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Story

"Story" is one of the key words in That Summer in Paris because it refers to a number of different things which are all central to the plot.

Firstly, it refers to the articles Callaghan is writing for the Toronto Star in the opening chapters of the book as a young journalist.





Secondly, it refers to the short stories and novels being worked on and passed around by the aspiring writers in the book such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Callaghan.





And thirdly, it refers to the story which is printed at the very end of the book about the boxing match between Hemingway and Callaghan at The American Club, in which Hemingway is reportedly knocked out by Callaghan.




These previews in Voyant show how the context changes throughout the book and how the word "story" is used to refer to various different things.

We can also clearly see the distribution of the word in this Voyant graph, which shows that there is a greater use in the beginning before Callaghan travels to Paris. The fact that it then begins to drop after he gets to Paris perhaps implies that he begins to lose focus on story-writing and instead places a much greater emphasis on his relationships with the other writers such as Hemingway, Joyce and Fitzgerald.



The sudden surge at the end of the book clearly coincides with the printing of the article about the boxing match, and all of Callaghan's focus immediately becomes centred around this incident.

 

Works Cited:

References:

Callaghan, Morley. 1963. That Summer in Paris: Memories of Tangled Friendships with Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/bio/callaghan-thatsum.html.