Stories to Make You Wise -- collected by the author/editor over her life to which she has added her 40+ years of professional insights.
Dr. Bond offers us 19 short stories from the obscure writer to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Each story is a glimpse into the conflicts we humans stumble upon & through. Sometimes we grasp significance, & sometimes we stagger blithely on. At the end of each story, Dr. Bond offers her insights into the psychological aspects of the drama around which the authors & their Muse wrote their prose.
Tales of Psychology is a unique & fascinating collection of complex & colorful fragments of literature accompanied by a psychologist's insights into the human emotional terrain each story illustrates, as well as her occasional personal comments about how she was affected upon reading the story.
From perhaps the most horrific of Dr. Bond's choices -- Paul Bowles' A Distant Episode -- in which everyman's nightmare becomes real when a linguist is kidnapped, bound & then has his tongue cut off. Both the story & Dr. Bond's observations leave an indelible impression.
To Alice Adams' Roses, Rhododendron in which we get to re-live those teenage years when we are so hungry for someone/something to adore, to melt into, to incorporate. Dr. Bond's insights here are diamond-bright.
To Angelica Gibbs' The Test which brings back memories, not of the 1940s about which it was written, rather of Chicago in the 1960s when I was witness to such racial & gender intimidations.
I make no pretense at being an "expert" or even learnéd in the ways our minds work, & the ways our feelings affect us. Each story Dr. Bond has chosen for Tales of Psychology revolves around the darker spectrum of emotions. Some stories offer redemption, others don't. Dr. Bond's observations & comments at each story's end, offer us further insights about both the history of psychology, as well as aspects we might not have noticed. Sometimes, I wished her comments had been longer!
The stories are: A Small, Good Thing by Raymond Carver A Cap for Steve by Morely Callaghan Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland by Carson McCullers Truth and Consequences by Brendon Gill Rose, Rhododendron by Alice Adams A Complicated Nature by William Trevor A Distant Episode by Paul Bowles Verona: A Young Woman Speaks by Harold Brodkey The Middle Years by Henry James Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken How to Win by Rosellen Brown The Test by Angelica Gibbs In the Region of Ice by Joyce Carol Oates The Death of Justina by John Cheever Paul's Case by Willa Cather The Other Woman by Sherwood Anderson Teenage Wasteland by Anne Tyler The Right Thing by Richard Yates My Apology by Woody Allen.
I certainly did feel somewhat wiser after reading Tales of Psychology. With her recapitulations & observations, Dr. Bond has breathed new life into these remarkable literary snacks.
As Dr. Bond comments, the stories: “...should be required reading for...” -- everyone interested in other ways to think about what we read.
Dr. Alma Halbert Bond is the author of nine published books, including I
Married Dr. Jekyll and Woke Up Mrs. Hyde; The Autobiography of Maria
Callas, a Novel & Who Killed Virginia Woolf? A Psychobiography. She recently recorded her new manuscript, Old Age is a Terminal Illness, as an audio book. Dr. Bond teaches Psychology & Writing online at WriterSchool.
(07/28/02)
Rebecca
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