical Perspectives 7 (1993): 359-369. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2214129
[9] Hornstein, Norbert, Jairo Nunes, and Kleanthes K. Grohmann. Understanding Minimalism. Cambridge University Press, 2005. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840678
[10] Just, Daniel. “Is Less More? A Reinvention of Realism in Raymond Carver's Minimalist Short Story.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 49.3 (2008): 303-317. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3200/CRIT.49.3.303-318
[11] Kermode, Frank, and Thomas Stearns Eliot. “Selected Prose of TS Eliot.” 1975.
[12] McCaffery, Larry. “Literary Disruptions: Fiction in a Post-Contemporary Age.” 1976. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/302017
[13] Meyer, and James. “Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties.” Yale University Press, 2004.
[14] Miller, J. Hillis. Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels. Harvard University Press, 1982.
[15] Monti, Enrico. “Minimalism, Dirty Realism, and Raymond Carver.” 23 (2013): 56-69.
[16] Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Philosophy of Composition.” The Writer's Art: By Those Who Have Practiced It. 31 (1924): 114-130. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674732513.c10
[17] Strickland, Edward. Minimalism: Origins. Indiana University Press, 2000.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
