NOT PYNCHON: "it's all about me"
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Sun Nov 20 06:16:08 CST 2016
Seems I may be teaching a course next semester at my local university on
EITHER some modern short stories or THE SIXTIES.
I pitched the short stories one as not famous stories--what do I
know,anyway, about
what is canonical or not at colleges today?--- but interesting ones that
might not need
the usual kind of classroom glossing that most are used to....no
symbol-finding
(which I love, ya know) and no overly historical "understanding" necessary
to get and like.
My key theme will be......the stories will connect with your life straight
on ...
not just your literary ideas --if I'm right and we all share how, behind my
wide flashlight beam. I hope.
Or Sort of like a Group Read of my chosen stories.
Anyway, I am soliciting suggestions from this group that usually has some.
To start, one story I have self-chosen is Cortazar's AXOLOTL--the one
reputedly translated by
Pynchon in that original US collection--because of the theme of entering
another mind/world--a metaphor for what some fiction can do, is why.
I may add Salinger's A PERFECT DAY FOR BANANAFISH--called a perfect story
by Nabokov--and
Murakami's 'answer", A PERFECT DAY OR KANGAROOS...because...stories
talking about each other might be a new thing to many....
Re: The Sixties, the only book I will (loosely) "require" is The Crying of
Lot 49, which won't surprise
anyone. I will be signposting the decade myself. Real work required by me
but, again, any thought will be attended to if you care to take the time to
express them.
(I have already decided to start the SIXTIES in 1959, per Morris
Dickstein's Gates of Eden. And, I think, to use Orwell's great observation
that there are at least two major cultural strains in almost any block of
history.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20161120/1699c418/attachment.html>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list