Thomas Wolfe Short Story Discussion - "Three O'Clock"
Led by Ellen Brown
A fun way to enter the world of Thomas Wolfe, Asheville's most famous writer!
In this 10th annual series of monthly discussions during the winter season, members of the general public have been working our way through Thomas Wolfe's Complete Short Stories, edited by Francis E. Skipp (1987) and available for purchase at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial or your favorite bookstore. "Three O'Clock" is a 4-page short story in this book.
If you don't know much about Wolfe, don't worry. "Three O'Clock" describes a moment in time as 12-year old George Webber lies on the grass in front of his uncle's house and enjoys everything around him: "He watched the sunlight come and go across backyards with all their tangle of familiar things; he saw the hills against the eastern side of townsweet green, a little mottled, so common, homely, and familiar, and, when remembered later, wonderful, the way things are."
But this peacefulness is broken by a violent incident that begins with a bulldog jumping for a mastiff's throat.
TRIGGER WARNING: Wolfe uses the "n" word multiple times in this story. We will have to deal with Wolfe's family-nutured and society-nurtured racism - and that of virtually all White writers of the time - as we sort through the nuances of what Wolfe is trying to say in this story about what can happen from moment to moment during our lives.
If you can't attend in person, don't worry. This is a FREE and hybrid event - both in-person AND Zoom. Register via Eventbrite and receive a Zoom link about a week before the event.
Our discussion leader, Ellen Brown, was born in Schenectady, New York. She graduated as a voice major from Sweet Briar College, and spent a few years in Vienna, Austria, for training to be an opera singer. Instead, she won a one-year appointment in the Austrian public schools to be a Fulbright Teaching Assistant. She then returned home and earned an advanced degree in German at the University of Virginia.
Frustrated by teaching profession at a boy’s boarding school, Ellen discovered a talent for organization and started a Free Health Clinic in Lynchburg, Virginia. Over the next several years she served as director for several social services organizations, but when faced with a painful divorce, returned toacademia and earned an MLA from UNC Asheville (2001) as well as an MA in history from Virginia Tech (2003.) She then served as director for two museums in Virginia.
Ellen particularly enjoys researching and writing biographies. . Since moving to Asheville in 2014 to be near her children, Ellen is creating a digital archive concerning the preservation movement in the Adirondacks, and has enjoyed giving lectures via Zoom to audiences in New York. John Apperson's Lake George, her book about her great uncle - an early environmentalist in the New York Adirondacks - was published in 2017.