Readings

Writing is there to be read, don't you think? It's a form of personal expression, first and foremost, but when it is shared, it gains a whole new meaning and gives rise to new interpretations, new understanding.

The following are excerpts we have worked with as a springboard for writing and discussion.

First workshop

Philip Pullman, “I have a feeling this all belongs to me”

One day when I was a little boy I went out for a walk with my grandmother. There was a big pile of dark brown earthenware pipes by the side of the road for the workmen to put underground, and Granny let me clamber about over them for a while and crawl inside and out the other end. But she was anxious to go back home, and I couldn't persuade her to stay, so I went with her, reluctantly; and when we got home, who could believe it? I had a new brother. A little crying baby, of all things. Where had he come from?

Lydia Davis, “Happiest Moment”

If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long
time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: An English-
language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said his wife had gone to Beijing and had eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.


Second workshop

William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now and again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks--all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now.

James Joyce, Dubliners

He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of.


Third week

Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

I never put up a barber pole or a sign or even gave my shop a name. I didn’t have to. The building was already called “the barbershop.” That was its name because that had been its name for nobody knew how long. Port William had little written history. Its history was its living memory of itself, which passed over the years like a moving beam of light. It had a beginning that it had forgotten, and would have an end that it did not yet know. It seemed to have been there forever. After I had been there a while, the shop began to be called Jayber Crow’s, or just Jayber’s. “Well, I’m going down to Jayber’s,” people would say, as if it had been clearly marked on some map, though it was so only in their minds. I never had a telephone, so I was not even in the book.

            From 1937 to 1969, I was “the barber” in Port William. The shop was at the bottom of the swag in the midst of the town. The road came up the river from Hargrave; about a mile from Port William it climbed the hill onto the upland, made a couple of dips and turns, passed the graveyard and the houses opposite, passed the church and the bank and the handful of business places, went by my shop and the garage down in the swag, and then rose up again, going by more houses; at the top of the rise it passed the school, and then it hurried on.


Fourth week

George Eliot (via Jess Hobbs)

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

--And selections from the student writing on the blog.


Fifth week

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
(excerpts)

Maira Kalman, "And the Pursuit of Happiness"

Sixth week

Any family pictures students may carry with them

Toni Morrison and Studs Terkel interview, Sula excerpt read by the author (1974)