Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 3.13 Literature and Poetry
Presentation #1 Title
Beyond Beer, Bucks, and Busted Lips: Representations of Masculinity in Eric Shade's Eyesores
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Eric Shade’s Eyesores (The University of Georgia Press, 2003) is a collection of linked stories set in Windfall, a fictional town located in western Pennsylvania that calls to mind many isolated and impoverished towns in Appalachia (a lack of industry and low employment, a dwindling population, etc.). As the book’s title suggests, there is much in the town we likely would rather not witness, from acts of violence and betrayal to bottles and old kitchen appliances dumped off a bridge. Furthermore, many of the stories in the collection focus on males at various stages in their lives. Therefore, I am especially interested in the book’s representations of masculinity. In several stories, males are engaged in conventionally masculine activities, such as beer drinking, deer hunting, and fighting. However, the males of Windfall also display behaviors that do not always fit within society’s rigid categories. Specifically, I argue that in trying to survive in a place in which all things seem diminished, distinctions between “moral” and “immoral,” for example, and between “consuming” and “discarding,” become difficult to define. These two particular sets of seemingly opposed terms, along with the confusion of boundaries associated with them, characterize men and relationships between men in Windfall. While Eyesores asks us to recognize the harsh reality of Windfall, and of similar marginalized communities, it also asks us to reconsider our assumptions about the men who inhabit such places, whose words and actions, though sometimes troubling, also reveal a masculinity more complex than we might expect.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Nathan Anderson is an assistant professor at Marietta College, where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing.
Beyond Beer, Bucks, and Busted Lips: Representations of Masculinity in Eric Shade's Eyesores
Harris Hall 443
Eric Shade’s Eyesores (The University of Georgia Press, 2003) is a collection of linked stories set in Windfall, a fictional town located in western Pennsylvania that calls to mind many isolated and impoverished towns in Appalachia (a lack of industry and low employment, a dwindling population, etc.). As the book’s title suggests, there is much in the town we likely would rather not witness, from acts of violence and betrayal to bottles and old kitchen appliances dumped off a bridge. Furthermore, many of the stories in the collection focus on males at various stages in their lives. Therefore, I am especially interested in the book’s representations of masculinity. In several stories, males are engaged in conventionally masculine activities, such as beer drinking, deer hunting, and fighting. However, the males of Windfall also display behaviors that do not always fit within society’s rigid categories. Specifically, I argue that in trying to survive in a place in which all things seem diminished, distinctions between “moral” and “immoral,” for example, and between “consuming” and “discarding,” become difficult to define. These two particular sets of seemingly opposed terms, along with the confusion of boundaries associated with them, characterize men and relationships between men in Windfall. While Eyesores asks us to recognize the harsh reality of Windfall, and of similar marginalized communities, it also asks us to reconsider our assumptions about the men who inhabit such places, whose words and actions, though sometimes troubling, also reveal a masculinity more complex than we might expect.
