Course Blog! Description and Pre-Semester Advice

Hello Everyone, and welcome to the course blog. This is the first time I have tried using a blog as a means of mass communication with a class, but I think it is going to work nicely. The first thing all of you should do is add this blog to your RSS feed. It exists exclusively for our class, and by adding it to your feed, you will be automatically notified whenever something new is posted. The "comments" section is open to anyone, so posting replies or comments should be easy for each of you, and I strongly encourage you to post whenever you have something to say. Blog participation will count the same as class participation, so for those of you who are hesitant to talk in class, this could be a great place for you to make up for slow days when you didn't have much to say.

What kinds of posts should you expect? I plan on using this blog to post and disseminate the following things: course information (including the syllabus and the schedule of dates and assignments), essay prompts, and useful background material on our texts. I also might add other things as the semester goes on, like discussion questions or external links and information. Generally, I plan to use this blog to communicate with all of you between class periods; I don't plan on posting too frequently, but I want to use this tool to engage each of you on a daily or bi-daily basis.

For now, I want to encourage all of you to GO AHEAD AND START READING OUR BOOKS FOR THIS SEMESTER! We have seven novels to get through, and if you begin now, it will help you keep up as the semester goes on. I imagine a lot of you are going to be with family for the holidays, and I don't know about you, but for me, that's a great time to get reading done.

If you're going to start reading, start with Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD. It will be the first novel we discuss, and it's also a pretty easy read. For those of you who are already considering the "watch the movie instead of read the book" move, I would caution you against it: although I imagine the movie (which should be here around Christmas) is pretty faithful to the book, I think you are much more likely to "get" the movie if you have already finished reading McCarthy's text. As always, the novel offers an author a more transparent canvas for introducing themes than a film offers its director, and although I am personally crazy about movies, I think (at least in this case), you should do the reading first. So, go ahead and get started, and if you have any questions, you can either email me directly (kennycamacho@hotmail.com) or post them here. I'll check this site at least once each day.

Take care, and I'm looking forward to meeting all of you in January.

Course Description

TRUTH IN FICTION

This course will focus on the relationship between “truth” and written “fiction.” Obviously, the word “fiction” suggests that a subject is not factual—that it is not “non-fiction” or “true.” However, the history of literature is in many senses a history of what we as a culture perceive and have perceived “Truth” to be. In the past, literature has been used to tell us who we are, where we come from, what we believe and how we should act. In more recent years, it has challenged the way we imagine ourselves, the way we imagine our world, the way we envision the future and, in some cases, the way we imagine our own histories. This class will investigate the kinds of “truth” available in the “untrue” art of fiction while also challenging us to reconsider the category of “fiction” itself. Students will complete two written essays, eight one-page, single-spaced journal entries, and a mid-term exam.




REQUIRED TEXTS (This list is subject to change)

WHITE NOISE, by Don DeLillo
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, by Jonathan Safran Foer
THE COLLECTOR, by John Fowles
THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy
LIFE OF PI, by Yan Martel
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
UNCLE TOM'S CHILDREN, by Richard Wright

* A course packet will also be available at Universal Copies before the beginning of the Spring semester