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John Steinbeck / The Long Valley / Plot Synopsi

s   John Steinbeck  The Long Valley Plot Synopsis "The Chrysanthemums" Elisa Allen, the protagonist of "The Chrysanthemums," Steinbeck's most frequently anthologized short story, gardens on the foothills ranch she shares with her husband, Henry Allen.  The story opens with a description of the surrounding Salinas Valley and narrows in on Elisa Allen pruning last year's chrysanthemums as she notices Henry talking with two men in business suits.  Elisa, who is thirty-five, is described in masculine terms.  She is "lean and strong" and "looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, man's black hat pulled low down over her eyes […] Her face was eager and mature and handsome". After Henry finishes his conversation, he approaches and compliments Elisa on...

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Scott Fitzgerald / Boil Some Water-Lots of It

  "BOIL SOME WATER-LOTS OF IT" by F. Scott Fitzgerald Scott Fitzgerald / Pongan agua a hervir, mucha, mucha   Pat Hobby sat in his office in the writers' building and looked at his morning's work, just come back from the script department. He was on a "polish job," about the only kind he ever got nowadays. He was to repair a messy sequence in a hurry, but the word "hurry" neither frightened nor inspired him for Pat had been in Hollywood since he was thirty--now he was forty-nine. All the work he had done this morning (except a little changing around of lines so he could claim them as his own)--all he had actually invented was a single imperative...

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The Battler by Hemingway

  The Battler by Ernest Hemingway BIOGRAPHY Nick stood up. He was all right. He looked up the track at the lights of the caboose going out of sight around a curve. There was water on both sides of the track, then tamarack swamp. He felt of his knee. The pants were torn and the skin was barked. His hands were scraped and there were sand and cinders driven up under his nails. He went over to the edge of the track, down the little slope to the water and washed his hands. He washed them carefully in the cold water, getting the dirt out from the nails. He squatted down and bathed his knee. That lousy crut of a brakeman....

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John Steinbeck / The Long Valley / Plot Synopsi

s   John Steinbeck  The Long Valley Plot Synopsis "The Chrysanthemums" Elisa Allen, the protagonist of "The Chrysanthemums," Steinbeck's most frequently anthologized short story, gardens on the foothills ranch she shares with her husband, Henry Allen.  The story opens with a description of the surrounding Salinas Valley and narrows in on Elisa Allen pruning last year's chrysanthemums as she notices Henry talking with two men in business suits.  Elisa, who is thirty-five, is described in masculine terms.  She is "lean and strong" and "looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, man's black hat pulled low down over her eyes […] Her face was eager and mature and handsome". After Henry finishes his conversation, he approaches and compliments Elisa on...

Continue reading



Scott Fitzgerald / Boil Some Water-Lots of It

  "BOIL SOME WATER-LOTS OF IT" by F. Scott Fitzgerald Scott Fitzgerald / Pongan agua a hervir, mucha, mucha   Pat Hobby sat in his office in the writers' building and looked at his morning's work, just come back from the script department. He was on a "polish job," about the only kind he ever got nowadays. He was to repair a messy sequence in a hurry, but the word "hurry" neither frightened nor inspired him for Pat had been in Hollywood since he was thirty--now he was forty-nine. All the work he had done this morning (except a little changing around of lines so he could claim them as his own)--all he had actually invented was a single imperative...

Continue reading