Meeting Elise single work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2007... 2007 Meeting Elise
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon One Story no. 93 May 2007 Z1551748 2007 periodical issue 2007
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Boat Nam Le , Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1495449 2008 selected work short story (taught in 42 units)

    'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)

    Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008
    pg. 76-105
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Best Australian Stories 2008 Delia Falconer (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2008 Z1535129 2008 anthology short story (taught in 1 units) 'Australian short fiction is where the action is: outward-looking, exciting, filled with surprises and joyful life. Delia Falconer In The Best Australian Stories 2008, Delia Falconer brings together the year's most exciting short fiction. Featuring established masters as well as fresh new voices, this is a perfect book for summer and an ideal introduction to Australia's best contemporary writing. 'As a reader,' Delia Falconer writes, 'I crave what the short story is most suited to deliver: a glimpse into the unpredictability of life, a quick burst of tone and voice, a bittersweet balance of surprising layers.' By turns global and domestic, subversively funny and wrenchingly sad, this year's Best Australian Stories delivers this, and more.' (Publication summary) Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2008 pg. 259-280

Works about this Work

A Patriarchy of Pain : Nam Le, Don DeLillo, and the Hierarchical Cosmopolitanism of Contemporary Fiction Rodney Taveira , 2016 single work
— Appears in: New Scholar , vol. 4 no. 1 2016;
'This essay examines the loop of contemporary American literary production and reception. Firstly, I read Nam Le's 'Meeting Elise,' from The Boat (2008), Le's much-awarded collection of short stories set across the globe, alongside Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis (2003), a novel that depicts the daylong journey in a limousine of a billionaire currency trader down New York's 47th St. Secondly, I compare Le's and DeLillo's different cosmopolitanisms against the cosmopolitan scene of New York City book reviews. I argue that a graphic depiction of pain and the male body-a 'patriarchy of pain'-reveals a tension between the local and the transnational in the field of contemporary literature and reception, and that this tension reflects and informs the how the field bestows and withholds value. Le and DeLillo, I argue, as figures of different cosmopolitanisms, further complicate matters. What Donald C. Goellnicht has called Le's 'refugee cosmopolitanism' is regarded differently than DeLillo's New York, older cosmopolitanism. The regard of difference demonstrates a continuation of the older mode as it encounters the newer mode. This creates a hierarchy to the scene of the cosmopolitanism of the New York book reviews, what I call 'hierarchical cosmopolitanism,' one that confers value to those it admits.' (Publication abstract)
Untitled 2007 single work interview
— Appears in: One Story , May no. 93 2007;
Untitled 2007 single work interview
— Appears in: One Story , May no. 93 2007;
A Patriarchy of Pain : Nam Le, Don DeLillo, and the Hierarchical Cosmopolitanism of Contemporary Fiction Rodney Taveira , 2016 single work
— Appears in: New Scholar , vol. 4 no. 1 2016;
'This essay examines the loop of contemporary American literary production and reception. Firstly, I read Nam Le's 'Meeting Elise,' from The Boat (2008), Le's much-awarded collection of short stories set across the globe, alongside Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis (2003), a novel that depicts the daylong journey in a limousine of a billionaire currency trader down New York's 47th St. Secondly, I compare Le's and DeLillo's different cosmopolitanisms against the cosmopolitan scene of New York City book reviews. I argue that a graphic depiction of pain and the male body-a 'patriarchy of pain'-reveals a tension between the local and the transnational in the field of contemporary literature and reception, and that this tension reflects and informs the how the field bestows and withholds value. Le and DeLillo, I argue, as figures of different cosmopolitanisms, further complicate matters. What Donald C. Goellnicht has called Le's 'refugee cosmopolitanism' is regarded differently than DeLillo's New York, older cosmopolitanism. The regard of difference demonstrates a continuation of the older mode as it encounters the newer mode. This creates a hierarchy to the scene of the cosmopolitanism of the New York book reviews, what I call 'hierarchical cosmopolitanism,' one that confers value to those it admits.' (Publication abstract)
Last amended 24 Mar 2009 16:43:23
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