Landfill by Joyce Carol Oates

Landfill by Joyce Carol Oates comes from the Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction, which she also edited. Being in graduate school for Higher Education and Student Affairs and reading case studies, along with using a identifying your values training exercise (about a bridge and a mistress and death and whose fault it was) that we gave our Resident Assistants during training, prepared me for when I read this story, I thought this story would work perfectly for these exercises and that I should start a book club on short stories about college students for professional development and fun! So this story indirectly inspired this whole summer.

Discussion Questions for Landfill by Joyce Carol Oates

1. How did the style affect your reading of the story? (shifting POV, syntax, achronological revelations, etc.)

2. Mrs. Campos blames Mr. Campos for coercing Hector into engineering, such difficult courses, who could excel at such difficult courses, it’s no wonder that Hector has been so lonely, away from home for the first time in his life. None of his Southfield High friends were at Grand Rapids. His classes were too large, his professors scarcely knew him. Twelve thousand undergraduates at Grand Rapids. Three hundred residents in ugly high-rise Brest Hall where poor Hector shared a room with two other guys – “Reb” and “Steve” – who in Hector’s words “didn’t go out of their way” to be friendly to him.

In this story, Hector, Jr. dies, but there are several moments where the author allows the reader to see that outcome was not necessarily necessary. Take a moment to rank the following characters in order of who was most responsible for Hector’s death, with 1 being most responsible. You can add more names.

Your Rankings                                                                                   

Hector, Jr. Campos
Mom Campos
Dad Campos
Roommates
Fraternity Brothers
Fraternity Brother who pushed him / let go of him down chute
College Recruitment Officers
Admissions Officers
ResLife Placement Office
Campus Police
Local liquor stores
Girls who spurned Hector

 

Then, can we come to a consensus on the order of who was most responsible?

3. Away at college Hector, Jr. was called “Hector” by his teachers, “Scoot” by his friends, “Campos” by the older Phi Epsilons he so admired and wished to emulate.

How do names identify us? How do our students use their different names to relate to different groups? Hector had several intersecting identities – how did they affect his tragic end?

4. More money, always more money, more than you’ve computed, Mr. Campos! – more than the sum quoted by the university admissions office for tuition/room-and-board/textbooks, “fees” for fraternity rush, for fraternity pledging, a starling high fee (payable in advance, Hector. Jr. has said) for fraternity initiation upcoming in May. How does the cost of college affect our students? What other unexpected costs do our students face that may not have been computed before arrival on campus?

5. Yet the police investigation will continue. And the university administration will convene an investigating committee.

There’s research that suggest a university’s public statements concerning a student death vary – possibly depending on the cause of death, the liability of the university, etc. How does our school respond to student death? Have you seen different responses? What’s the variable?

6. In Hector’s class, the professor says, “No purpose only just chance, the pattern of scout-ants seeking food would look to a viewer like “intelligent design” but is really the result of the random haphazard trails of ants blindly seeking food.”

Does this story support or undermine the lecturer’s point?

7. A few beers, tequila, Scoot isn’t tongue-tied and sweating but witty, and wired.

Scoot’s idea of himself when drunk is very different from the reality. As it is for most of our students. What’s keeping this recognition of dissonance of the idea of self when drinking and the reality of self when drinking from being recognized? Is it only connected to alcohol? Or just aggravated by alcohol?

“Je est un autre” - [the] I is another.

8. They left me here, to puke on my back and choke and die, the fuckers. His friends! His fraternity brothers-to-be! Had to think Never again! Not ever! Meaning he’d depledge Phi-Ep, and he’d stop drinking. But somehow, next weekend he’d come trailing back, couldn’t stay away.  

WHY???? 

Porcupines at the University and The School by Donald Barthelme

This week's selections are by Donald Barthelme, a literary giant in the world of short story authors. He's known for his exceptionally compact stories, wordplay, and occasional epiphanic moments caught in absurd incidents. Porcupines at the University can be found in his collection 40 Stories and The School can be found anthologized in many short story collections, readings, and in 60 Stories. Porcupines at the University is about a university president's fears about the approach of porcupines that he doesn't want at his university and about a porcupine wrangler, who's not actually bringing them there. Is it an allegory? Or is it just funny images put to words? The School is a fun little story about a classroom dealing with the reality of death, whom my favorite short story author, George Saunders, gives an excellent analysis of its mechanics and perfection.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

The School
1. Comments on style? (POV, language, tone, etc.)

2. How do we deal with death? When a student dies in one of our buildings, how do we respond to support those who knew him/her? What's the typical university response? How do we respond to support the residence hall population? How do we respond to individuals?

3. Are we equipped to confront death on campus?

4. How do we answer questions from our mentees to which we don't have an answer? Can we say "I don't know," and maintain credibility/authority/value?

5. What do you think of the story's resolution? Do you, like the children, cheer wildly?

Porcupines at the University
1. Comments on style? (POV, language, tone, etc.)

2. Do you read this as a funny, absurd tale with strange characters? Or as an allegorical fable?

3. There is a clash of cultures between the world of the porcupine wrangler and the world of the dean. Their different assumptions and expectations almost lead to a tragedy. What clash of cultures do we experience in our work at a university?

4. Are there fears about the possible over-enrollment of any particular population and the campus' ability to manage that population?

5. The dean and the wrangler embody too different ideas of accomplished men. How do their views/treatment of women (dean's wife / fancy women) reinforce or undermine their masculinity? What roles of manhood do our male students seek and do those roles affect their treatment of our female students?

6. In the final paragraph, Barthelme writes,

"The citizens in their cars looked at the porcupines, thinking: What is wonderful? Are these porcupines wonderful? Are they significant? Are they what I need?"

Assuming the porcupines are an allegory for "the other," how do the citizens' thoughts compare with how the dominant culture views "the other."

Signifying Nothing by David Foster Wallace

Our story this week is "Signifying Nothing," by David Foster Wallace. You can find it in his short story collection, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. A quick warning, maybe unnecessary, but maybe appreciated - this story recounts an episode of child abuse and the emotions that follow and how someone deals with that memory. It may be a trigger if you are sensitive to such topics. If so, please just come and drink the wine (this week's selection is drinking all the leftover bottles collecting in my apartment!) and listen in to how we reacted. This week's story also continues the trend of a very conversational narrator. David Foster Wallace is famous for his book, Infinite Jest; you may also have come across his commencement address about fishes.

1. How did the style of writing (POV, language, tone, etc.) affect your reading of this story?

2. General impressions?

3. Narrator's dealing with anger?

4. Thoughts in light of our Child Abuse and Neglect policy?

5. Role of memory and hearing a judicial case with multiple students involved who each report different details concerning what happened?

5. How free are our students to completely cut off contact with their parents?

6. How often do you feel like the mom in this story? Clueless, but aware enough to be concerned?

Loser and Zombies by Chuck Palahniuk

This week's selection includes two short stories by one of my favorite contemporary authors, Chuck Palahniuk. Zombies was published in Playboy last year and will be collected into a new short story collection to be released later this year or next. Loser was published in Stories: All New Tales in 2011.

You may have seen the movie adapted from his first published novel, Fight Club. If you haven't, your students certainly have. The movie came out while I was in college, and I remember hearing from several of my friends at the time of how it made them reevaluate their lives. My brother, while serving in Kuwait, said that he had friends who wouldn't read at all, except for all the Chuck Palahniuk novels he'd been sent. On a more personal note, Chuck Palahniuk wrote me back when I wrote him fan mail as a youth, and he sent me a hand-made necklace, as well as thoughtful answers to all my questions, so yeah, I adore him more than any other artist I admire.

This week we'll drink sweet white wine since it's close to my birthday. I'll have some dry wine as well, if like my wife, you can't stand the sweet stuff.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. How did the style of writing (POV, tone, language, etc.) affect the reading of the story? (Palahniuk is sometimes considered a "transgressive fiction" author, transgressive fiction being stories with taboo subjects, unique voices, shocking images, etc...)

2. General impressions?

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. Reading both of these stories reminded me of the passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (1920), about a recent Princeton graduate arguing with an older man about how restless he is with the options available to him upon graduation. Both of the protagonists in Palahniuk's stories reject a perceived future role they find unsatisfactory but they feel is expected of them. Do you recognize this angst? Is it universal? Or is it unique? Have you ever dealt with it yourself? How did you resolve the conflict? Have you ever counseled a student struggling with what they see as a path all of their peers seem content to embrace but doesn't fit them? 

4. Are there any student development theories that explain the struggles our protagonists face?

5. How are the protagonist’s answering the questions in Baxter-Magolda’s theory of self-authorship: How do I know? How do I want to construct relationships with others? Who am I?

6. If you recall the Alexander Astin quote from "The Christian Roommates" discussion, what role does our protagonists' peer group play on their decisions / actions?

In What Matters in College?: Four Critical Years Revisited, Astin (1993) says that "Viewed as a whole, the many empirical findings from this study seem to warrant the following general conclusion:  the student's peer group is the single most important source of influence on growth and development in the undergraduate years (p. 398).

However, in both these stories, parents are also a strong influence. In your experience, is one more influential than the other?

7. In “Loser,” the protagonist talks about his knowledge differs from that of his parents or what society values. How does this disagreement on the value of certain kinds of knowledge affect our students? How do they decide what to remember? What to know?

8. There's an epiphany in both of these stories that seems to be a realization of uncertainty, of accepting that it's okay to not have the answer as long as you know what the answer isn't (Loser) and that it's okay to not have the answer since neither does anyone else and you recognize you're all in it together (Zombies). Agree/disagree? How common is this response amongst the students we support?

9. Do you want to see the necklace Chuck Palahniuk made me?

The Christian Roommates by John Updike

The Christian Roommates by John Updike
first appeared in the April 1964 issue of the New Yorker magazine and has been collected in John Updike: The Early Stories and anthologized in American Short Story Masterpieces. In a Paris Review interview, Updike briefly describes how his Harvard experience changed him his freshman year and the ambivalence and awareness he felt developing there.

The story is about several roommates on a first year residence hall, but focuses on the experience of two distinct roommates. As the Midwestern, small-town protagonist, Orson Ziegler describes the situation, "He envied all the roommates, whatever the bond between them - geography, race, ambition, physical size - for between himself and [his roommate] Hub Palamountain he could see no link except forced cohabitation." His roommate's different habits (yoga, vegetarianism, being a conscientious objector to the Korean war, etc.) nearly drive Orson to a nervous breakdown. Eventually, they get into a physical fight in their room (instigated by Orson) in front of their fellow residents (where Hub easily dominates Orson); they quit talking to each other for a couple days; and then they "finished out the year sitting side by side at their desks as amiably as two cramped passengers who have endured a long bus trip together." Orson is particularly bothered that his roommate seems to hold him to a higher standard than the other guys on the floor and struggles with encountering someone who shares his faith in name and general beliefs but who varies widely in practice.

Discussion Questions:

1. First thoughts? General Impressions? How does the style (voice, pov, details revealed, etc.) affect your reading of this story?

2. This story is set in Harvard in the early 1950s. What first year experiences do the characters have that our students continue to have today? Are there any first year experiences the characters have that our students don't?

3. Considering Orson's friction-filled relationship with Hub (and the twist at the end of the story), how do spiritual development theories (Parks, Fowler) and/or cognitive development theories explain Orson's development?

4. In What Matters in College?: Four Critical Years Revisited, Astin (1993) says that "Viewed as a whole, the many empirical findings from this study seem to warrant the following general conclusion:  the student's peer group is the single most important source of influence on growth and development in the undergraduate years (p. 398). How important is Orson's roommate, Hub, on his growth and development? How important are the other guys on the floor?

5. Tinto's Theory of Retention (1975) suggests that a sense of fit with an institution makes it much more likely that a student will stay and graduate and that conversely, a sense of not belonging makes it more likely that a student will drop out or transfer. How does this explain the experience of Young, the black student who lived down the hall from Orson?

Young was a lean, malt-pale colored boy from North Carolina, here on a national scholarship, out of his depth, homesick, and cold. Kern called him Brer Possum. He slept all day and at night sat on his bed playing the mouthpiece of a trumpet to himself. At first, he had played the full horn in the afternoon, flooding the dormitory and its green envelope of trees with golden, tremulous versions of languorous tunes like "Sentimental Journey" and "The Tennessee Waltz." It had been nice. But Young's sense of place - a habit of self-effacement that the shock of Harvard had intensified in him - soon cancelled these harmless performances. He took to hiding from the sun, and at night the furtive spitting sound from across the hall seemed to Orson, as he struggled to sleep, music drowning in shame...

Who eventually, "...slunk in and out of the dorm as if he were diseased and marked for destruction; he became, while still among them, a rumor."

6. In describing Peterson and Fitch, Orson thinks, "physiques aside, it was hard to see what they had in common, or why Harvard had put them together." Is the idea that the department personally selects one's roommate prevalent? How does that idea affect our interactions students?

7. There's no indication of an RA in the story! Why not?

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (excerpt) by Junot Diaz

Our selection for Sips and Stories this Thursday will be the fourth chapter of the first section of the acclaimed Junot Diaz novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Sentimental Education. The novel has gotten numerous accolades* and great reviews; there's a good chance you already have it on your bookshelf! The selection we'll be reading is set on Rutger's University and deals with a variety of issues including: Assignments, Roommate Conflict, Masculinity, Suicidal Ideation, Family, Immigrant Experience, Alcohol use, etc.

The wine will be any Sauvignon Blanc, which is typically dry, (so I'll also have a bottle of sweeter stuff if you don't like it!)

*Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize

Possible Discussion Questions

1. How does the style of writing affect the telling of the story? (conversational tone, untranslated Spanish, allusions, etc.)

2. How does reading what happened through Junior’s point of view affect the telling/receiving of the story?

3. Junior has a strong sense of who he is. He frequently identifies being a Dominican male with having a lot of sex with different women. When discussing why he chose to “fix” Oscar he says, “What I should have done was check myself into Bootie Rehab. But if you thought I was going to do that, then you don’t know Dominican men. Instead of focusing on something hard and useful like, say, my own shit, I focused on something easy and redemptive.” Junior calls himself a “playboy,” and “the biggest player of them all.” In the excerpt, in what ways does Junior identify himself with his idea of masculinity? How does he exclude others that don’t fit this ideal? On our campus, how do our male students identify themselves as “manly?”

4. Junior discusses how after his fight with Oscar, “they acted like roommates act when they’re beefing.” How does their experience compare with other roommate conflicts you’ve dealt with?

5. What unique aspects of residence hall living (in this case, a living-learning program experience) did Junior mention in telling this story? What were positive, what were negative?

6. Junior speaks disparagingly of his residence hall and its reputation. How does Demarest’ identity affect Junior and Oscar? What reputations / identities do our buildings have? How does that affect the students we work with?

7. Oscar attempts suicide because he cannot “get a girl.” He worries that being a virgin means he is a failure. In the news recently, a young man shot and murdered several campus sorority members in California for what appears to be the same reason. Are these isolated incidents or is the idea that to be a man (or to be fulfilled/happy/whole/etc), a young man must be successful in “getting girls?” Is this a realm of identity that we, as student affairs professionals, have any influence? How can we help the students we work with, both male and female, navigate this time in their lives when not being able to get sex seems to equate to being a failure?  

8. What student development theories help to explain the development of the characters in this story?

The Man From Mars - Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood's The Man From Mars from her 1977 short story collection, Dancing Girls is a frequently anthologized story about a young college female, who after showing some kindness to an international exchange student from Asia, finds herself doggedly "pursued" by him. She is at times embarrassed, frightened, and empowered by his attention. The story is set on a Canadian college campus and raises issues of national identity, class identity, and gender identity.

Some questions that I thought would lead to interesting discussion are:

1. Consider the different aspects of Christine’s identity in the story, “The Man From Mars,” – how do they affect the way she acts/thinks? Her national identity? Her gender identity? Her class identity?

2. Christine’s family calls people from other countries, “a person from another culture.” Do you think this phrase is applied also to Canadian minorities? Did your family have a particular phrase for “the other?” How does  confusion over whether her “friend’s” behavior is normal for his culture affect Christine’s response? How have cultural misunderstandings affect student’s you work with (i.e., roommate conflict)? How have cultural misunderstandings affected your response to individuals from other cultures/countries?

3. Christine wants to be a good ambassador and “ do her duty” by being polite when she first meets him, having him over for tea – are there examples when you made yourself uncomfortable because you wanted to represent your national/class/racial/gender/sexual identity in a positive light? Do you have examples of students you’ve worked with doing so?

4. Christine doesn’t consider her family wealthy. Her father says “nobody made any money with the Government.” When did you become conscious of your class identity? How do you think awareness (or lack of) affects the students we work with? 

5. In describing her role as a woman, Christine “wasn’t a cock-teaser, a cold fish, an easy lay or a snarky bitch; she was an honorary person. She had grown to share [her male friends] contempt for most women.” This story was set presumably in the 60s (before the outbreak of the Vietnam War) – are these categories for women still present? How do they affect our students? Who defines them?

6. Being chased made Christine feel special. How valid is the idea that you should be attractive to someone else to be special? How does this affect the students we work with?

7. In the story, Christine’s “friend” faces explicit limitations in the form of language difficulties and visa permit regulations. Presumably, he also struggles with financial issues and finding friends also from Vietnam. What struggles do international students face? How can we help them?