Week Eleven: Literature and Gaming

Sceen shot from Heavy Rain

This week we are considering gaming narrative and whether or not the narrative experience of gaming might be considered a literary experience and thus whether games might be/become literature.

Your assignment this week is to read, You,  a new novel by the game designer, Austin Grossman. The events of the novel unfold over a background of a history of electronic games. The protagonist undertakes a quest that has him playing through games from the earliest computer games to games resembling those of the present generation. We will discuss the novel in class.

Also in class we will consider any games you think might be offer a literary experience. Here are some additional resources for our discussion. 

Play Everybody Dies by Jim Munroe

Play Shade by Andrew Plotkin

Game Studies an Online Journal

"Perspectives of Computer Game Philology"

Week Ten: Twenty-First Century Literature

Todd James Pierce

This week we will be considering three short stories. We will be reading two stories before class, one by Pierce called Colombine: The Musical and one chosen by Pierce to be read by our class called The Beauty Treatment by Stacey Richter from her collection My Date With Satan. In class we will read and discuss together another story by Pierce called Newsworld.  Copies of these stories are currently available on the course resource page.

Todd James Pierce is a novelist and short story writer known especially for his 2006 collection, Newsworld. He is a graduate of the MFA program and the University of California at Irvine and the Ph.D. program at Florida State University. He creative writing at California Polytechnic State University. He is currently working on a lengthy work of non-fiction recounting the history of the men and women who built the new generation of American theme parks in the 1950s. We will discuss some of this work in the second half of our class. Pierce will be talking about this history as well as showing rare footage of animators and park designers from this period in his on-campus talk Wednesday evening in the Academic Center Auditorium.

Next week the featured work is the novel You by the novelist and game designer Austin Grossman. The novel unfolds in a retrospective history of electronic gaming. 

Week Five: Genre Blending

Still of John Wayne from The Searchers

This week's featured work and required reading is the novel Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem. In this novel Lethem blends some of the tropes of science fiction with the atmosphere of a John Wayne western and the angst of a coming of age story. Please read the book before coming to class.

As a required movie I have suggested Moonrise Kingdom a story of coming of age and first love by the director Wes Anderson. The book itself is influenced by The Searchers, a 1956 John Ford movie considered one of the greatest westerns of all time and a penetrating study of American racism. Another film that makes a interesting accompaniment to the novel is the recent remake of True Grit. The novel, True Grit, by Charles Portis is also an interesting precursor to this week's reading.

In class we will review the radio play assignment.

Writing Assignment: For this week's blog posting please write a 350-500 word review of the novel focusing not on whether you liked the book or not, or whether you thought it was good or bad, but rather on a description of the experience of reading the book and what you think are the most defining aspects of the novel.

Next week is faculty professional day, we will meet again on Oct. 1 when we will discuss Allen Ginsburg's Howl.

Week Four: Pulp Fiction

Pulp Art by H.J. Ward

This week we are considering the case of pulp fiction and the general sorting of stories into categories and cultural events into genre. There are a number of books available to read on the course resources page and another list of works on the course syllabus. We will discuss the idea of genre as defined by metadata. We will begin our discussion of the medium of radio and look at its history as a model against we can observe some of the patterns of media. Pick any book from the list you would like to read. 

The writing assignment for this week is to take any scene from the novel you have read for this week and turn it into a radio play using primarily dialogue and sound effects to represent the theme. Record the radio play and post it as an audio file. 

Instead of a required movie to watch this week I am asking you to listen to some Radio programs. They will be listed under the radio subhead on the course resource page. Try to listen to at least 3 hours of radio from the 1930s and 1940s.

Book cover expouses ostensibly anti-gay sentiment while attempting to appeal to gay market segment.

Cover art by Paul Rader