English 680  The Creative Writing Seminar

T 4:00-7:30

Spring 2007

Greg Martin

Office:  Humanities 257

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

Phone:  277-6145

E-mail:  gmartin@unm.edu 

Course website:  www.unm.edu/~gmartin

Books:

1. On Boxing   Joyce Carol Oates

2. Black Water   Joyce Carol Oates

3. The Rings of Saturn     W.G. Sebald

4. After Nature   W.G. Sebald

5. Fever Pitch   Nick Hornby 

6. About a Boy   Nick Hornby

7. Lucy   Jamaica Kincaid

8. A Small Place   Jamaica Kincaid

9. Song of Solomon    Toni Morrison

10. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness & the Literary Imagination   Toni Morrison

11. All the Days and Nights   William Maxwell

12. The Year of Magical Thinking   Joan Didion 

13. Play it as it Lays   Joan Didion 

14. For the Time Being   Annie Dillard 

15. Out of Sheer Rage  Geoff Dyer

On E-reserve at Zimmerman Library.

1. "Reading"   Richard Ford

2. Paris Review Interview of Joyce Carol Oates

3. W.G. Sebald Interview -- The New Yorker

4. "April 2004"  Excerpt from The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby

5. Jamaica Kincaid Interview -- The Missouri Review

6. "Girl"  Jamaica Kincaid

7. "Biography of a Dress"  Jamaica Kincaid

8. Paris Review Interview of William Maxwell

9. Paris Review Interview of Joan Didion 

Overview

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..."

This is a 4 credit, cross-genre seminar designed for creative writers.  Over 16 weeks together, we will read and discuss the work of contemporary writers who work in multiple genres. Course readings will include novels, memoirs, short stories, personal essays, and a verse novel. We will also read essays and interviews about craft.

The goal of the course is practical: to each week look at work of literature and ask the questions: How was this made? How does this work? How is this author's work in this genre different than their work in that genre? How does a growing understanding of these genres shape my own work?

My hope is to 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:  (60%) One 3-5 page response will be required each week.   These responses should be composed and focused, not written off the top of your head.  They should be very insightful, unboring and even, if you want, funny.  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 twenty pages) on (1) a particular author or (2) a craft concern which grows out of the course reading and your reading responses.

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

Note #2:  Snacks and Coffee are required at each class meeting.  We will set up a coffee-bringer schedule for each class.  (The Satellite Jug has a lot of coffee.)  In the past, people have brought homemade tamales, chips and guacamole, pizza(s) from Saggios, brownies, cookies...  We will be spending 3 and half hours together each week.  Snacks are crucial. 

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.