English 2783
The Art of Fact: Contemporary Literary Journalism
Prompt # 10
6 October 2010
Tom Wolfe, his collection, and moving on
Remarks on the process
I'm still puzzled at how much of the process people don't appear to
grasp. I checked the weekly learning journal entries this morning
and only three people had posted one since last Monday. It might be
worth going back to reread the course introduction on this, and
especially Prompt #4.
I'm also puzzled that people took so long to read the fairly short
prefatory matter to Tom Wolfe's book, and post their choices of what
sections from the book they wanted to read. This whole process isn't
difficult, but in order to survive it you really do have to take
control of your time, or at least some of it.
Tonight in class
We're going to spend some time discussing Wolfe's introduction to The
New Journalism. We'll begin by considering what people wrote
about their reading of it on the forum -- I have some copies printed
out, and what we'll begin by doing is reading through these (as
though they were inksheds) and marking things we might want to talk
about -- questions, observations, etc. When you see something worth
discussing, underline it or put a star (or, even better, a comment)
in the right margin. Initial each as you read it, to keep things
organized.
When we're done, we'll do a round or two in which people will be
invited to indicate something written (by someone else) that you
think we should explore further. In part our purpose is going to be
to begin posing questions about Wolfe and the "New" Journalism that
we think might actually be answerable over the next couple of weeks.
I'll try to track explorable questions as we go.
There are going to have to be some deadlines between class meetings,
and some online discussion, because we're not going to be able to
meet next Monday. Here's the plan.
Reading Wolfe's selections
Everybody should, by this evening, have chosen, and have access to,
one designated piece from Wolfe's anthology to focus on. We'll talk
about the sources of these pieces a bit, and about finding things
like this on the Web and in the library, and why it matters.
When we've done that, your first task is to read it, carefully and
reflectively, bearing in mind all the issues we've been talking
about in class, and compose a thoughtful description of the piece in
which you give the rest of us as clear a feel as you can for how it
sounds, what it says, and what it does as a piece of journalism and
a piece of literature. Please remember that we're not interested in
whether you enjoy it our not (that's about you); we're
interested in what kind of writing it is and what we can learn about
literary journalism from your reading and description of it (that's
about it). Again, your job here is not to be a reviewer, but
to be a good journalist (you have an audience who will be learning
from what you have to say). You should spend as much time as you can
(remember the 7-hour rule) in the next few days on this, and post
your descriptive report on the New Journalism forum on the Moodle
page. Use Wolfe's chapter title as the title for your posting (e.g.,
"From In Cold Blood").
You'll need to post your report before Friday night, as we'll be
moving on after that.
For next week, there will be two related assignments. One will be to
add to your report by finding out more about its author and his
work, and the piece itself; the other will be to begin finding out
about the reaction to Tom Wolfe's move to establish something called
"The New Journalism." There will be prompts detailing how we'll do
both on the Web site before the end of the week.
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