English 698.02/598.01 - Studies in Creative Writing/Prose
Instructor: Robert Majzels
Description
English 698 is an advanced course in creative writing, intended to offer the practiced student an opportunity to work intensively on a book-length fiction manuscript.
What remains of the book when its very existence seems threatened by web-based communications and it has been stripped of its value as an object of commercial exchange and/or fetish? The critical approach of the course will be particularly focused on this question and on its repercussions on the various forms and genres of the contemporary novel and fiction in general.
Students will submit their work, and read and respond to their colleagues' writing in a workshop format, as well as discuss a number of books of fiction and critical theory. The book-length project (approximately 120 pages) may consist of a novel or long novella, a collection of interconnected or independent short fictions, or a work combining genres (fiction, non-fiction, criticism, memoir, poetry, etc.).
Prerequisites for Admission: Admission to this course is by consent of the Department of English. Students wishing to enroll must submit for consideration, the application form, a proposal (maximum two pages) describing the book-length work they wish to complete, along with relevant model texts and critical influences, and a twenty page portfolio of writing (double spaced, typed and in hard copy, not via e-mail attachment). Students will be notified about whether or not they have been admitted by September 1st.
NB: Please include in your portfolio your name, address, phone number, student number, and e-mail so that you can be contacted. As admission to this course is extremely competitive, students should enroll in a second-choice course; once granted admission to 598, students can easily change their registration.
Texts
Claude Lévi-Strauss, "A Writing Lesson," in Tristes Tropiques. New York: Penguin, 1974.
David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress, a novel
Critical Texts to be discussed will be determined by the class as a group. They may include:
Rosie Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance
Hélène Cixous, La jeune née
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "What is a Minor Literature"
Jacques Derrida, "Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book" Lyn Hejinian, "Rejection of Closure" Stéphane Mallarmé, "Notes Toward a Book" Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark Marc-Alain Ouaknin, The Burned Book (Le livre brûlé) Fictions to be discussed may include: Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless Hubert Aquin, Next Episode Samuel Beckett, How It Is Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein's Nephew Nicole Brossard, Mauve Desert Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler Elias Cannetti, Auto-da-Fé Cao Xue Qin, The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Pavilion, vol.1) Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch Hanif Kureishi, "With My Tongue Down Your Throat" Carol Maso, AVA Gilbert Sorrentino, Aberration of Starlight John Cayley, hypertextual and web-based fiction: http://www.shadoof.net/in/Marie (site under construction) Wikifiction: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikifiction
