An essay in eight parts. My Father and the Genre of Silence Isaac Babel the Master of the Genre of Silence My Father What is Silence? What is Genre? Quick Rhetoric of Photographs Barthes The Woods    

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Part 1 of The Genre of Silence, an essay. My father died in 2011 and left behind him a rebuilt red Chevy Super Impala convertible 1968, a couple of houses, and about a half dozen shoeboxes full of several thousand photographs of the Central Cascade mountains. I hadn’t spoken with my father for five years […]

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Part 2 of The Genre of Silence, an essay. Isaac Babel, a Jewish and Russian short story writer, was one of the greatest naturalists who ever lived. His book The Red Cavalry and Other Stories along with James Joyce’s Dubliners–two early 20th century short story collections–are definitive statements of the naturalistic short story that has […]

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Part 3 of The Genre of Silence, an essay. My father drove a bus. Growing up he had been a night cook at the place where Westlake Mall now stands called the Copper Kitchen. It was a Seattle dinner with the theme of copper implements. My dad wore a white double breasted chef’s coat and […]

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Part 4 of The Genre of Silence, an essay. It is understood that you are not to make noise in the library. The movies tell us to silence our cell phones and not to talk. Silence is not nothing; silence is the absence of communication. Silence is the number zero of genres. To understand a […]

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