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Full text of this paper is not available in the ETD Center. Copies may be available for inter-library loan from Bowling Green State University or may be available for purchase from Proquest/UMI

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In the Season of Our Monstering

Adams, Samuel J
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9025-5263
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1523020784239892

Abstract Details

2018, Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, Creative Writing/Fiction.
The stories in these four chapbooks examine borders, limitations, and the mechanisms of exclusion by which society operates, as well as the mechanisms of inclusion through which it might become kinder and better. The tales trot the globe and zip through time from a darkly dreamed-up, dystopic version of western Ohio to the Bucharest of the 1930s to the Podunk Fairgrounds of contemporary Central California. These stories examine tensions between agency and authority, freedom and self-destruction, and engagement and withdrawal, as the characters in them reckon with the possibility and peril of acceptance—of themselves, others, and the sadder inevitabilities of life—and interrogate notions of what it means to love and accept someone in a world where people are constantly denying others the same treatment. Many stories began as ethical questions the author couldn’t answer; rather than prescribe solutions, the stories observe at length the attempts of characters to find light in what is morally murky, and to justify to themselves and their community why they’ve let their light guide them thus. The collection of twenty-four stories was split into fourths in a concession to the attractive nature of the chapbook form and arranged according to natural cycles to approximate four seasons of weather, four times of the day, and four approximate stages of human life. “In an Ohio Dreamscape” has a wintry, midnight feel, and operates by the twilit illogic of dreams, childhood whimsy, and magic. “The Journalist is Here” springs the reader into a busy morning of work, travel, and praxis in the outer world; its pieces stem from autobiography, history, and facts gathered in pen-scrawled journals. “Lovelorn: Five Blues,” the noontime, summer section, examines mid-life heartache and the costs of living with and without love. “Grasses like Flayed Lion Hides,” the autumnal, California-set section, follows the sun to the Golden State and dips us West towards evening, night and death; its characters confront, reject, or accept the fundamentals of being alive in the regenerating and dying world they inhabit, doing their best to abide until the next “Season of Our Monstering” rolls around.
Wendell Mayo (Advisor)
Lawrence Coates (Committee Member)
Theresa Williams (Committee Member)
215 p.
Animals; Comparative Literature; Cultural Anthropology; Experiments; Fine Arts; Folklore; Limnology; Literature; Modern Literature; Personality; Social Structure; Spirituality
fiction; ohio fiction; monsters; Fur; Experimental Fiction; exclusion; California Fiction; Bucharest; Short Stories; Stoicism; flash fiction; orchards; beards; travel writing; monstering; chapbooks; fabulism; anthropological fiction; lovelorn; cycles

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Adams, S. J. (2018). In the Season of Our Monstering [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1523020784239892

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Adams, Samuel. In the Season of Our Monstering . 2018. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1523020784239892.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Adams, Samuel. "In the Season of Our Monstering ." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1523020784239892

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1523020784239892
Release 3.2.12