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