One thing creative writing classes try to teach their students is how to mimic the styles of famous authors.

I think that’s pretty smart. After all, one way to ensure a writer can make informed decisions about the different aspects of their own writing style is to see if they can pick up on and identify the alchemy of other writers’ styles.

I’ve never taken Creative Writing, but I’m taking Lit 110 this semester. As a result, I’ve recently read some short stories that are considered ‘classics’ by the powers that be:

A & P – John Updike
Story of an Hour – Kate Chopin
A Rose for Emily – William Faulkner
A Party Down at the Square – Ralph Ellison
Everyday Use – Alice Walker
Shiloh – Bobbie Ann Mason
Araby – James Joyce
The Man Who Was Almost a Man – Richard Wright
Sweat – Zora Neale Hurston
Good Country People – Flannery O’Conner
The Guest – Albert Camus
Hills Like White Elephants – Ernest Hemingway
In the American Society – Gish Jen
Woman Hollering Creek – Sandra Cisneros
The Red Convertible – Louise Erdrich

I’ll admit I have little patience for old movies and less patience still for old, archaic prose.
To make matters worse, a good portion of the stories featured irritating dialogue, where the writers tried to phonetically transcribe ‘slack-jawed’ or other variant dialect, which made reading them horribly laborious.

But a few were pleasant surprises, such as Araby and The Guest. And every one of these authors had radically different styles, so it was kinda fun to pick up their quirks and nuances while reading.

The point of all this is I tried rewriting the ending to Mr. Updike’s short story, A & P (circa 1930), mimicking his style as best as I could. Read the rest of this entry »