Essay Questions

Which writer and his short story is “Referential” a self-proclaimed homage to?

“Referential” is described by the author as an homage to Vladimir Nabokov’s short story “Symbols and Signs” which was published in the New Yorker in 1948. Not coincidentally, in 2012 “Referential” was also published in the New Yorker. The story actually is capable of stimulating debate over where the line is drawn between homage and something a bit more sinister. Consider, for example, how the two stories open:

Moore: Mania. For the third time in three years they talked in a frantic way about what would be a suitable birthday present for her deranged son.

Nabokov: For the fourth time in as many years they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to bring a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind.

One might well suggest the line between homage and plagiarism is the mere act of acknowledgment.

What does the narrator mean of “Paper Losses” mean when Kit thinks to herself that Shelley Winters dies in every one of the actress’ movies that she’d seen?

The reference here is to a once-famous actress named Shelley Winters who had started her career as a bombshell-type and ended up as a figure of overweight pathos. The allusion is to the idea of how the perspective toward women in general changes over time as they age. Although Winters plays the tragically sassy low-rent girlfriend who gets run over to death in the first film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, it was really her appearance in A Place in the Sun that forever altered the trajectory of her career. In that film, she actually had to fight to convince the director she could play an unattractive harpy since up to that point she had mostly played sassy young hotties. So successful was her transition that most people don’t mind that her boyfriend played Montgomery Clift is convicted of murdering her even though it may just have been an accidental drowning. From that point her, Winter’s career highlights all involved unpleasant woman who are offed long before the movie ends with Lolita and The Poseidon Adventure being the most iconic examples. In a story mainly about the wife at the end of twenty year marriage at the point of divorce, the reference to the career path of Winters is painfully appropriate.

Bake McKurty is a natural talent at quickly spinning tales that are light on the side of factual truth. What are some of the lies he tells Linda during the fundraiser dinner?

Linda is a hardcore conservative woolly-head lobbyist who thinks the height of humor is calling Barack Obama “Barama” and as such it is not the most difficult thing in the world to pull the wool over her eyes. Even so, the depth of her ignorance would have been shocking during the time period in which the story is set. In the world following Obama’s exit from the White House, her ignorance barely rises to the level of notable. Among the tales Bake spins for her which she seemingly accepts as blind truth are that in addition to his biography of George Washington he also penned one about Boy George. He makes an allusion to the Revolutionary War being stimulated by Washington’s having been passed over for a promotion while serving in the British army which goes unchallenged. He not only sells her on the idea that he is a Nobel laureate, but that it got overlooked in the media because he was awarded the prize—and not even for Literature—just as the second plane flew into the World Trade Center tower on September 11, 2001.