Syllabus -- ENG 683
Time and Location: 6:30 pm to 9:20 -- MHRA 3204
Email: Craig
Cell Phone: 919 259-0040 (It’s best to text me.)
Home Phone: 919 732-1857
Office: MHRA 3312
Office Hours, Wednesday, 5:30 to 6:30 and by appointment.
Reading List and Schedule:
August 19th, brief introduction, signup sheet for essays, and watching the movie version of Wonder Boys.
August 26th --The Wonder Boys(Michael Chabon)
September 2nd -- Tinkers (Paul Harding)
September 9th -- The Light In the Piazza (Elizabeth Spencer)
September 16th -- So Long, See You Tomorrow (William Maxwell)
September 23d -- Double Indemnity (James M. Cain)
September 30th -- Stoner (John Williams)
October 7th -- The Runaway (the Alice Munro collection of stories)
October 14th --Yellow Birds (Kevin Powers)
October 21st -- Hotel du Lac (Anita Brookner)
October 28th -- The Shell Collector (Anthony Doerr)
November 4th -- Mary Reilly (Valerie Martin)
November 11th -- Shipwrecks (Akira Yoshimura)
November 18th -- Closely Watched Trains (Bohumil Hrabal)
This is a graduate level course and it is expected that you will treat it as such, and by this I mean the student will be prepared, do the work on time, speak up in class, and realize that this is a serious academic endeavor.
As I will say in my introductory remarks, the title of this course, The Structure of Fiction, is a misnomer, and that I think it is more accurate to say that it should be called The Effects of Fiction.
By this I mean not only will we consider such basic items of fiction as structure, but also look at how other elements contribute to the effect of a novel, such as character, language, voice, the use of expectation, and the nature of the unstated, among other items.
It is expected that all work will be original. Cheating, in any form, will not be tolerated.
Attendance is mandatory. More than one unexplained absence can result in being dropped from the class. This is particularly important since we only meet once a week.
Grades will be determined by two elements, equal in weight, class participation and the essays each student will write.
By class participation, I don’t mean giving one opinion and then being silent. I mean contributing to our discussions in an ongoing manner.
Each student will write at least two essays. On the first night I will pass around a signup sheet so that you will know, long in advance, when your work is due.
One thing you must not do is sign up to deliver an essay for a specific date and then not send it. If something goes wrong, let me know, and not an hour before your essay is due. Give me some warning so that I can make an adjustment.
For each class we will have two essays, one devoted to the structure of a novel we have read that week and one devoted to the meaning of the novel. These two, of course, will overlap, but these essays will be the beginning of our discussion of the books we are going to read.
These essays will be due, by way of Blackboard, on the Sunday evening before the Wednesday we are going to discuss them.
If you don’t know how to use Blackboard, I will pass out a little manual that explains how to send an essay to every member of the class.
I will be in my office an hour before class, and if you want to talk to me, please come by then. If this isn’t convenient, send me a note by email, and we will make an appointment.
But, in addition to these bureaucratic items, I’d like to mention a few definitions that have to do with what I mean by structure.
On the first night, we will read a two page story, Prendergast’s Daughter, which we will use as a way to make clear the meaning of some terms we are going to use.
But the first thing I would like to say is that the magic of fiction is that it can make the chair you are sitting on disappear.
I have been thinking about this class for some time, and, in fact, you could say that I have been thinking about it since I published or wrote my first novel, which, in the way that a novelist measures his life, not in years, but in books, was fourteen novels ago.
Here are some of the terms we are going to be using.
I think we need to begin with a definition of structure.
The first part of a definition, I think, is that structure (in all its various guises) is something, however mysterious, that builds a story,that makes one event or detail lead to another.
In addition, we will consider such items as the effect of voice, character, language, vision, and the unstated. All of these have an impact and a sort of structure, too.
I’d like to be a little more specific in terms of a definition.
In the two page story we will read on the first night, and in general, the first element of structure is a beginning. Usually, this will have an essential ingredient, what I call dramatic structure, by which I mean some detail, some event, some circumstance will come into play in a manner that makes us curious and that makes uswant to keep reading. It can be a matter of voice, as in, say, Moby Dick, or it can be a specific eventthat makes us want to know what is going to happen.
So, the first thing, in the most general terms, is a beginning that, in one way or another, makes us curious or intrigued.
And in this beginning, we have an essential item, a sort of fractal that will be endlessly repeated, in different forms, in almost every aspect of structure of the novels we look at.
So, in addition to wanting to know what is going to happen, two other things usually take place.
The first one is an unspoken communication between author and reader. The author is saying, or is doing somethingto you, the reader, although it is never mentioned. But the author is often saying, in unspoken terms, I’m telling you a story, or I am giving you information, and you understand it, and so there is a kind of understanding between us. We are in it together. I know something, the author implies, that you want to know. We’re kind of partners. Or, we are doing a kind of business together.
This is very subtle and has to do with trust and voice, elements of structure that we will get into later. But in the beginning, let’s just say that this communication is one of the things that is going on between author and reader and it often is a critical part of how beginnings work. The writer winks at us. He or she is saying, So, you want to know, don’t you?
But there is something else.
A secondary item is taking place, too. If you are a writer it will come in handy or, I should say, if you are a writer it will be rocked ribbed essential.
This setting up of curiosity makes room for the reader to enter the story. That is, when you are curious, when you are beginning to be drawn in as a reader, when you can feel the first slight tug of the story pulling on you, you are entering the room that is being left for you. And, as this advances, as you become more an occupant of that room the writer makes for you, the more you will experience the magic of fiction, which, as I say, is the item that makes the chair you are sitting on disappear.
Flannery O’Connor, by the way, says that fiction is a matter of experience for the person reading it.
So, often structure, in a beginning, will make room for the reader.
A secondary matter, if the author has set up a beginning with dramatic structure is this: something must happen.
So, after the beginning, we have a middle, in which the story becomes more complicated. Often, with dramatic structure, the middle will have a surprise, or better yet, a series of of surprises.
And this suggests something else about this beast we are trying to describe, that is, fictional structure. It usually or often surprises the reader. And, usually, it is not a gratuitous surprise, but one that illuminates something for the reader.
For instance, in an Alice Munro story, “Face,” a young woman, who out of exceedingly complicated motives, too complicated, I think to sum up, nevertheless cuts her face with a razor to be like a man she loves or at least feels guilty about who has a birth mark on his face.
There are an infinite number of varieties of surprises, because, as nearly as I can tell this is what the dramatic structure of successful fiction does. Not only does it lead us on, it surprises us, too, and the more believable the surprise the better (as in, say, the Great Gatsby, where Tom Buchanan’s mistress is run over by Gatsby’s car).
So, the middle will be more complicated and will usually have some surprises, and these surprises have two aspects: they inform, and yet they add more tension and produce more curiosity. And this, of course, is the way that structure keeps us in that space the author has made for us.
Andthe dramatic structure is not static, that is, we don’t have just one surprise, but a series, one event making us curious and leading us to the next event, or surprise, that makes us more curious yet.
Finally, in this generic description of structure, we have the last part, which I think we must call the end or the conclusion. Here, the items we have been curious about are resolved.
Mixed in with the resolution, or the entire story for that matter, is an item I think is of critical, essential importance. And that is the unstated. The subject that the writer is concerned about, and is often the motivation for writing a story or a novel, but is not mentioned. And the odd thing is that by not stating this item, it almost always seems bigger, since a summation usually reduces the meaning of a story.
This matter of the unstated is in every book we are going to read.
For instance, in the Great Gatsby, we have many unstated items, but surely we can say that they include these: some romantic dreams are toxic, that the American class system is brutal, although no one talks about it much, and in a marriage, an imbalance in power can be toxic, too.
In addition to this basic notion of structure, we will be considering some other aspects, and they are:
Vision
The social world of the novel
Details that validate what is happening
Voice
Sensibility
Language
Character
Humor
The use of expectation
Finally, as for me, by way of introduction, I should say that for many years, twenty five or so, I made a living as a writer and sometime screen writer, and did this in Vermont. I have published fourteen novels (with next one on the way...) and they have been translated into 10 languages and also published in England. Anyway, 14 novels, ten languages, and I have had fiction in the Paris Review, Esquire, and I have worked for the New York Times and the Washington Post. And I’ve had the usual prizes, Harper Saxton, Guggenheim, National Endowment, An Award in Literature from the American Academy, etc.
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