English 587  Theory of Fiction/Creative Nonfiction

Blurred Boundaries

W 4:00-6:30

Fall 2005

Greg Martin

Office:  Humanities 257

Office Hours:   Wednesdays 2:00-3:30 and by appointment

Phone:  277-6145

E-mail:  gmartin@unm.edu 

Course website:  www.unm.edu/~gmartin

"Art is the lie that tells the truth." Pablo Picasso

Books:

1. William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow

2. Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

3. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

4. Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club

5. W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants

6. Colette My Mother's House & Sido

7. Milan Kundera's Slowness

Stories, Memoirs, Craft Essays and Indefinables

(On On E-reserve at Zimmerman Library.  Password: study587)

1. Delmore Schwartz's "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"

2. Vance Bourjaily's "The Amish Farmer"

3. Richard Ford's "Reading"

4. Tobias Wolff’s “Firelight”

5. Alistair MacLeod’s “The Boat”

6. Alice Munro’s “The Progress of Love” & “Miles City, Montana"

7. Tim O'Brien's "The Magic Show" & "The Vietnam in Me"

8. Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman”
9. Dan Meuller's "How Animals Mate" &  "P.M.R.C."

10. Sharon Warner's “Working Puzzles” & "Birds"

11. Madison Smart Bell's "Narrative Design" & "Linear Design"

12. William Gass's "Autobiography"

13. Janet Malcom's "Gertrude Stein's War"

14. Nathalie Sarraute's "The Age of Suspicion"

Interviews

1. Alice Munro
2. Tobias Wolff
3. Milan Kundera
4. Mary Karr
5. W.G. Sebald
6. Tim O'Brien

Overview

William Maxwell, in his novel/memoir So Long, See You Tomorrow, says that when we talk about the past we lie with every breath we take.  This is a literature course designed for prose writers, in fiction and creative nonfiction, which will explore the blurred boundary between “truth” and “invention.”  Course readings will include novels, memoirs, short stories, and personal essays, as well as essays and interviews on craft.   In all these readings, we will look at how both fiction and creative nonfiction writers, implicitly and explicitly, manipulate the reader’s desire for "literal” truth.  (In a story called “Love,” the second story of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a fictional character, Tim O’Brien, a writer, is visited at home years after the war by a fictional character, Jimmy Cross, who tells him how to write the story, “The Things They Carried,” which the reader just read.) 

The goal of the course is, at bottom, practical, to each week look at books, stories and essays and ask the questions:  How was this made?  How does this story work?  How does a growing understanding of these stories shape my own work?  Finally, another goal of the course is to develop theories of our own sensibility. 

Course Requirements

Reading Responses:  (60%) One 3-5 page response will be required each week.   These responses should be composed and focused, not tossed off, written off the top of your head.  Bring two copies of your response to class each week, one for me and one for another person in class.  Give your response to a different person each week.  Late reading responses will not receive credit.  (See handout on website for more details.) 

Craft Essay:  (40%)  Each student will write one craft essay (approximately ten to twenty pages) on a story (or stories) or memoir  (or memoirs) or craft concern which grows out of the course reading and your reading responses.  The goal of this assignment is to write a craft essay like the craft essays which we will be reading, the kind of essay that appears in The AWP Chronicle or Crafting Fiction or Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House or Kundera's Art of the Novel or Madison Smart Bell's Narrative Design ...)  The goal is to have a piece that you can revise and send out to a magazine.  The goal with this craft essay, like with your stories and memoirs, is to get it published someday. 

Note:  If you miss class more than twice it will affect your grade.

Readings & Responsibilities

Week 1                                                                       

Week 2           

Week 3

Week 4                                                           

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

Week 11

Week 12

Week 13

Week 14

Week 15

Week 16

Week 17

 Note:  Readings are due on the date listed.