English 125E

Other Readings and Media

Beckett, S.: Company; Byatt, A.S.: Possession: A Romance; DeLillo, D.: White Noise; Markson, D.: Wittgenstein's Mistress; McCarthy, C.: Blood Meridian; Mitchell, D.: Cloud Atlas; Nabokov, V.: Pale Fire; Pynchon, T.: Mason & Dixon; Roth, P.: American Pastoral; Silko, L.M.: Ceremony

Description

An exploration of the novels listed above, all of them written in the second half of the twentieth century. The course will move through these texts inductively, without any particular preconceptions or thematic axes to grind, in an effort both to understand these writers on their own terms and to discover among them commonly shared concerns and practices. There will be two shorter papers, a midterm, a final paper, and a final exam.