Lust- Susan Minot

MAD magazine

- Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century, with editor Al Feldstein increasing readership to more than 2,000,000 during its 1970s circulation peak.
-Though there are antecedents to Mad’s style of humor in print, radio and film, Mad became a pioneering example of it. Throughout the 1950s, Mad featured groundbreaking parodies combining a sentimental fondness for the familiar staples of American culture—such as Archie and Superman—with a keen joy in exposing the fakery behind the image.
Wild Horses- The Rolling Stones

Sugar Magnolia- The Grateful Dead

Darkness Darkness- Youngbloods

Under My Thumb- The Rolling Stones

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes- The Platters

I'll Love You Just For Now- ???

Rashomon- Ryunosuke Akutagawa

• Mother went mad and died
• Father gave to maternal uncle, where he received his surname, family for adoption
• Committed suicide at age 35 of overdose.

• Published 1915
• 1950 movie only takes scenes, plot based on 1922 short story "In a Grove"
• Story based in Kyoto.
• Akutagawa's use of the gate was deliberately symbolic, with the gate's ruined state representing the moral and physical decay of Japanese civilization and culture.

Rashomon- mean 'wall gate' and had a sister gate at the northern tip of city also, while this one was located at the southern end.


The Rashomon effect
-Effect of subjectivity of perception on recollection. Event observers able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts.

Misery- Anton Chekhov

The Fall of the House of Usher- Edgar Allan Poe

Literary Themes and Topics

• Anti Transcendentalist
• Gothic
• Amateur Psychoanalytical
• Vampirism
• Madness

Critical Analysis

Questions

1- Discuss the angle of vision in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Who, if not Poe himself, is telling the story? Why Has Poe chosen this narrator? How would the story change if it were told by an omniscient author?

• Single person narrative
• Usher's childhood companion
• Previous, untainted history with historical knowledge
• Narrator is closest friend but doesn't know about twins
• Justified by Usher's thoughts

2-How does the atmosphere (the quality of the setting, the mood deriving from the setting) function? To what extent does it describe qualities of the psyche?

• Depressing and oppressive- dark.
• Dreary, melancholy, insufferable gloom, desolate, terrible, bleak.
• Atmosphere and setting function as imagery.
• State of disrepair/ feeling of dread correlate with Usher family line- shambles.

3- The plot of the story is improbable; the atmosphere of horror exaggerated; the character of Usher melodramatic. Does Poe, nevertheless, manage to move the reader? What in the reader is he able to touch?

• Who is the reader?
• Lengthy exposition
• Blind person
• Monotonously ghastly
• Jaded- horror films for kicks and giggles
• Sensory
• Sympathy for narrator/ Usher's plight
• Indignation at situation

Evaluation

• Themes of evil, isolation, and fear.
• Evil in gloom, family incest and illness [demon possession/madness?]
• Isolation crops up with the twins, the only friend, the house itself and incest.
• The fear at the sight of the house, Roderick's madness, and murder/ death.

FACT:
The Fall of the House of Usher was first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine

The poem "The Haunted Palace" was first published in April 1839 in Nathan Brooks' American Museum Magazine.

Media Frenzy