tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-215946882008-04-02T10:34:22.885-07:00Pacific University AlumniBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-78733327762031814762008-04-02T10:30:00.001-07:002008-04-02T10:30:16.708-07:00Brokaw covers many issues in Boom! including race, politics, Vietnam, women’s rights, drug culture and counter culture. Do you feel he leaves anything out? What else might Brokaw have used to define the 1960s?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-13312719251811574692008-04-02T10:29:00.003-07:002008-04-02T10:34:22.967-07:00Brokaw has mentioned several times that the acts that took place in the 1960s are shaping our lives today. Do you agree?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-66788173842582789222008-04-02T10:29:00.001-07:002008-04-02T10:34:11.350-07:00Former president Bill Clinton is quoted in Boom! saying, “If you thought something good came out of the Sixties, you’re probably a Democrat; if you thought the Sixties were bad, you’re probably a Republican.” What do you think of the Sixties? Were the results positive or negative?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-18851173818722024702008-04-02T10:28:00.000-07:002008-04-02T10:29:03.717-07:00Boom! is often described as a “reunion of the Class of 1968.” Are you from this generation? What are your thoughts on the book as a “reunion?”Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-78842522052432887512008-04-02T10:25:00.000-07:002008-04-02T10:28:45.159-07:00Did you miss the 1960s by being born too late? Does this book still resonate with you?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-3719127486466308202008-04-02T10:20:00.001-07:002008-04-02T10:25:43.006-07:00Were you a student at Pacific University between 1963 and 1974? How do Brokaw’s descriptions of the time fit in to your memories of life at Pacific?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-48019571097450687242008-04-02T10:13:00.000-07:002008-04-02T10:19:39.313-07:00Where were you when? Share your story of the 1960sPacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-18880906427770798882008-01-31T17:03:00.000-08:002008-01-31T17:04:03.132-08:00The novelist, who herself fled Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, wrote the book virtually while the occupation was happening, most likely making <span style="font-style:italic;">Suite Française</span> the first work of fiction about World War II. How do you think she managed to write while she herself was in jeopardy? Do you think it was easier for her to capture the day-to-day realities of life under occupation? In what ways might the book have been different if she had survived and been able to write <span style="font-style:italic;">Suite Française</span> years after the war?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-86206686510826958752008-01-31T17:02:00.001-08:002008-01-31T17:02:49.320-08:00<span style="font-style:italic;">Suite Française</span> is a unique pair of novels. Which of the two parts of Suite Française do you prefer? Which structural organization did you find more effective: the short chapters and multiple focus of Storm in June, or the more restricted approach of Dolce?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-618218430650040882008-01-31T17:01:00.001-08:002008-01-31T17:01:26.898-08:00What is the significance of the title Dolce?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-43891538506713533242008-01-31T16:59:00.001-08:002008-01-31T16:59:25.486-08:00How does Suite Française undermine the long-held view of French resistance to the German occupation?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-42335494801359137912008-01-31T16:57:00.001-08:002008-01-31T16:57:40.571-08:00Discuss Irène Némirovsky’s approach to class in Suite Française. How do the rich, poor, and the middle classes view one another? How do they help or hinder one another? Do the characters identify themselves by class or nationality?<br /><br />(You might consider the aristocratic Mme de Montmort’s thought in Dolce: “What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, but the way they hold their knife and fork.”)Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-86899591644877943122008-01-31T16:56:00.001-08:002008-01-31T16:56:53.352-08:00In Dolce, we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration. Each relationship is distorted by the allegiances of war. What happens when someone—who might have been your friend—is now declared your enemy during a war?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-54272809617868276932008-01-31T16:55:00.000-08:002008-01-31T16:56:03.418-08:00The lovers in the second novel question whether the needs of the individual or the community should take priority. Lucille imagines that “in five, or ten, or twenty years” this problem will have been replaced by others. To what extent, if at all, has this proved the case? Has Western society conclusively decided to privilege the individual over the group?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-41600962320684927792008-01-31T16:53:00.001-08:002008-01-31T16:53:27.888-08:00How does <span style="font-style:italic;">Suite Française</span> compare to other World War Two novels you have read? How would you compare it to the great personal documents of the war (for example, those written by Anne Frank and Victor Klemperer), or to fiction?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-54473667141447754702008-01-31T16:51:00.000-08:002008-01-31T16:52:12.245-08:00“Important events—whether serious, happy or unfortunate—do not change a man’s soul, they merely bring it into relief, just as a strong gust of wind reveals the true shape of a tree when it blows of all its leaves.” —Storm in June, p.203<br /><br />Do you agree?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-58562477433533369462008-01-31T16:50:00.001-08:002008-01-31T16:50:59.259-08:00Consider Irène Némirovsky’s plan for the next part of Suite Française (in the appendix). What else do you think could happen to the characters?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-24455426631677756162007-11-02T08:31:00.001-07:002007-11-02T08:31:43.485-07:00At the novel’s onset, most of the characters are outside New York: Danielle in Australia, pursuing an idea for a story and finding someone to have a crush on; Marina at her parents’ summer house in Stockbridge, accompanied by Julius; and Bootie in his mother’s house in upstate New York. Why might Messud have chosen to begin in this manner? At what other points in the book do the characters leave the city and with what results?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-15268739387251346602007-11-02T08:30:00.000-07:002007-11-02T08:31:03.316-07:00Which of the novel’s characters strikes you as its moral center? Is it Bootie, who comes to New York with such high ideals and easily rankled feelings? Is it Danielle, who has lived there long enough to feel at home there but who still sees its pretensions and absurdities? With which of these characters is the reader meant to identify? Whose judgments seem the most reliable? And what flaws or blind spots afflict even him or her?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-54670584680452768262007-11-02T08:29:00.001-07:002007-11-02T08:29:16.733-07:00Almost everybody in The Emperor’s Children envies, and is intimidated by, somebody else. Julius, for instance, is in awe of Marina’s self-confidence and envious of her sense of entitlement. Marina is cowed by her father. And poor Bootie is a virtual pressure cooker of indiscriminate awe and resentment. What sort of things do Messud’s characters feel insecure about? Is there anyone in the book who seems truly comfortable with him or herself or any relationship that seems to be conducted by equals? Would you say that awe and envy are this novel’s dominant emotions?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-10308508997302759422007-11-02T08:28:00.003-07:002007-11-02T08:28:56.146-07:00When pressed to take a job, Marina confesses, “I worry that that will make me ordinary, like everybody else.” [67] To what extent are other characters possessed by the same fear, and how do they defend themselves against it? Do they have a common idea of what constitutes ordinariness? Can ordinariness even exist in a social world in which everyone is constantly, feverishly striving to be unique? Is it possible that Marina is just lazy and prevaricating in her charming way?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-37389985584856840672007-11-02T08:28:00.001-07:002007-11-02T08:28:38.576-07:00With his high-flown ambitions, his indolence, and his appalling sense of hygiene, Bootie initially seems like a comic character. But in the course of the novel Messud’s portrait of him darkens until he comes to seem either sinister or tragic–perhaps both. How does she accomplish this? Which other characters does she gradually reveal in a different light? Compare Messud’s shifting portrayal of Bootie to her handling of Julius and Danielle. In what ways do they too evade or defy the reader’s initial expectations about them?Pacific University Alumnitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21594688.post-44976935573193503642007-11-02T08:20:00.001-07:002007-11-02T08:20:47.049-07:00Ludovic repeatedly declares that he wants to make a revolution with his magazine The Monitor, but what is the magazine supposed to be about? Lest we think that The Emperor’s Children is merely a satire of the New York media, what other highly touted ideas in this novel turn out to be light on substance, and what does this sugges