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Almost all of Daugherty’s work happens to be set in Texas, especially in Houston. He has three books of short stories, four novels, and a collection of essays. He has also published some criticism in scholarly journals, and a literary biography of Donald Barthelme, his late mentor at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. He currently directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Oregon State University and is a member of the M.F.A faculty at Warren Wilson College. I am giving you his bio because he is not a widely known writer at this point.
Daugherty�s �Becker� stories, among other things, are loosely based upon his relationship with Barthelme. Four of these stories–�Four A.M.,� �Paint Us a Picture,� �Almost Barcelona,� and �While the Light Lasts�–appear in the middle section of his first collection, The Woman in the Oil Field (1996). The book is dedicated to Barthelme. The fifth and final story, �Bliss,� appears in his second collection of stories, It Takes a Worried Man (2002).
The stories examine the relationship between a famous artist, Frederick Becker, and his aspiring artist son, Robert Becker. The stories are set in Houston, New York, and an imaginary version of Barcelona. Barthelme was fascinated with the father-son relationship, and it runs through his work. This particular father-son relationship is inspired, to some degree, by Daugherty�s relationship with Barthelme.
In the first story, �Four A.M.,� we are introduced to Frederick, who has abandoned his family to pursue his career in New York. He is now at the end of his career and is dieing. He returns to Houston in the second story to seek treatment for his cancer at the Medical Center, and dies. Daugherty keeps the character of Frederick going, after death, through flashbacks and other techniques.
In this story, think about the line on page 73 where the narrator says Frederick “prefers things messy.” Also notice one of his works of art, on page 77, is called “The Collage of Indignation.”Daugherty discusses his thoughts on the term collage in relation to his fiction, particularly his novel, Axeman�s Jazz, in an interview.
It’s like taking found objects from here and there–a car bumper, a beer can, a coat hanger–and piecing them together to form an object the world has never seen before; each individual piece retains its old identity, and all the connotations from its past use, but now contributes to something greater, something new. It’s a thrilling vision, one that I felt gave me permission to combine my own experiences of Houston with experiences, views, voices from other perspectives. No one has the right to appropriate someone else’s story. But we all have a pressing need, I believe, to share each other’s stories, and to search for commonalities in our stories. “Not since Huckleberry Finn have there been images of black and white fraternity,” Ellison writes. I hope more and more American writers, from all backgrounds, will start combing through the beer cans and car bumpers, and come up with exciting new “images of fraternity.”
He also uses musical terms, such as �Free-Style Swing,� and cooking terms such as �gumbo� and �stew� to convey this sense. In reference to Barthelme�s stories, he writes that they show the many ways that abstractions, high modernist aesthetics, postmodern disjunctions, minimalism, maximalism, and straight-forward representation can be mixed to make a rich and hearty stew. (ANQ 188)
Do you see these thoughts being applied at all here in this story? The next stories actually get more into this area than this one does, but some of the ideas are beginning to at least be introduced.
Another thing I would like you to consider is Frederick’s thought about being “a citizen of the world” on page 80. What does he mean? What are the implications? In the following stories, attachment to place is a concern, and this idea is somehow related to it. What seems to motivate Frederick? What sense does the story give of his philosophy of art?
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