Forms of Literature
Autumn, 2004
INSTRUCTOR: Lee Martin
OFFICE: 166 Denney Hall
HOURS: MW 4:15-5:15
Or by appointment
PHONE: 292-0648 (Office)
292-6065 (English Department)
767-0298 (Home)
E-MAIL: martin.1199@osu.edu
REQUIRED TEXTS:
Tobias Wolff, This Boy’s Life.
Kathleen Finneran, The Tender Land.
Lauren Slater, Lying.
Amy Benson, The Sparkling-eyed Boy.
Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss.
Mary Karr, Cherry.
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior.
J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood.
Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory
ARTICLES ON ELECTRONIC RESERVE:
Wexler, Laura. “An Interview with Patricia Hampl.” AWP Chronicle 30.5 (2003): 1-7.
Bartkevicius, Joceyln, et.al. “Rountable: Literal versus Invented Truth in Memoir.”
Fourth Genre 1.1 (1999): 133-56.
Johnson, Claudia. “The Other Half of the Story.” AWP Chronicle 28.2 (1995): 1-8.
Wexler, Laura. “Saying Good-Bye to ‘Once Upon a Time,’ or Implementing
Postmodernism in Creative Nonfiction.” In Writing Creative Nonfiction. Eds. Carolyn ForchJ and Philip Gerard. Cincinnati, OH: Story Press, 2001. 25-33.
Phelan, James. “Suppressed Narration in Confessional Memoir: The Kiss.”
Gornick, Vivian. “The Situation and the Story.” In The Situation and the Story: The Art
of Personal Narrative. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001. 3-26.
McDonnell, Jane Taylor. “‘Just Make It Up, Then See If It Is True’: Imagination Coming
to the Aid of Memory’.” In Living to Tell the Tale. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. 45-70.
Quindlen, Anna. “How Dark? How Stormy? I Can’t Recall.” New York Times on the
Web. http://partners.nytimes.com/books/97/05/11/bookend/bookend.html. May 11, 1997. 1-3.
Bartkevicius, Jocelyn. “The Self as a Literary Construct: Third Person Limited in
Memoir.” AWP Chronicle 32.3 (1999): 41-43.
Cooper, David D. “Interview with Richard Rodriguez.” Fourth Genre 5.2 (2003): 104-32.
TO ACCESS ELECTRONIC RESERVES:
IMPORTANT ACCESS NOTES:
NETSCAPE 7.1 may cause problems - The solution is to switch
to Internet Explorer for access.
AOL ACCESS ISSUE -If you use AOL as your browser you may not
be able to access Electronic Reserves, one solution is to use Internet Explorer
or Netscape 7.0 or earlier.
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
Our particular focus in this Forms of Literature Seminar will be on the contemporary memoir. Our purpose will be to study a variety of its forms with an eye toward an analysis of craft. We will consider such elements as structure, point of view, voice, characterization, and detail. We will also take into account the interaction of memory and invention in the artistic shaping of fact. Our work will require each of us to think as both writer and critic as we come to a better understanding of the various technical issues at work in any given personal narrative. We’ll also think about how memoir is both similar to and different from fiction. If a memoir is working well, as with any piece of literature, there is integrity between its form and its content. Each complements the other in a way that makes us believe that this particular story couldn’t have been told any other way. A writer sets out to shape individual experience and make it the reader’s. In order to achieve this goal, the writer must at some point in the process understand the effects of her or his artistic choices. How, then, does a writer use the literary devices at her or his disposal to create the experience that the material requires? Investigating this connection between form and content will be our chief enterprise in this seminar, and I hope it will be challenging, stimulating, and rewarding for those of you who want to become better practitioners of the genre, more astute critics, or both. Here are some technical issues we’ll want to consider:
1. Balancing scenic depiction with exposition and reflection.
2. Constructing multiple selves: the narrator as character.
3. The traditional conflict-based structure versus the more connection-based form.
4. Postmodern techniques in memoir—the plurality of truth.
5. The relationship between narrative technique and ethics.
6. The use of second and third-person points of view in memoir.
7. The place of the “creative” in creative nonfiction and the use of fiction in memoir.
8. The memoir of ideas and the balance between the abstract and the particular.
METHODS:
We’ll supplement our reading of memoirs with various articles and interviews that consider issues of craft. Along the way, we’ll try our own hands at writing memoir. Since this is a graduate seminar, much of the business of the course will fall upon your shoulders. To help us meet our objectives, I’ll ask you to be responsible for the following: (1) leading a discussion of craft for one of the memoirs on our reading list, (2) designing a writing activity to help us practice a particular technique and then leading us through it, and (3) handing in a piece of memoir [a minimum of 10 pages] along with a critical analysis [a minimum of 10 pages] of that piece.
LEADING THE CRAFT DISCUSSION:
I’ll ask you, most often in teams of two, to lead our discussions of the memoirs under consideration. To do that, you’ll need to be familiar with the craft article(s) that complement the memoir assigned for the week. I’d like you to highlight a few pertinent issues from the article or articles and then use those thoughts as a way of opening up conversation about the book we’re discussing. You might find something in the article(s) that you believe to be especially useful to our understanding of a technique at operation in the memoir we’re reading, or you might find something that you believe is worthy of further discussion or question. Feel free, to bring particular passages of the memoir to our attention. The objective here is to make a connection between the craft article(s) and the memoir so we become a group of writers curious about what another writer set out to do and how she or he either did it or didn’t. These craft discussions will generally take place on Mondays and will provide a way of introducing and entering the memoir under consideration that week.
LEADING THE WRITING ACTIVITY:
Usually on Wednesdays, I’ll ask the same people who led Monday’s craft discussion to provide a writing activity that will allow us to practice a technique that came to our attention during our first conversation about that week’s memoir. These activities should take no more that thirty minutes to complete and should lead into further discussion about the memoir. Please provide us with a handout that does the following: (1) the purpose of the activity, (2) the steps in the activity and the time it takes to complete each, (3) thoughts and questions for further discussion. Ideally, these writing activities will turn into passages in the piece of memoir that you’ll be turning in at the end of the quarter.
THE FINAL PIECE OF MEMOIR AND ITS CRITICAL ANALYSIS:
At the end of the quarter, I’d like you to give me a piece of original memoir and a critical analysis in which you think about some of the technical choices you’ve made and why they’re necessary to your material and the reading experience you want to create; feel free to refer to memoirs from our reading list or other memoirs with which you’re familiar to provide an aesthetic context for your own piece of memoir. Also, feel free to utilize the craft articles on our syllabus to offer a theoretical context.
GRADES:
When you hand in your memoir and the critical analysis at the end of the quarter, please attach a note that tells me whether you’d like me to assign more significant weight to the former or the latter. If you think of yourself primarily as a scholar and would like me to base your grade primarily on your critical writing, I’ll be glad to do so. Similarly, if you consider yourself more of a creative writer than a scholarly one and would like me to base your grade primarily on your piece of original memoir, all you need do is tell me. If you’re equally confident in both the memoir and the critical analysis and would like me to weight them the same, please make that known. Naturally, I’ll also be considering the work you did with your craft discussion and your writing activity as well as your participation (needless to say, attendance, if poor, may become a factor here) in the seminar discussions.
DISABILITY STATEMENT:
The Office for Disability Services, located in 150 Pomerene Hall, offers services for students with documented disabilities. Contact the ODS at 2-3307.
DAILY SYLLABUS:
W: 9/22 Course Introduction
M: 9/27 This Boy’s Life. “An Interview with Patricia Hampl.” “Rountable: Literal versus Invented Truth in Memoir.”
W: 9/29 This Boy’s Life
M: 10/4 The Tender Land. “The Other Half of the Story.” Kathleen Finneran will visit our seminar and will also present a reading in The Commons Room (Denney 311) at 3:30.
W: 10/6 The Tender Land
M: 10/11 Lying. “Saying Good-Bye to ‘Once Upon a Time,’ or Implementing Postmodernism in Creative Nonfiction.”
W: 10/13 Lying
M: 10/18 The Sparkling-eyed Boy. Amy Benson will visit our seminar and will also present a reading in The Commons Room (Denney 311) at 3:30.
W: 10/20 No Class
M: 10/25 The Kiss. “Suppressed Narration in Confessional Memoir: The Kiss.”
W: 10/27 The Kiss
M: 11/1 Cherry. “The Situation and the Story.”
W: 11/3 Cherry
M: 11/8 The Woman Warrior. “‘Just Make It Up, Then See If It Is True’: Imagination Coming to the Aid of Memory’.” “How Dark? How Stormy? I Can’t Recall.” Please note that Maxine Hong Kingston will be in residence November 8-12. Her 692W workshop will meet from 3:30-5:18 in Derby Hall, Room 60. Her public lecture and reading will be on November 9, at 8 p.m. in the Mershon Auditorium.
W: 11/10 The Woman Warrior
M: 11/15 Boyhood. “The Self as a Literary Construct: Third Person Limited in
Memoir.”
W: 11/17 Boyhood
M: 11/22 Hunger of Memory. “Interview with Richard Rodriguez.”
W: 11/24 Thanksgiving Eve. No class.
M: 11/29 Hunger of Memory
W: 12/1 Memoir and Analysis Due