In order to write fiction, you need to know what an automat is

My students aren’t just learning how to write fiction, they’re also learning about all kinds of other stuff, like...

Hold on. I need to put that differently.

Let’s try this:  Because writers are supposed to write what they know, they need to know, well, everything, so in order to learn how to write fiction my students are learning about all kinds of other stuff, for instance, the history of the great migration of African Americans out of the South, the menu at In-N-Out Burger, the biblical allusion that opens Moby-Dick, automats.

This week for their writing exercise I have them looking at some paintings by Edward Hopper, picking out a person in a painting of their choice, and turning that person into a character in a story.  One of the paintings is Automat.  Turns out many of them knew Hopper already and could even name at least one of his paintings.  Guess which one.

So they’d heard of Hopper.  But none of them knew what an automat is.  Always a helpful instructor, I gave them the clip below as visual aid.

Apparently, automats were like saloons in the Old West. You couldn’t be in one long before a fight broke out.

 

The movie is Easy Living, starring Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, and Edward Arnold. Preston Struges wrote the screenplay. Sturges is someone else my students need to know about.

Something I want to teach myself, making a regular comeback out of the line “Hire a hall.”

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Other paintings by Hopper they can use:  Gas. Tables for Ladies. Office at Night. New York Movie. First Row Orchestra. Conference at Night. New York Office. Second Story Sunlight.

I’d pick Conference at Night myself. What about you?

Comments

[Claire Helene]

That's one of my favorite Hoppers. I have a postcard of it hanging in my cubicle.

[Philipsturner]

Nighthawks is a favorite Hopper of mine. BTW, my wife, an artist, wrote an interesting essay on Hopper some time ago. Here's a link: http://leftbankartblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/architecture-of-color-modern-life.html?spref=tw

[M George Stevenson]

I'm going to steal your choices and use them as a slideshow for my directing class to demonstrate framing.

[Philipsturner]

I neglected to add that the essay my wife focuses on a somewhat lesser known Hopper work, "The Barber Shop."

[Gary Farber]

I used to go to the Automat in Manhattan when I was young. I'm That Old.

[Dave]

I remember going to the Automat twice. I always regret not having the chance to have made Automat tomato soup.

If your students need to know about Sturges (and they do), show them "Remember the Night." It's everything "It's a Wonderful Life" wants to grow up to be and will never succeed.

[willaful]

I was reading this on Google reader, which did not show the clip, but the second you referred to a fight in the automat, I knew which movie it would be. :-)

Another suggestion for education: Robert Klein's automat bit on "Child of the Fifties."

I have the vaguest memories of automats from my childhood in Manhattan. And Chock Full o' Nuts.