The novel is dead; long live the anti-novel, built from scraps.
I’m not interested in collage as the refuge of the compositionally disabled. I’m interested in collage as an evolution beyond narrative.
https://washington.zoom.us/j/94448807178
A great painting comes together, just barely (Picasso).
It may be that nowadays in order to move us, abstract pictures need if not humor then at least some admission of their own absurdity-expressed in genuine awkwardness or in an authentic disorder (Adam Gopnik).
These fragments I have shored against my ruins (T.S. Eliot).
Collage is the primary art form of the twenty-first century (Donald Barthelme).
A course in literary collage/bricolage/assemblage/montage. We’ll read all or parts of some of the works below (key books are bolded); throughout the module, students will create their own 10-to-15-page collage, which they will turn in by the end of the quarter and which we will discuss in class.
Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Matter”
Eula Biss, The Balloonists
Anne Carson, “Just for the Thrill”
Terry Castle, “My Heroin Xmas”
E.M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist
Alphonse Daudet, In the Land of Pain
Annie Ernaux, Things Seen
Amy Fusselman, The Pharmacist’s Mate
Mary Gaitskill, “Lost Cat”
Kenneth Goldsmith, Seven American Deaths and Disasters
Mira Gonzalez/Tao Lin, Selected Tweets
Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing
Brad Listi, Board
Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness
David Markson, This Is Not a Novel
Leonard Michaels, “Journal”
Maggie Nelson, Bluets
Don Patterson, Best Thought, Worst Thought
James Richardson, Vectors
George WS Trow, Within the Context of No Context
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (introduction)
Joe Wenderoth, Letters to Wendy’s
Kate Zambreno, Toilet Bowl