English 2783
The Art of Fact: Contemporary Literary Journalism
Prompt # 20
25 November 2013
Working toward closure
What we decided
As I said in the last prompt,
What I want to achieve over the next week (or two) is a
chance for those who have been consistently engaged in the work of
this course to get some closure. This normally would involve some
work with texts by scholars, critics, or historians about literary
journalism (the sort of thing we used a few weeks ago, starting
with this list of texts and the working
bibliography), and then, in that context, allowing everybody
to choose one central practitioner and take a sustained look at
one piece and its context. In each case, of course, what I would
hope we'd get was a public report from each person about this, so
that as a preparation for a final learning reflection everyone
would be able to use the work of others along with her own to
create a final synthesis of her learning. We don't have time to do
both.
The consensus among those who were in attendance was that closure
could best be achieved by the latter choice.
What to do
Decide on a writer to focus on. It needs to be someone who is a
practicing and well-regarded writer of literary journalism, and
someone whom we have not so far focused on, and someone that no one
else is working on this week. In order to make sure of the latter,
you need to email the class list with your choice. First come, first
served. (I reserve the right to veto choices; I want to be as sure
as I can that everyone is working on a writer that it will be useful
for the rest of us, as well as you, to know more about.
Do a quick research job to find out what you can about the writer,
and do a profile. Choose a substantial piece by your writer (a
substantial chunk of a book would do), read it, and write the kind
of descriptive report we've been working with for the last couple of
weeks (but, of course, better).
Post the works -- it should be a two-part essay, with references
(that is, identify the sources of your profile, and the
bibliographic information on the specific work you read) on the same
forum -- "finding
literary nonfiction" -- we've been working with.
Do it, as usual, in time for people to read it and reply before
class time next week.
Forward to next
prompt
Back to the previous prompt
To the list of prompts
To the main course Web site