Greasy Lake Short Story Driver A Punk
Boyle weathered a rebellious youth (he describes his younger self as a maniacal, crazy driver a punk pure and simple) and a drug-addled early adulthood before landing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he studied with American masters of the short story John Cheever and Raymond Carver. BOYLE Raised in Westchester County, New York in the 1960s, T.C. Mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, The Washingt.1 Greasy Lake BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF T. Read 53 reviews from the worlds largest community for readers. Is the narrator saying that 'bad' behaviour is natural 2 The word 'bad' in the first paragraph is symbolically used to show a moral or cultural decline in the form of excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury by teenagers without caring at all.Greasy Lake & Other Stories book. Notice that the first paragraph ends with a short sentence about Greasy Lake, This was nature.
He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Henry Prize, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has won awards from the PEN/ Faulkner Foundation, the O. The author of sixteen novels and eleven short story collections, Boyle s starry career spans four decades.
They re tourists in the land of badness, just as were many members of the counter-culture of the sixties and seventies. The narrator and his friends think it is cool to be bad context clues within the story tell the reader that these boys are financially comfortable and middle-class, but they reject their cushy position in life in favor of seeking thrills and danger in places like Greasy Lake. Greasy Lake explores the tensions that grew out of the prosperity of the period, as well as the failures of the American dream despite the appearance of boundless opportunity and great fortune. Boyle is a member of the Baby Boomer generation.
KEY FACTS Full Title: Greasy Lake When Written: Early 1980s When Published: 1985, as the title story of the collection Greasy Lake and Other Stories Literary Period: Postmodernist Genre: Literary fiction short fiction realism Americana Setting: New York State Climax: After brawling with a bad character on a visit to Greasy Lake, the unnamed narrator, hiding at the lake s edge finds a dead body. Boyle s rich language and highly imaginative plots have roots in the work of Thomas Pynchon (Gravity s Rainbow), Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations), and even noted American satirist Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). Boyle s work is often described as lush and maximalist, where the work of Carver and Cheever pioneered a minimalist writing aesthetic. From these teachers, the authors of acclaimed works such as Bullet Park, The World According to Garp, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Boyle inherited an interest in writing dark humor, dirty realism, and stories that investigated the failure of the American dream. Boyle was inspired during his time at the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop by the work of mentors like John Cheever ( the Chekhov of the suburbs ), John Irving, and Raymond Carver.
Boyle named Greasy Lake for Bruce Springsteen s song Spirit in the Night, written and recorded for Springsteen s debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Lasting just under thirty minutes, the film remains true to the story s brevity and simplicity. In 1988, Greasy Lake was adapted into a short film starring Eric Stoltz as the narrator and James Spader as Digby.
It is the third night of summer vacation, and the boys are dreadfully bored Greasy Lake offers the possibility of danger, intoxication, and sex. Once a clear, glistening lake, it has now become a murky and festering place, but it is still all the boys know of nature. In order to do so they wore torn-up leather jackets, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine, went up to Greasy Lake. PLOT SUMMARY An unnamed narrator, looking back on his past, recalls a time when it was good to be bad, when he and his friends, at nineteen years old, were desperate to be seen as dangerous characters.
The narrator and his friends quickly realize that the car does not belong to Tony Lovett, but rather to a very bad character in greasy jeans and engineer boots. As they do, the narrator drops his keys in the grass. Digby recognizes the Chevy as belonging to their friend Tony Lovett they decide to play a hilarious joke on Tony, and flash their brights, honk the car s horn, and jump out to go press witty faces against the Chevy s window.
She s barefoot, dressed in panties and a man s shirt, and she calls the boys animals. As the three boys stand over the Bad Character s unconscious body, his companion, The Fox, emerges from the car screaming. Digby is quickly laid out by the Bad Character, so Jeff attacks the man while the narrator retrieves a tire iron from beneath the front seat of his mother s car and uses it to bring the Bad Character down in one fell swoop.
Greasy Lake Short Story Drivers Of The
The narrator hears the three men turn to car, and he peeks through the weeds to watch as the Bad Character and the two blond men destroy the Bel Air. The narrator hears The Fox tell the two blond drivers of the car that the boys tried to rape and then two voices (one of which the narrator recognizes, with relief, to be the Bad Character s) call threats against the boys into the night. The narrator runs to the lake s edge, planning to swim for it, but he feels something in the water realizing it is a dead body, the narrator stumbles away horrified. Their car keys are lost and so, unable to drive away, they bolt for cover elsewhere. A car pulls into the lot and the boys scatter. The boys descend upon her, tearing at her clothes, grabbing for flesh.
Thankful for his life, and for the approaching dawn, the narrator returns to his mother s car, inspecting the damage. He recalls the dead body, and realizes that it belongs to the owner of the chopper, no doubt, a bad character come to this. The narrator lies in the primordial ooze at the lake s edge for a long time, bemoaning his bad fortune. They do, and are soon followed by the two blond men.
CHARACTERSCTERS The Narratorator The unnamed narrator of Greasy Lake is nineteen and cultivates decadence like a taste. He looks back in his rearview mirror and sees the older girl still standing there, her shoulders slumped, hand outstretched. The girl tells the boys that they look like pretty bad characters and offers them pills the boys refuse, and the narrator drives away.
After an encounter with a Bad Character goes awry, the narrator hides at the edge of Greasy Lake, where he finds a dead body. From an unknown point in the future, the narrator tells the story of a night when he and his friends drove their parents cars up to Greasy Lake. He floats through his days and nights acting like he doesn t give a shit about anything and hoping that exciting things will happen to him. Just like his friends Jeff and Digby, the narrator is understood to be firmly middle-class, though he is desperate to shake that uncool identity.
Digby Along with Jeff, Digby is one of the narrator s two best friends. Boyle has noted, in past interviews, the autobiographical tilt of Greasy Lake, and with his own history of pursuing badness, it s possible that Boyle uses the narrator as a conduit for expressing the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of his own teenage years. In the light of morning, he and his friends recognize their shameful behavior and the stark reality of their foolish dreams of danger.
He is lazy, uncertain, and is thinking of quitting school to become a painter/musician/ head-shop proprietor. Jeff One of the narrator s two best friends, Jeff s primary characteristic is his inaction. Comfortably middle-class and bad in the same false way the narrator is bad, Digby represents the three boys foolish desire for danger. Digby, who is nineteen, wears an earring and allow his father to pay his tuition at Cornell.
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