And so it is : a group of short stories

"And So It ls" is a group of eight short stories which were written to be read aloud. The reader should lead with his ear and follow with his eye. The story is in the sound, in the details, in the motion, and not in the plot or the characters. What happens is in no sense important; how it happens, is. All of my writing is based on incidents which did occur. So, "And Etc." is the story of a girl about to write an exam; "With My People" is about an Indian student who once wrote a paper for me as a teacher; "Where They Are," "Such As It Is," "They Know What They're Doing," "Other Men Make The," "A Single Scrambled," and "Some Trip This Is Going To Be" are stories of a girl's first introduction to boat-life as a mess-girl on a west-coast freighter. I attempt neither to enlarge nor diminish events, but naturally they change, take shape, assume a form as I write. So, although various listeners have called my fiction comic, symbolic, realistic, absurd, poetic, literal, imaginative, all I can say is that these stories are based on incidents which did occur and that they are oral.Arts, Faculty ofEnglish, Department ofGraduat