Once Upon a Time: Reading 'Out of Body' by Jennifer Egan

The story of the month: 'Out of Body' by Jennifer Egan

Link to the story:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rJw-UNZD6zn8oW3bgW9hl1lb2M6cQRuY/view?usp=sharing

Link to the Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/tnt-fnkp-uhp

The meeting room will open 5 minutes before the session.

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"A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it."

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Despite unwarranted reports of its demise at various times, the short story has been robust and thriving. The form itself has constantly changed, always reflecting the times it came out of, unlike the novel.

From the great short story writers – Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Henry James, O’Henry, and Saki – we moved to the more modern writers who brought a change in the middle of the twentieth century – Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver were at the forefront of this.

Once Upon a Time is a session in which we try to familiarise ourselves with the world's best short stories. Shankar will read the story aloud in the session. After the reading, we will analyse it together to learn from it.

But if you can, please read the story beforehand.

THE STORY: 'Out of Body' by Jennifer Egan

In this chapter-story of 'A Visit from the Goon Squad', you follow Rob — recovering from a suicide attempt — who observes his friends’ lives as if from the margins, captured in second-person narration that heightens his estrangement. What emerges is a sharp meditation on self-alienation, identity and the body’s failure to contain the self in transition — a startling moment of detachment and reckoning.

Link to the story:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rJw-UNZD6zn8oW3bgW9hl1lb2M6cQRuY/view?usp=sharing

THE AUTHOR:

Jennifer Egan, born in Chicago in 1962 and raised in San Francisco; she went on to study English at the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge. Her inventive fiction—especially the novel 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' — won major acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. Egan lives in Brooklyn, writes across short stories and journalism as well, and enjoys bending narrative form (yes, even a chapter as a PowerPoint slide) to challenge how stories are told.

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THE HOST:

Shankar is living in Pune and has been a lifelong reader and was bitten by the writing bug after reading stories by Tobias Wolff, Anton Chekhov and William Trevor. While he loves novels, especially by the Russians, he always has a particular fondness for short stories.