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I have been writing lately and I think about the kinds of stories that have a plot, (action plus conflict), and those that don’t, the ones known as "slice of life" stories. The slice of life stories are often short stories. Plays, TV stories and poems give us a glimpse into lives in a similar way. Haiku are marvelous with their short pithy look at the world.
Castle with Nathan Fillion has a plot each week. There is a conflict (or two or three) and there are resolutions. But sitcoms like Seinfeld, are more of a slice of life show rather than a plot driven show.
I did watch Welcome Back, Kotter years ago, and I am betting if I watched the whole series at once, it would mostly be week after week, "Sit down, Vinnie," and "You got us all wrong, Mr. Kotter." But it was a good tension reliever for a teacher who did not have anyone writing my lines every day. I think, it too, was a slice of life program.
When my night school students said something was boring I would say, "They don’t pay me enough to be Bill Cosby and they don’t give me a script like Kotter."
Wiki:
http://en.wikiquote.org/...
Epstein: Hey, look, we can't stay long, we got a cab waiting downstairs.
Kotter: You took a cab?
Epstein: We're gonna give it back.
Kotter: You stole a cab?
Vinnie: No, no, no, no. It's Horshack's father's cab. You can't steal a guy's father's cab. You can't.
Horshack: Then why'd we tie him up, Vinnie?
.............
Kotter: So nobody did it. I think we should put a candle in the window, because the last time this happened, three wise men came from the east.
.....................
Vinnie: You're not our friend. You're nothing but a teacher.
Kotter: Why can't I be your teacher and your friend?
Epstein: It don't work that way, Kotter. You see, in this vast universe of ours, people are divided into two groups, us and them. You're them.
......................
Kotter: What would have happened if George Washington quit, huh? If Abraham Lincoln quit? What would have happened if Murray Cornfeld quit?
Freddie: I ain't never heard of no Murray Cornfeld!
Kotter: You know why you never heard of him? 'Cause he quit!
One of my favorite things about the Firefly series is when we peek at something they are doing just for fun. There is one episode where the crew is playing a form of basketball and it is fun to see that little slice of their lives when they are not being serious or in deep trouble.
The king of the slice of life stories is Garrison Keillor, of course. He would give us a peek every week on his Prairie Home Companion radio show at what was happening in Lake Wobegon. As hubby and I drove home every two weeks from his parents’ house with kids asleep in the back seat (and during the winter months sliding around curves wondering how big the next drift would be), we listened to the story of a small town much like our own only more so. Sometimes our knuckles were so white we couldn’t laugh, but he talked us home.
Many of his stories did make us laugh, of course. There is the one about the pontoon boat outing, one about the homecoming in which the queen rode on a tank (when my daughter was prom queen she had her picture taken out by the tank at the Legion Hall where the dance was held), one about the gift of one of the magi that must have been a casserole, and many others. We knew these people. Garrison’s Sidetrack Tap, run by Wally and Evelyn, was right on Main Street in our town and if you had the courage to go in and sit down, the six farmers in their Caterpiller hats would stare at you.
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
A slice of life story is a category for a story that portrays a "cut-out" sequence of events in a character's life. It may or may not contain any plot progress and little character development, and often has no exposition, conflict, or dénouement, with an open ending. It usually tries to depict the everyday life of ordinary people, sometimes but rarely, with fantasy or science fiction elements involved. The term slice of life is actually a dead metaphor: it often seems as if the author had taken a knife and "cut out" a slice of the lives of some characters, without concern for narrative form.
Raynet Business & Marketing Glossary
Slice-of-life
denoting any presentation that depicts naturalistic, everyday activities
.
My own definition sounds like window peepers, but it is like that to me. We open a window of time and we look inside to see what is happening and there is no clear cut beginning and no specific resolution. Sometimes that can be frustrating, but it can be wonderful, too. In Alcott’s Little Women, Laurie used to look into the family's windows and watch the fun the girls were having putting on plays and having all kinds of romps. That is what a slice of life story is like.
Sometimes the narrator invites us to participate in the story with him or her and show us what they are learning about life. Alice Hoffman’s books often seem to do this and Elizabeth Berg’s. Bob in Shane and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird are narrators who do this, too, by telling us what they see even if they don’t really understand all of it.
Those books do have plots, but To Kill a Mockingbird is really about three phases of Scout and her brother growing up or three windows that we peek through. There is the first phase where Jem has to go read to the lady he thought was mean, there is the Boo Radley phase, and there is the tragic Tom Robinson story where Tom is falsely accused of attacking a young white woman. Mixed with these three phases are many views of life in Scout’s small town.
In Shane, Bob is often watching Shane through the store window in town or his family from the door of his bedroom.
More titles are One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a novel written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Wiki thought that Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was one, too.
Wiki:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The story is set in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, and describes a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Its publication was an extraordinary event in Soviet literary history—never before had an account of Stalinist repression been openly distributed.
Wiki:
Hiroshima
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Though Collier's Weekly had previously published an account of the bombing, the editors of the New Yorker recognized the impact that the article would have by providing a human face to the victims, and devoted the entire August 31, 1946 edition to it. Although the four chapters were intended for serialization in four consecutive issues of the magazine, the editors decided to devote one entire issue only to it.
There were no other articles and none of the magazine's signature cartoons. Readers, who had never before been exposed to the horrors of nuclear war from the perspective of the actual people who lived through it, were quick to pick up copies, and the edition sold out within just a few hours. The article was read in its entirety over the radio and discussed by newspapers. Shortly after it appeared, the Book-of-the-Month Club printed it as a book and distributed it free of charge to all of its members....
Modern editions of the book contain a final, fifth chapter, The Aftermath, written forty years after the original article. In it, Hersey returned to Japan to discover what happened to the six people he originally interviewed in the ensuing years. Two of them, Masakazu Fujii and Wilhelm Kleinsorge, had already died, but he described how they lived in the shadow of the bombing, with the former trying to erase any memory of what had happened, and the latter suffering a series of ailments stemming from his exposure to radiation. Influenced by Father Kleinsorge, Toshiko Sasaki had become a nun, after caring for her three younger siblings. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki had prospered with his own private clinic, and several experiences, such as a bad operation for lung cancer and his wife's death, had developed his outlook on life and death.
Kiyoshi Tanimoto had become the "celebrity" of the group, touring the United States to raise money to rebuild his church, help young girls injured in the blast with things such as reconstructive surgery, and establish the Hiroshima Peace Center. On one such visit, described in detail, he appeared on the popular television program This Is Your Life where he was placed in the uncomfortable position of meeting with Captain Robert A. Lewis, copilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on the city.
Of Mice and Men is a story that hurts my heart in so many ways and yet I love it. It reaches out to me in some way I cannot explain. I care about the characters.
Wiki:
Of Mice and Men
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Loneliness is a significant factor in several characters' lives. Candy is lonely after his dog is gone. Curley's wife is lonely because her husband is not the friend she hoped for —- she deals with her loneliness by flirting with the men on the ranch, which causes Curley to increase his abusiveness and jealousy. The companionship of George and Lennie is the result of loneliness. Crooks states the theme candidly as "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you." The author further reinforces this theme through subtle methods by situating the story near the town of Soledad, which means "solitude" in Spanish.
Despite the need for companionship, Steinbeck emphasizes how the nature of loneliness is sustained though the barriers established from acting inhuman to one another. The loneliness of Curley's wife is upheld by Curley's jealousy, which causes all the ranch hands to avoid her. Crooks's barrier results from being barred from the bunkhouse by restraining him to the stable; his bitterness is partially broken, however, through Lennie's ignorance.
Steinbeck's characters are often powerless, due to intellectual, economic, and social circumstances. Lennie possesses the greatest physical strength of any character, which should therefore establish a sense of respect as he is employed as a ranch hand. However, his intellectual handicap undercuts this and results in his powerlessness. Economic powerlessness is established as many of the ranch hands are victims of society during the Great Depression. As George, Lennie, Candy, and Crooks wish to purchase a homestead, but they are unable to generate enough money.
A film that makes me think most of a slice of life story is Children of a Lesser God written by Mark Medoff with William Hurt and Marlee Matlin in the movie version. It is so beautifully done. There is a double dose of peeking into the lives of two people. First the camera is allowing us to peek at the characters, but also the characters peek through windows or doors.
The film opens with us peeking at Sarah who is sleeping. She lies on the bed sleeping peacefully while the shutters bang open and shut over and over.
She is a sleeping beauty who needs someone to wake her up. The thorns that have grown around her castle are her stubbornness and pain.
We peek at Jim as he rides the ferry to the school on the island where he will teach speech. We are often peeking in windows as Jim works. He teaches one young girl to use a song phrase to speak aloud and they dance as we watch. We see one of the teachers at the school peer into the room and then we see the loud music penetrating the school and Franklin actually comes in and turns off the record player.
We peer into Jim’s home where he turns music on after a hard day’s work and we see how important it is to him. We see into Sarah’s world when she is in the swimming pool where she is at home.
Jim first sees Sarah by peeking into the kitchen where she is throwing things.
Later he peeks at her through the window of the place where she works.
It is not just Sarah’s deafness, nor stubbornness, her abuse as a child, nor her fierce intelligence that causes problems in the relationship.
Jim marches to a different drummer as he tries to engage his students.
Jim is funny and a good teacher, but with Sarah, he is bossy. We sympathize with him, but we see that he does make the decisions as in the scene where he literally takes her from the school.
Where is your suitcase?...You are going to come live with me.
He insists that she must speak when she sees no need to do so.
Somehow Sarah has to try to be independent. At the same time we see that she is lonely.
The two clips below show some scenes, a bit of the swimming and Jim watching her at her workplace:
Children of a Lesser God (Main Title Theme) - By Michael Convertino (several scenes, a bit of the swimming scene)
http://www.youtube.com/...
Children of a Lesser God extract 6 (has the scene where he watches her through the window as she works)
http://www.youtube.com/...
Wiki:
Children of a Lesser God
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Children of a Lesser God is a 1986 film that tells the story of a speech teacher at a school for deaf students who falls in love with a deaf woman who also works there. It stars William Hurt, Marlee Matlin, Piper Laurie, and Philip Bosco.
The movie, directed by Randa Haines, was adapted by Mark Medoff, Hesper Anderson and James Carrington from Medoff's Tony award-winning play of the same title, which ran on Broadway from 1980-1982.
In her debut role as Sarah Norman, Matlin won the 1986 Academy Award for Best Actress. Aged 21 at the time, she is the youngest actress to have received an Oscar for Best Actress. Almost completely deaf in real life since the early age of 18 months, she has since gone on to become an established film and television star and remains active in charities for the deaf and hearing impaired around the world. The film also garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for William Hurt, Best Supporting Actress for Piper Laurie, Best Picture, and Best Writing for an Adapted Screenplay.
http://www.imdb.com/...
The poignant question of the film
James Leeds: Do you think there's someplace where we can meet that's not in silence and not in sound?
Some of the important dialogue in the film:
http://www.script-o-rama.com/...
Jim wants to try to teach Sarah to speak. He wants Franklin to help him to get her to agree.
Leeds:
It's a shame
that a bright woman
is stuck here
cleaning toilets.
Franklin:
Doesn't bother her.
Leeds:
Oh, no?
Franklin:
Look, hotshot,
not everyone
wants to be a star.
Sarah is content.
She had
a rotten childhood.
She was diagnosed
as retarded
We let her know
how smart she was.
Leeds:
For what?
Franklin:
She's productive.
Pays taxes.
Leeds:
Oh, brother.
.......................
Jim takes Sarah out to dinner and they order.
We'll take a carafe,
please.
He doesn't think
you're stupid.
He thinks
you're deaf.
No. Only stupid
hearing people
think that deaf
people are stupid.
http://video.barnesandnoble.com/...
In the film Educating Rita based on the play by Willy Russell, there is also the use of windows to show us poignant scenes. When Rita, a hairdresser, is taking an open university class from Frank, he invites her to a party, but when she gets to his home, she peers through the window and gives up the idea.
Later, we see Rita peering through the window at her back yard where her husband is burning her books.
The camera takes us into Rita’s life with a view of her with her family at the pub, at her sister’s wedding, and as she works in the beauty shop.
Toward the end of the film, it is Frank who peers out of his window at a confidant Rita talking with other students on the way up to his office.
This, too, is an unforgettable film.
Michael Caine – Dr. Frank Bryant
Julie Walters – Rita, aka Susan
....................
Frank:–What do you want to know?
Rita:–Everything.
...................
http://www.imdb.com/...
Rita is being nosy about Frank's marriage
Dr. Frank Bryant: We split up, Rita, because of poetry.
Rita: You what?
Dr. Frank Bryant: One day, my wife explained to me that, for the past fifteen years, my output as a poet had dealt entirely with the part of our lives in which we discovered each other.
Rita: Are you a poet?
Dr. Frank Bryant: Was. And so, to give me something new to write about, she left me. A very noble woman, my wife - she left me for the good of literature. And remarkably it worked.
Rita: What, you wrote a lot of good stuff, did ya?
Dr. Frank Bryant: No. I stopped writing altogether.
.........................
Rita: I'm beginning to find me. It's great.
..............
http://www.script-o-rama.com/...
Frank-Perhaps he thinks we're having an affair.
Rita-Oh, go 'way. You're me teacher.
I told him that.
Frank- You told him about me?
Rita- Yeah.
Frank- What?
Rita- Oh, well, I've tried to explain to him
how you give me room to breathe.
You, like, feed me
without expecting anything in return.
Frank- What did he say?
Rita- He didn't.
...............
Frank- What's wrong?
Rita- Last night, Frank, I went to the theatre.
Frank- I thought it was something serious!
Rita- It was.
It was Shakespeare!
Frank- I thought something happened to you.
Rita- Something did happen to me.
It was fantastic.
Macbeth, it was. I bought the book!
Oh, it done my head in.
I thought it was gonna be dead boring
but it wasn't, it was electric.
Wasn't his wife a cow?
And that bit where he meets Macduff
and thinks he's all invincible.
I was on the edge of me seat
because I knew!
I wanted to shout out and warn Macbeth!
Frank-You didn't, did you?
Rita-No!
They'd have thrown me out the theatre.
Macbeth's a tragedy, isn't it?
Frank- Right.
Rita- Right.
Educating Rita
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://video.barnesandnoble.com/...
It is your turn to mention favorite stories where we are invited in to look at the characters' lives.
Speaking about slices of life.
The Overnight News Digest is up every night around midnight EST providing recaps of the day’s news from local to far flung places. I do mean far flung places and not just Australia, but far out in space.
On Saturday nights, Neon Vincent provides a recap of science news that is startling and extremely interesting. He covers all the areas of science.
If you missed this week’s diary, check it out!
Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Water found on Moon edition)
by Neon Vincent
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A couple of the stories out of dozens:
Archeology/Anthropology
The Telegraph (UK): Archaeologists believe they have discovered the palace of Japan's "Boadicea" – the warrior Queen Himiko.
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
The building covering nearly 300 square metres was located close to the city of Sakurai and the former Japanese capital of Nara, 300 miles south-west of Tokyo.
Built on stilts, the structure was found beside three other aligned buildings, leading archaeologists to believe it is the site of Himiko's Yamatai palace.
"A building cluster that is placed in such a well-planned manner is unprecedented in Japan at that period in time," Hironobu Ishino, director of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Archaeology, told Kyodo News.
Space.com via MSNBC: Stuck Mars rover to begin moving
By Andrea Thompson
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Months of planning are finally coming to fruition: NASA engineers are ready to begin trying to maneuver the plucky rover Spirit out of its sandy trap on Mars.
Mission managers are sober about the prospects for freeing Spirit. They will send the first commands to the rover to try to move on Monday, "but this process could take quite a while if it's possible at all," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The new plan will command Spirit to try to backtrack and make its escape using the tracks that were left in the dirt before the rover got stuck.
palantir pointed me to this diary that I missed which is definitely a wonderful example of the slice of life sharing that Daily Kos is noted for.
On Faust, Striving, Storms, and Pyramids.
by erratic
http://www.dailykos.com/...
My own slice of life that I posted in Yosef 52’s diary below:
November in the Thumb
cfk
All rights reserved
sunshine splashes against the weeds
illumines dry leaves smashed up against the corn rows
one pheasant is flaunting himself near the road
warm jeweled flash of whirr as he leaps into the sky.
sugar beets are piled in symmetrical pyramids without a top
rising out of a field row after row
the dust of the breathing world skimming the plowed fields
where the beets have been harvested
before the rains could bog the pickers down.
some fields have the green mist of winter rye.
one tractor is driven by a grandpa sort
his grandson on his lap
a huge circular hay bail on the fork
to be added to the white covered row.
an open door in a shed
hay bails for sale with the honor code
leave the coins in the can provided.
no passing the laden corn hauler whose tires
look nearly flat beneath the load
until the elevators rise up from the flat land
to lure the hauler from the road.
sunshine and balmy breezes in November
raise spirits as we steal
the days from harshest winter
just a few more please
because my daughter is adding a second story
to her home and heavy tarps cannot withstand
a heavy blow, nor workers cower on a roof
to shingle it in snow.
Michigan's blue waters gleam against the boring
brown of November
white bare birches stand in rows marching around the pasture
where shaggy cows from Scotland raise enormous horns.
we are wary of the deer chased out from cover
by coyotes or a hunter.
it gets dark early now in that turn toward
the darkest day of December.
..........................................
The Minotaur
all rights reserved
cfk
The Minotaur never sleeps.
He paces in his lair and turns his thoughts
To the world beyond the maze
Where ordinary mortals attend their shops
Call their wares, buy and sell
Sing, earn wreathes, toil, make love.
While beneath the world he dwells
And waits for what youth may come
Sword in hand, bound for revenge
For storied maids and rumored deaths of men.
For dancers who mold the myth
On bull's backs, he pays
And pays.
One of these days he will go mad
Dive blind with pleasure into the shadowed Styx
Where memories are expunged.
Diaries of the week:
Write On! This is your brain on words.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The Holidays Are Coming! Frugal, Green and Charitable Gift Ideas plus Stress Busters.
by JaxDem
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Energy Bookshelf: Ten more worth your time than Super Freaky Crap
by A Siegel
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Conservation Refugees Book Review
by Captain Future
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Poems of Consciousness
by Yosef 52
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Book Review: Heart of a Patriot (Max Cleland)
by alpolitics
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Are Literary Agents and Publishers Racists, Or Just Dumb?
by Jason Hill
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Orphans in Afghanistan Thrive Due To CharityHelp International
by jimluce
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Let's read a book together! Guns, germs and steel: Chapter 16 How China became Chinese
by plf515
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has changed his book talk to Wednesday mornings early.
sarahnity’s list of DKos authors has grown so much that she has her own diary.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
sarahnity says:
It turns out that we have quite a few authors hanging out here who have published books in the real world. A while ago, I started keeping a list of books by Kossacks, former Kossacks and Kossacks-once-removed. I was posting it each week to the diary series What Are You Reading and Bookflurries, but the list has grown long enough, that I've decided to turn it into a diary and post it as a weekly series on Tuesday evenings.
Not all Kossack authors may wish to lose their anonymity, so I am only including the author's UID if he has outed herself here (gender confusion intended). If you'd like to be included on the list, or if you know of an author who is left off, please leave a comment or email me.
(sarahnity@gmail.com)