Has anyone here read any Charles Chesnutt? I'm reading him for my short story class right now, and he is incredible. Such a breath of fresh air after Poe! And, actually, Melville as well.

He writes in dialect a lot, so a lot of my classmates are having "trouble" reading him. So, they complain a lot. I'd love to discuss him if anyone else has read any of his stuff. For Monday we read a bunch of the Uncle Julius stories, and today we're reading "The Dumb Witness" and "Dave's Neckliss."

I have, but it's been a while. I do have his collected short stories on the shelf right behind me.

Did you have trouble with the dialect? I had to read those parts a little slower, but didn't have "trouble." I couldn't believe all the complaining on Monday. I was like, "People. Get a grip. Learn to learn!"

I may have issues.

I don't recall having trouble, except that it took a couple of pages to get into the rhythm of it.

I've read one Chesnutt story, but I will say that it's a major feature of fiction in that period using dialect -- it's supposed to be "authentic." (There's a whole dissertation in there, about authentic national literatures and independence movements in Ireland, Finland, the rise of Beowulf being taught in England, etc. and how the US, not having an historical national document to fall back on, created documents of the now, i.e. contemporary folk tales.)

I find stabs at dialect difficult to read because they're often spelled counterintuitively -- e.g., Mark Twain using oncet for the Missouri tendency to add a T sound to the end of "once". When I read Twain for the first time, I thought he was trying to say onset, and I think if he'd spelled it phonetically, i.e. wunst, I would not have been nearly as confused.

The thing that bugs me most about historical representations of dialect is the apostrophes, though. It's like every printer in the land discovered he could make an extra half-cent for every unnecessary character he could add to the line of print, and went hog-wild on the apostrophes.

Yeah, exactly.

I really loved the Uncle Julius stories. We only read three, but I suspect I'll read more on my own while I still have the book out from the library (and some day I'd like to own the book). His style is so intriguing to me, especially since I'm working on writing some framed stories myself right now. Such an effective way to show what he wanted to show during that time right after the Civil War.

It's like every printer in the land discovered he could make an extra half-cent for every unnecessary character he could add to the line of print, and went hog-wild on the apostrophes.

No doubt!

Cool! I just found out there's a graphical LibraryThing widget you can insert into LJ code. I haven't played around with the parameters in detail yet, but this shows a random 4 books from my collection. I just need to tweak that and work out where in my journal layout to put it.

Graphical widget discussion.

Yay! My Paypal transfer finally finished so I can get my Lifetime Library Thing membership! On to higher catalog numbers!

I need some recommendations and figured the Buffista Hive Mind would be a great resource.

Do any of you know of any poems or short stories that are about dealing with sexual orientation/homosexuality that are written by Americans, preferrably well-regarded American authors, and are appropriate for high school sophomores? Appropriate meaning not graphic and fairly accessible for regular level readers.

Any suggestions you have would be most welcome!!