English 587 

Theory of Nonfiction

T/TH 3:30-4:45

Spring 2009

Greg Martin

Office:  Humanities 257

Office Hours:   Tuesdays 2:00-3:00 and by appointment

Phone:  277-6145

E-mail:  gmartin@unm.edu 

Course website:  www.unm.edu/~gmartin

Books:

1. Best American Essays 2008
2. Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates
3. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
4. The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
5. Daddy Needs a Drink by Rob Wilder (Rob will visit class. He's leading the memoir master class this summer at Taos.)
6. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
7. What is the What by Dave Eggers
8. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
9. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

Essays & Interviews  on On E-reserve at Zimmerman Library.  Password: study587

Overview

Two quotes to start out with:

Saul Bellow:

"A writer is a reader moved to emulation."

Annie Dillard, from Write Till You Drop

"The writer studies literature, not the world. She lives in the world; she cannot miss it…  She is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write...

The writer knows her field - what has been done, what could be done, the limits - the way a tennis player knows the court. And like that expert, she, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. She hits up the line…

Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hamsun and Turgenev as models. Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E. M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust. By contrast, if you ask a 21-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, ''Nobody's.'' He has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Bohr and Gauguin…learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world harassed them with some sort of wretched hat..."

Literary Nonfiction is incredibly diverse, and this class is a small attempt to acknowledge this. Course readings will include books and essays and (what some might call) articles. The phrase "creative nonfiction" is lousy, inadequate, insufficient, and so also are the names of its so-called subgenres: the personal essay, the memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, lyric essays, nature writing. (There are many other supposed categories.) Regardless, we will be reading lots of work that is regularly put in these categories, and from time to time, we might even invoke these categories ourselves, smugly, knowing all along how lousily they capture the innovations of art and form.

The goal of the course is practical:  to each week look at books, essays and articles and ask the questions:  How was this made?  Why was it made this way?  How does an understanding of this shape my own work? My hope is to crack open your limited aesthetic (I have the same hope for myself) and expand your sense of what is possible in your own writing and to encourage you to play the edges of genre and craft. 

Course Requirements

Reading Responses: 

(A) Ten brief, 1 page reading responses are required. With these brief responses, you are to write one good long paragraph (or so) on one and only one craft feature that compels you. You may not write onto the second page.

(B) Ten 3-5 page reading responses are required. (See handout for more guidance.)

These responses should (1) illuminate, in some depth, elements of craft that compel the responder, and (2) relate to the craft concerns in their own ongoing creative work—the work of their dissertation. 

Bring two copies of your response to class, one for me and one for another person in class.  Give your response to a different person each week. 

Responses must be turned in on the day that the work under consideration in the response is being discussed. We have 30 class meetings. You have 20 responses. You choose which books or essays or articles you want to write long or brief papers on. You choose which books or articles you don't want to write about. If there are two or more pieces under discussion for that day, you choose whether you want to write on one or two or all of them. Write your responses on the essays or books that intrigue and compel you the most.

Note:  If you miss class more than three times 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 Spring Break

Week 10

Week 11

Week 12

Week 13

Week 14

Week 15

Week 16

 Note:  Readings are due on the date listed.