Imagined Scenes (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Ann Beattie
- First Published: 1974
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: A winter during the 1970's
- Setting: Evidently the northeast United States
- Principal Characters: An unnamed young woman, David, An old man, His sister, Katherine and Larry Duane
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction
- Subjects: Self, Emotions, Women, Loneliness
- Locales: Northeast (U.S.)
The Story
Like much of Ann Beattie's fiction, “Imagined Scenes” is more evocation of a situation than plotted tale. The seven sections of the story cover three days in the life of the female protagonist, who sits nights with an old man while his daughter and son-in-law take a midwinter vacation in Florida. The garrulous old man reminisces about the terrible winter he spent in Berlin and produces photograph albums and postcards, one of which, a silver-spangled picture of Rip Van Winkle walking through a moonlit forest, provides one of the story's many ambiguous echoes. The...
[The entire page is 1754 words long]
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