Even polar bears, which made headlines in recent years after scientists observed them engaging in cannibalism, have been eating their own species for longer than many people would expect. Schutt offers examples like medicinal cannibalism, the practice of eating parts of bodies in order to treat disease, which was common in Europe in recent history. He also traces the taboo of cannibalism from the ancient Greeks through fairy tales and into modernity, showing that equating cannibalism with evil is a cultural construct.
The association between cannibalism and monsters catalyzed political actions that shaped the modern world. While it is unclear whether or not cannibalism did exist, it was the Western taboo surrounding cannibalism that cast indigenous peoples as barbarians in need of civilizing. While Cannibalism is rooted in a naturalistic survey of the topic, the horror is impossible to overlook.
One student admitted to having run someone over; another may have for the first time come out of the closet. When the exercise was over, Lish smiled.
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Hempel said that this exercise set the stakes of the workshop: students would have to give everything they had to even attempt to please him. It also set the terms: Lish wanted students to approach him from a position of complete vulnerability. The effort to satisfy Lish would be about more than literature—it would be personal. Pleasing him would not only affirm their worth as writers but put them back on tolerable footing with him as human beings.
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How did Lish tell his students to do this? By using their vulnerability to perform a feminine seduction. Like all writing instructors, Lish told his students they must have authority over their material, Lily Tuck wrote. How did they restore themselves? By dramatizing their confessions in a way that commanded attention: that was tense, taut, and confident, that had the feeling of an emotional striptease about it.
There was an archetypal student for whom this approach worked best.
She was a woman, and most likely an attractive woman with some confidence, who intuitively understood the tactics Lish described, and was able to translate them from life to the page. She felt some uncertainty about the direction of her life but had real financial security—a young woman from a wealthy family, or a middle-aged one who regretted giving up work for her family—and this combination allowed her to commit totally to the workshop.
Like most of us, she possessed a reserve of personal trauma, which she could have explored as easily in therapy as in workshop. But she was in workshop, which meant that she would dramatize her reckoning in tense and enticing sentences. Simply coming to terms with the more difficult facts of her life would not be enough; she would have to come to terms with them in a way that made her vulnerable, attractive, compelling.
Within this framework, Lish became, in various combinations, teacher, analyst, correspondent, editor, lover, and publisher. One difficulty with the method was that it only really worked once. Most of us have only so many secrets, and after a certain point we lose interest in telling them. The Lish workshops produced many good first stories, and many good first books, but they have been less successful at launching careers.
Those who have persisted have made clear in the transformation of their work that they are drawing on different resources. What does it sound like when many writers are appealing to one person—and that person fundamentally understands writing as seduction? Baby, I will miss you with your common sense, and with your blindness to psychology. My prediction for you is that you will have a fascinating life and that you will stay eternally young, and that you will never lack for love.
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I am interested in all aspects of you. One complicated aspect of learning to write to seduce is that for many women it was a form of empowerment. Williams was a suburban Chicago housewife, a former editor, and a dissatisfied amateur writer when she traveled to take one of his classes. She was looking for something to change her life, and this was it: within a few years she had moved to New York, where she became a professional writer and teacher and founded the literary magazine NOON. By the mids Lish was completely engaged with cultivating new writers, to the point where the actual work of publishing books came to seem a distraction.
So he threatened to quit unless he was, like editors at a few other publishing houses, given his own literary magazine to edit. Lish, of course, was Q.
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During this time, Lish was as powerful as he would ever be. Critics began to speak about the School of Gordon Lish—meaning both the classes and the work itself—probably most perceptively Sven Birkerts, in his article of that title, which appeared in The New Republic soon before the founding of The Quarterly. After surveying the works of Ferrell, Hempel, and several others, Birkerts wrote,. The writers are, as I say, outwardly various enough.
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Holbrook , Massachusetts. Jane F. Schutt White. Everhere offers donations to grieving families to alleviate the costs associated with the death of a loved one. Here is Jane F. It is always difficult saying goodbye to someone we love and cherish. Family and friends must say goodbye to their beloved Jane F. Schutt White Holbrook, Massachusetts , who passed away on February 7, Leave a sympathy message to the family in the guestbook on this memorial page of Jane F.
Schutt White to show support. She was loved and cherished by many people including : her spouse Frederick C. White; her children, Christine L. McPherson of Holbrook, Frederick C. White Mary of Holbrook and Steven T. She was also cherished by many nieces and nephews. Funeral arrangement under the care of Cartwright Funeral Homes. There are no additional photos for Jane F. Schutt White at this time.
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