<p>8.5 x 11 paper</p>
<p>CC consensus:
-self-satisfied
-distributed widely
-resignation
-formative stage as a writer
-surmise/deeds</p>
<p>Do people generally post answers from the QAS?</p>
<p>we dont have a consensus for the self-satisfied,conscientious, and wary</p>
<p>The chlorophyll passage with the question: The primary reason why the leaves change colors in the fall is?</p>
<p>^No new pigments are produced</p>
<p>I believe i put conscientious, only because the girl was taking into account that she was writing in place of her grandmother, and therefore had to use words like “grandson,” and was conscientious of the fact that her grandmother’s sister lived in California also.</p>
<p>Although I put self-satisfied, conscientious has a far more logical argument. The girl kept in mind that she had to sound like her grandmother, and ensured that she always wrote like “my grandson” instead of “my brother”.</p>
<p>But for some reason I can’t put down self-satisfied. The way the girl smugly described how she could manipulate the letters and how she did not feel any guilt or “wariness” (note! she never stated any fear of getting caught) about the whole thing, gave an overall feel of self-satisfaction.</p>
<p>I guess it depends on what exactly the question was asking for (which I cannot exactly remember), cos otherwise multiple answers could be correct…</p>
<p>asked for the general tone of this particular passage:</p>
<p>Of course, the protagonist of the hockey tale was not “my brother.” He was “my grandson.” I departed from my own life without a regret and breezily inhabited my grandmother’s. I complained about my hip joint, I bemoaned the rising cost of hamburger, I even touched on the loneliness of old age, and hinted at the inattention of my son’s wife (that is, my own mother who was next door, oblivious to treachery).</p>
<p>whole story is here: [Amazon.com:</a> I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory (9780393320312): Patricia Hampl: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-You-Stories-Sojourns/dp/0393320316]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-You-Stories-Sojourns/dp/0393320316)</p>
<p>you have to sign into amazon though…its around page 196: i still can’t get a grasp around it even after reading it again :/</p>
<p>i guess im just hoping my answer is the correct one.</p>
<p>My Czech grandmother hated to see me with a book. She snatched it away if I sat still too long (dead to her), absorbed in my reading. “Bad for you,” she would say, holding the loathsome thing behind her back, furious at my enchantment.</p>
<p>Did she read English? I’m not sure. I do know that she couldn’t - or didn’t - write it. That’s where I came in.</p>
<p>My first commissioned work was to write letters for her. “You write for me, honey?” she would say, holding out a ball-point she had been given at a grocery store promotion, clicking it like a castanet. My fee was cookies and milk, payable before, during, and after completion of the project.</p>
<p>I settled down at her kitchen table while she rooted around the drawer where she kept coupons and playing cards and bank calendars. Eventually she located a piece of stationery and a mismatched envelope. She laid the small, pastel sheet before me, smoothing it out; a floral motif was clotted across the top of the page and bled down one side. The paper was so insubstantial even ballpoint ink seeped through the other side. “That’s OK,” she would say. “We only need one side.”</p>
<p>True. In life she was a gifted gossip, unfurling an extended riff of chatter from a bare motif of rumor. But her writing style displayed a brevity that made Hemingway’s prose look like nattering garrulity. She dictated her letters as if she were paying by the word.</p>
<p>“Dear Sister,” she began, followed by a little time-buying cough and throat clearing. “We are all well here.” Pause. “And hope you are well too.” Longer pause, the steamy broth of inspiration heating up on her side of the table. Then, in a lurch, “Winter is hard so I don’t get out much.”</p>
<p>This was followed instantly by an unconquerable fit of envy: “Not like you in California.” Then she came to a complete halt, perhaps demoralized by this evidence that you can’t put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.</p>
<p>She sat, she brooded, she stared out the window. She was locked in the perverse reticence of composition. She gazed at me, but I understood she did not see me. She was looking for her next thought. “Read what I wrote,” she would finally say, having lost not only what she was looking for but what she already had pinned down. I went over the little trail of sentences that led to her dead end.</p>
<p>More silence, then a sigh. She gave up the ghost. "Put ‘God bless you,’ " she said. She reached across to see the lean rectangle of words on the paper. “Now leave some space,” she said, “and put ‘Love.’” I handed over the paper for her to sign.</p>
<p>She always asked if her signature looked nice. She wrote her one word - Teresa - with a flourish. For her, writing was painting, a visual art, not declarative but sensuous.</p>
<p>She sent her lean documents regularly to her only remaining sister who lived in Los Angeles, a place she had not visited. They had last seen each other as children in their village in Bohemia. But she never mentioned that or anything from that world. There was no taint of reminiscence in her prose.</p>
<p>Even at ten I was appalled by the minimalism of these letters. They enraged me. “Is that all you have to say?” I would ask her, a nasty edge to my voice.</p>
<p>It wasn’t long before I began padding the text. Without telling her, I added an anecdote my father had told at dinner the night before, or I conducted this unknown reader through the heavy plot of my brother’s attempt to make first string on the St. Thomas hockey team. I allowed myself a descriptive aria on the beauty of Minnesota winters (for the benefit of my California reader who might need some background material on the subject of ice hockey). A little of this, a little of that - there was always something I could toss into my grandmother’s meager soup to thicken it up.</p>
<p>Of course, the protagonist of the hockey tale was not “my brother.” He was “my grandson.” I departed from my own life without a regret and breezily inhabited my grandmother’s. I complained about my hip joint, I bemoaned the rising cost of hamburger, I even touched on the loneliness of old age, and hinted at the inattention of my son’s wife (that is, my own mother who was next door, oblivious to treachery).</p>
<p>In time, my grandmother gave in to the inevitable. Without ever discussing it, we understood that when she came looking for me, clicking her ballpoint, I was to write the letter, and her job was to keep the cookies coming. I abandoned her skimpy floral stationery which badly cramped my style, and thumped down on the table a stack of ruled 8 1/2 x 11.</p>
<p>“Just say something interesting,” she would say. And I was off to the races.</p>
<p>I took over her life in prose. Somewhere along the line, though, she decided to take full possession of her sign-off. She asked me to show her how to write “Love” so she could add it to “Teresa” in her own hand. She practiced the new word many times on scratch paper before she allowed herself to commit it to the bottom of a letter.</p>
<p>But when she finally took the leap, I realized I had forgotten to tell her about the comma. On a single slanting line she had written: Love Teresa. The words didn’t look like a closure, but a command.</p>
<p>almost the whole one ^</p>
<p>i still think the primary purpose of that reading was misunderstanding over the purpose of a letter.</p>
<p>Alright, now I’m definitely sure that it’s self-satisfied. She “departed from her own world” and “breezily” entered the world of her grandmother. There was always something she could “toss into” the letters. The tone is definitely self-satisfied. If she were conscientious she wouldn’t be entering “breezily” and “tossing” extras into the letter without guilt or caution. The only thing she did was change “my brother” to “my grandson”, but I think she was taking pride in how she knew to do this. Conscientious does not fit.</p>
<p>ya…i’ve gotta admit, your right. i was too quick to cross off self-satisfied, and pick wary.</p>
<p>i agree (although i am biased) that the purpose of the passage was that the girl misunderstood the purpose of the letters, not that she developed as a writer. What do you think?</p>
<p>i put development as writer</p>
<p>but she thought that the letters were supposed to be informative and long, not a touching way for sisters to stay in touch.</p>
<p>grandma’s wanting to contribute the “love” at the end shows that there was a misunderstanding</p>
<p>we’ll see then when scores come out…i really dont know; theres evidence both ways</p>
<p>Ahh, both answers don’t really fit. I only scanned quickly just now and didn’t really see indication of development or misunderstanding. Except for the command part, but the question asked for the purpose of the WHOLE passage.</p>
<p>so what would be the answer then?</p>