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ENGL 384 A: The Craft of Prose

Summer Term: 
A-term
Meeting Time: 
MTWTh 12:00pm - 1:40pm
Location: 
* *
SLN: 
11431
Instructor:
Headshot of David Shields
David Shields

Syllabus Description:

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.

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 (TS 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; throughout the quarter, students will create their own 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 Ballonists

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

Alphonse Daudet, In the Land of Pain

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

 

Professor:

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-two books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice). The film adaptation of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel was released by First Pond Entertainment in 2017; forthcoming in June 2019 is Lynch: A History, a documentary film—about Marshawn Lynch’s use of silence, echo, and mimicry as tools of resistance—that Shields produced, wrote, and directed. Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention was published in 2018; The Trouble With Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power was published in March 2019. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published fiction and nonfiction in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, Tin House, A Public Space, McSweeney's, Believer, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Best American Essays. His books have been translated into two dozen languages.

 

Catalog Description: 
Intensive study of various aspects of the craft of fiction or creative nonfiction. Readings in contemporary prose and writing using emulation and imitation. Prerequisite: ENGL 283; ENGL 284.
GE Requirements: 
Arts and Humanities (A&H)
Credits: 
5.0
Status: 
Withdrawn
Last updated: 
August 2, 2019 - 10:30pm
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