LT312 From lyric essay to Buzzfeed listicle: The contemporary craft of creative non-fiction

LT312 From lyric essay to Buzzfeed listicle:
The contemporary craft of creative non-fiction
Module: Author and Influence
Seminar leader: Florian Duijsens
Course times: Mondays 5pm-6:30pm, Thursdays 3:15pm-4:45pm
Seminar room: SR1
Email: f.duijsens@berlin.bard.edu

Course Description:
To apply the critical and academic skills of a liberal arts degree outside or after academia entails a
change in tone and often a change in subject as well. Yet to write for the internet and its assorted
outlets does not necessarily entail a dumbing down. While the likes of David Shields and John D’Agata
are challenging the borders of non-fiction, writers such as Molly Lambert, Cintra Wilson, and Carl
Wilson have shown that there is both a market and a place for sharp and funny essays on the likes of
Taylor Swift, Dior, and Céline Dion. In this intensive writing class we will each week read contemporary
writing and blogs alongside the authors and reporters who were their sharp and snarky forebears
(Dorothy Parker, Joan Didion, Pauline Kael). Through case studies on polarizing issues such as the
Oscars, Berghain, and Taylor Swift, we study the art of taking a critical stand. To hone our observation
skills, we will look at the reportage of Michelle Tea and John Jeremiah Sullivan. We will explore the
current crop of cooking blogs with guest speaker Luisa Weiss (The Wednesday Chef) and examine the
roots of Jezebel, The Hairpin, and Tavi Gevenson’s Rookie, all the while working on short exercises in
writing reviews, reportage, essays, short memoirs, and GIF-laden listicles, the best of which we will
pitch or place on the Bard College Berlin blog, as well as other online outlets such as Asymptote and
Stil in Berlin.

Requirements
Attendance & Readings
Attendance at ALL classes is expected. More than two absences (that is, absences from two sessions of
90 minutes) in a semester will significantly affect the grade for the course.
A class participation mark will be awarded on the basis of your engagement in class discussions. You
are required to purchase one key text for this class: Wilson, Carl. Let's Talk About Love: Why Other
People Have Such Bad Taste. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Note that this is the most recent, expanded
edition. All other texts (aside from a few video or image-based ones) are included in the class readers.
As this is a writing class, you will be expected to bring them to class with annotations and marginalia,
highlighting any striking arguments, tonal shifts, or turns of phrase, as well as any references you find
confusing or enlightening.

Writing Assignments & Final paper
The weekly assignments should be double-spaced and sent in to me via email by 11pm the day before
the next class. The inclusion of images, links, and videos is encouraged, but please ensure your work is
carefully proofread for typos, misspellings, garbled constructions, and basic errors in usage and/or
punctuation. For the workshops on April 16, 20, and 23, you’ll be assigned a date and will send your

paper to the entire class by 10pm three days before your assigned session. The following deadlines
apply for the submission of various parts of the final paper:

•      Final paper pitch – April 27, 2015
•      Paper abstract (200 words) – May 4, 2015
•      Final paper deadline – May 20, 2015

Policy on Late Submission of Papers
Essays that are up to 24 hours late will be downgraded one full grade (from B+ to C+, for example).
Instructors are not obliged to accept essays that are more than 24 hours late. If I agree to accept a late
essay, it must be submitted within four weeks of the deadline and cannot receive a grade higher than
a C. Thereafter, the student will receive a failing grade for the assignment.

Grade Breakdown
Class participation: 30%
Assignments: 30%
Final paper: 40%

Schedule*
Class 1: January 26
What is non-fiction: Is it that stack of books beside your dad’s bed or just a handy term to collect all
writing that isn’t fiction? While there is no satisfactory answer to this question, it might help us to look
at two definitions by the late David Foster Wallace, one of the writers haunting this syllabus. Here’s
one from his introduction to The Best American Essays 2007:

       “Writing-wise, fiction is scarier, but nonfiction is harder — because nonfiction’s based in reality,
       and today’s felt reality is overwhelmingly, circuit-blowingly huge and complex. Whereas fiction
       comes out of nothing. Actually, so wait: the truth is that both genres are scary; both feel like
       they’re executed on tightropes, over abysses—it’s the abysses that are different. Fiction’s abyss
       is silence, nada. Whereas nonfiction’s abyss is Total Noise, the seething static of every particular
       thing and experience, and one’s total freedom of infinite choice about what to choose to attend
       to and represent and connect, and how, and why, etc.”

This Total Noise includes everything, from AP news reports to recipes and text messages, so we should
narrow our focus to ‘creative non-fiction’, which sounds like it’d be both more fun and more
rewarding. Here’s one of Mr. Wallace’s syllabi on the topic:

       “English 183D is a workshop course in creative nonfiction, which term denotes a broad category
       of prose works such as personal essays and memoirs, profiles, nature and travel writing,
       narrative essays, observational or descriptive essays, general-interest technical writing,
       argumentative or idea-based essays, general-interest criticism, literary journalism, and so on.
       The term’s constituent words suggest a conceptual axis on which these sorts of prose works lie.
       As nonfiction, the works are connected to actual states of affairs in the world, are “true” to some
       reliable extent. If, for example, a certain event is alleged to have occurred, it must really have
       occurred; if a proposition is asserted, the reader expects some proof of (or argument for) its
       accuracy. At the same time, the adjective creative signifies that some goal(s) other than sheer

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   2
calendar accordingly.

truthfulness motivates the writer and informs her work. This creative goal, broadly stated, may
       be to interest readers, or to instruct them, or to entertain them, to move or persuade, to edify, to
       redeem, to amuse, to get readers to look more closely at or think more deeply about something
       that’s worth their attention. . . or some combination(s) of these. Creative also suggests that this
       kind of nonfiction tends to bear traces of its own artificing; the essay’s author usually wants us
       to see and understand her as the text’s maker. This does not, however, mean that an essayist’s
       main goal is simply to “share” or “express herself” or whatever feel-good term you might have
       got taught in high school. In the grown-up world, creative nonfiction is not expressive writing but
       rather communicative writing. And an axiom of communicative writing is that the reader does
       not automatically care about you (the writer), nor does she find you fascinating as a person, nor
       does she feel a deep natural interest in the same things that interest you. The reader, in fact, will
       feel about you, your subject, and your essay only what your written words themselves induce
       her to feel. An advantage of the workshop format is that it will allow you to hear what twelve
       reasonably intelligent adults have been induced to think and feel about each essay you write for
       the course.”

NON-FICTION, TASTE, AND, YES, CÉLINE DION

Class 2: January 29
One is always told to ‘write what you know’, but does that mean you should also ‘write about what
you know you like’? As Pierre Bourdieu famously found, our tastes are deeply entwined with our
identities, and thus also rooted in class, ethnicity, and gender. How, then, can a writer be objective
and herself at the same time, let alone ‘cool’? Does it depend on who we are writing for?
Reading:
- Wilson, Carl. Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. Bloomsbury
Publishing USA, 2007. Chapters 1-2, 7-8.
- Gay, Roxane. “Peculiar Benefits.” Bad Feminist. Hachette UK, 2014.
Assignment: Write about a guilty pleasure (300 words max).

Class 3: February 2
Looking at our likes and dislikes more closely (or askant), we might find them rooted in historical
developments of co-optation and appropriation that run counter to our expectation. It becomes clear
that aesthetic or critical judgment is often more complicated than generalist disses such as ‘kitschy’ or
‘sell-out’ (or, for that matter, hype-y screams of ‘revolutionary’) would suggest.
Reading:
- Sontag, Susan. "Notes on camp." Camp: Queer aesthetics and the performing subject (1964): 53-65.
- Frank, Thomas. The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip
consumerism. University of Chicago Press, 1997. Chapter 1.
Recommended additional reading:
 - Wilson, Carl. Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. Bloomsbury
Publishing USA, 2007. Chapters 3-4.
Assignment: Write about a popular pop-cultural artifact (band, TV show, movie, actor, etc.) you detest
(300 words max).

Class 4: February 5
All this relativization does not necessarily mean, however, that writers should always play nice. Some
of the very best (and bitchiest) writers package their harshest criticism in eminently quotable writing.
Can great writing transcend snobbery and judginess?

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   3
calendar accordingly.

Reading:
- Parker, Dorothy. “Reading and Writing: Re-enter Miss Hurst, Followed by Mr. Tarkington.” The New
Yorker, January 28, 1928.
- Parker, Dorothy. “Recent Books: Re-enter Margot Asquith — Something Young — A Masterpiece from
the French.” The New Yorker, October 22, 1927.
- Wilson, Cintra. “Critical Shopper: Playing to the Middle.” New York Times, August 11, 2009.
- Wilson, Cintra. “Critical Shopper: Animal Instincts Most Costly.” New York Times, Dec 13, 2007.
Recommended additional reading:
- Parker, Dorothy. “Reading and Writing: Mrs. Post Enlarges on Etiquette.” The New Yorker, December
31, 1927.
- Wilson, Cintra. “Critical Shopper: A Spirit in a Material World.” The New York Times, June 16, 2009.

Class 5: February 9
We have been warned of the dangers of writing that edges too far into irony as becoming irrelevant to
reality, but are we also in danger of going too far the other way, becoming too sensitive? Daily
outrages on Twitter and Facebook could certainly suggest something like that, but is that something
new? In a recent interview with VICE (of course), professionally controversial author and screenwriter
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, The Canyons) called the Millennials out for being ‘Generation Wuss’:

       “It's very difficult for them to take criticism, and because of that a lot of the content produced is
       kind of shitty. And when someone is criticized for their content, they seem to collapse, or the
       person criticizing them is called a hater, a contrarian, a troll. In a way it's down to the generation
       that raised them, who cocooned them in praise—four stars for showing up, you know? But
       eventually everyone has to hit the dark side of life; someone doesn't like you, someone doesn't
       like your work, someone doesn't love you back... people die. What we have is a generation who
       are super-confident and super-positive about things, but when the least bit of darkness enters
       their lives, they're paralyzed.”

What separates critics from trolls? How to navigate the divide between snark and outrage? How to
ward off the deep claws of irony and the dangers of sincerity? And can we even extrapolate this
struggle to a generation or a point in time?
Reading:
- Wallace, David Foster. "E unibus pluram: Television and US fiction." Review of Contemporary Fiction
13 (1993): 151-151.
- Markowitz, Miriam. “Millennials Aren’t Generation Y, We’re Generation Omega.” The Nation, May 30,
2014.
- Magill, R. Jay. “Irony, sincerity, normcore: Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, David Foster Wallace and the
end of rebellion.” Salon, May 18, 2014.
Assignment: Write about your generation or era, responding to at least one of these texts (300 words
max).

Class 6: February 12
And how to write about things that go against good taste, that are excessively dramatic or loud or
schmaltzy? And why is it that it’s often culture enjoyed by, or aimed at, women that’s called out for
being melodramatic, cheap, hysterical?
Reading:
- Jamison, Leslie. “In Defense of Saccharin(e).” The Empathy Exams: Essays. Granta Books, 2014.
- Wilson, Carl. Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. Bloomsbury

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   4
calendar accordingly.

Publishing USA, 2007. Chapters 5-6.
- Proust, Marcel. “In Praise of Bad Music.” Marcel Proust on art and literature, 1896-1919. Basic Books,
1997.

Class 7: February 16
With a plethora of media geared exclusively to women, the internet has proved a safe haven for
women to have their voices heard, but it’s also a place where the worst stereotypes are still reinforced.
Through Mary McCarthy’s trenchant analysis of the changing tone of 1950’s women’s magazines and
Goffman’s tools to analyze the representation of gender in photography, we take a look at today’s
websites ‘for women’.
Reading:
- McCarthy, Mary. "Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue" (1950). On the Contrary. New York: Farrar,
Straus, and Cudahy (1961): 174-92.
- Goffman, Erving & Gornick, Vivian. "Gender advertisements." (1979). vii-ix, 28-41, 48-53, 60-68.
Assignment: Each of you will choose a site and representative post/writer/column and present a short
report on its mode of address (tone, style, references, images, audience, advertisers) (300 words max).

THE MOVIES

Class 8: February 19
In the first of the case studies we’ll be tackling in this class, the next few classes will deal with the
Oscars: a yearly Hollywood extravaganza that is as much a celebration of cinema and red-carpet
‘couture’ as it is a celebration of a multi-billion dollar industry. It is an odd but typical collision of
cultural, pop-cultural, and economic events that echoes through ALL media. To help you prepare
making a pitch for your take on the evening and its awards, we’re reading an old recap that remains
remarkably true alongside contemporary articles that will get you up to speed on the various ‘races’
and snubs.
Reading:
- Wilson, Cintra. “You Will Now Watch the Hollywood Awards Ceremony.” A massive swelling: celebrity
re-examined as a grotesque, crippling disease, and other cultural revelations. Penguin Group USA,
2001. p. 173-195.
- Current Grantland coverage of the Oscars (to be announced a week before class)
Recommended background reading:
- Harris, Mark. “Difficult Women: The Oscar Race and the Looming, Avoidable Best Actress Nightmare.”
Grantland, December 2, 2014.
- Harris, Mark. “The Curse of ‘Crash’: The Narratives That Doom Oscar Movies.” Grantland, October 30,
2014.
Assignment: Pitch a story on the Oscars to the class (one line).

Class 9: February 23
Pauline Kael was one of the most influential film critics ever, yet she hated Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey, and she wasn’t the only one. Though she admired plenty of other highbrow films, she
also appreciated ‘trash’. And come to think of it, aren’t some of our favorite films ‘trashy’? In a
profession seemingly cut out for film majors, it might actually be valuable to sometimes go with one’s
‘gut’ over academic standards.
Reading:
- Kael, Pauline, “Trash, Art and the Movies.” Harper's, February 1969.
- Adler, Renata, “The Screen: '2001' Is Up, Up and Away: Kubrick's Odyssey in Space Begins Run.” New

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   5
calendar accordingly.

York Times, April 4, 1968.
- Leslie Jamison, “Short Term Feelings: What Hurts About "Short Term 12.”” Los Angeles Review of
Books, January 3, 2014.
Assignment: Oscar coverage due on the 24th (500 words max)

Class 10: February 26
We discuss our (written) responses to the actual event. Did the best films win?
Reading:
- Watch the Oscars and however much of the red-carpet pre-show you can bear.
- White, Armond. “Can't Trust It.” City Arts: New York's Review of Culture, 16 October, 2013.
- Morris, Wesley, “The Song of Solomon.” Grantland, October 24, 2013.

THE MUSIC

Class 11: March 2
We finish our journey with Céline for now, turning to the contemporary puzzle that is Taylor Swift,
arguably 2014’s most ‘popular’ artist in the US. Can one be popular and still good or cool? More
importantly, can T-Swizzle?
Reading:
- Wilson, Carl. Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. Bloomsbury
Publishing USA, 2007. Chapters 11-12, p. 135-161.
- Moody, Rick. “And I tried to understand the Taylor Swift phenomenon this morning, but I do not
understand.” The Rumpus, January 15, 2013.
- Moody, Rick. “I Dared Criticize Taylor Swift.” Salon, February 9, 2013.
- Wilson, Carl. “Contemplating Taylor Swift’s Navel.” Slate, October 29, 2014.
- Lambert, Molly. “Lana, Taylor & Michelle.” Grantland, February 1, 2012.
Assignment: Write about a successful but controversial pop-cultural figure (300 words max)

Class 12: March 5
In this split session we depart from a state of the art of online music writing to focus on one particular
complaint that can easily be extrapolated to the internet at large: Music writing has “now mostly been
reduced to a game of simply reacting to The Thing That Everyone Is Talking About”. Time then to
discuss the state of the internet at large in terms of voice. Who decides what The Thing is? What’s
more, how do we write (or even think) about The Thing in language that isn’t clichéd or cut and
pasted?
Reading:
- The Morning News, “Catching Up with the MP3 Bloggers.” The Morning News, November 7, 2014.
- Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language” (1946). In: The Collected Essays, Journalism and
Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angos, vol. 4, ed. 1, 127-40. New York: Harcourt,
Braze, Javanovich.
- Saunders, George. “The Braindead Megaphone.” The Braindead Megaphone: Essays. Penguin, 2007.

REPORTAGE

Class 13: March 9
In a change of pace from the movie/laptop screen and your headphones, our next topic will take us
outside (thank goodness winter is almost over). Reportage is a craft akin to anthropology in which

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   6
calendar accordingly.

one’s lived experience mixes with one’s research, and an eye for detail is crucial. We read three
masters of the craft —Michelle Tea, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and John D’Agata—each of whom takes
very different approach to writing about places and people, and the fact that they were there to
witness these events. Since they’re writing to more (and different) people than were present in these
places at these times, it is important to note who they are writing to here. What do they (feel) have to
explain, in what frame of reference do they place it, and who are they trying to convince of what?
Reading:
- Tea, Michelle. “Transmissions from Camp Trans.” The Believer, November 2003.
- Sullivan, John Jeremiah. “Upon This Rock.” GQ, February 2004. Also available in: Sullivan, John
Jeremiah. Pulphead: Notes from the Other Side of America. Random House, 2012.
- D’Agata, John. “What Happens There.” The Believer, January 2010.

Class 14: March 12
As we have seen in the previous session, you write differently for people already aware of the
phenomenon you’re describing, and not only that, it also completely depends on whether the reader
is thought to have any interest (or benefit) in seeking out the phenomenon for themselves. This
separates commercial travel writing from things like anthropological research, but there are many
shades in between. To better understand how Berlin has been portrayed in media reports, we will look
at various recentish pieces on Berghain, the techno club in many ways as synonymous with the city as
Frau Merkel, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and Currywurst. How does the club relate
to the city, and how does the writer relate to the club, and does it matter whether the club cares it’s
being written about?
Reading:
- Rogers, Thomas, “Berghain: The Secretive, Sex-Fueled World of Techno's Coolest Club.” Rolling
Stone, February 6, 2014.
- Paumgarten, Nick, “Berlin Nights.” New Yorker, March 24, 2014.
- Garcia, Luis-Manuel, “Berghain & Panorama Bar.” Slow Travel Berlin, December 13, 2010.
- Krishtalka, Sholem, “A Berlin Diary: Snax.” Tumblr, Parts 1-10 (trigger warning, NSFW),
http://aberlindiary.tumblr.com/post/94731006297/snax-part-1 etc. through
http://aberlindiary.tumblr.com/post/94730918007/snax-part-10 [Not included in the reader]
Additional reading:
- Turner, Zeke, “Brooklyn on the Spree.” New York Times, February 23, 2014.
Assignment: Go someplace and write about it for an audience unfamiliar with it (300 words max).

Spring Break

I CAN HAZ INTERNET

Class 15: March 23
A look at the economy behind our clicks and a meditation on how those clicks shape online ‘content’.
Cats are the only topic that can really challenge porn in online omnipresence, but why cats? And how
do companies capitalize (‘cattitalize’) on this worldwide love of cats?
Reading:
- Lewis-Kraus, Gideon. “In Search of the Living, Purring, Singing Heart of the Online Cat-Industrial
Complex.” Wired, August 31, 2012.
- Rowan, David. “How BuzzFeed mastered social sharing to become a media giant for a new era.”
Wired, January 2, 2014.

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   7
calendar accordingly.

- Honan, Mat. “Inside the Buzz-Fueled Media Startups Battling for Your Attention”, Wired, December 17,
2014.
Recommended additional reading:
- Rice, Andrew. “Does BuzzFeed Know the Secret?” New York Magazine, Apr 7, 2013.

Class 16: March 26
As we’ve seen, the listicle is a ‘disruptive’ ‘innovation’ that has fueled Buzzfeed’s success, yet the list as
a form of creative non-fiction has been with us since Sumerian times, and even today it can be used to
actually disrupt stalemated conversations and innovate the way we think (and talk) about the world.
Reading:
- Shang-yin, Li. “Miscellany.” In: D’Agata, John. "The lost origins of the essay." (2009). p. 51-55.
- Shōnagon, Sei. “The Pillow Book.” In: D’Agata, John. "The lost origins of the essay." (2009). p, 57-83.
- Zimmerman, Edith. “Women Laughing Alone With Salad.” The Hairpin, January 3, 2011.
- Ortberg, Mallory on art: http://the-toast.net/category/artwork/ [not included in the reader]
- Flaubert, Gustave and Greg Norminton. Dictionary of received ideas. Penguin, 1994. Excerpts A-B.
- Cole, Teju. “In Place of Thought.” Page-Turner Blog (The New Yorker), August 27, 2013.
- Coupland, Douglas. “Unclassy.” Financial Times, January 10, 2014.
Assignment: Write a listicle comprising at least 10 items (use of images or videos is allowed).

Class 17: March 30
With the relative success of #readwomen2014, many have noted that the internet has enabled the
recent mainstreaming of certain feminist critiques. We saw some of Ortberg’s modern classics in that
field last week, and this week will delve a little deeper into her work, and that of others who have
‘changed the conversation’ about gender in online discussions.
Reading:
- Mesle, Sarah. “Sarah Mesle on Texts from Jane Eyre: Srsly.” Los Angeles Review of Books, November
6, 2014.
- Ortberg, Mallory. “Texts from Jane Eyre.” The Hairpin, July 9, 2012.
- Bechdel, Alison, and Liz Wallace. "The rule." Dykes to Watch Out For (1985).
- Flynn, Gillian. “Cool Girl.” Gone Girl: A Novel. Random House LLC, 2012. p. 222-TK.
Recommended reading:
- Solnit, Rebecca. “Men Explain Things to Me: Facts Didn't Get in Their Way.” Tom’s Dispatch, April 13,
2008.
- Rabin, Nathan, “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: Elizabethtown.” A.V. Club, January
25, 2007.

WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE

Class 18: April 2
We’ve written about other people’s work, about other places, and studied style, but what of that other
popular iteration of the essay, the personal essay or the memoir? Are our memories reliable enough to
use in our writing, and are other people’s? Can memories provide a key to a moment or era?
Reading:
- Hempel, Amy. “The Harvest.” The collected stories of Amy Hempel. Simon and Schuster, 2007.
- Brainard, Joe. I Remember. Penguin Books, 1995. p. 7-29.
- Sicha, Choire. Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City.
Harper, 2013. P. 3-27.
Assignment: Write about a memory (yours or someone else’s) (300 words maximum).

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   8
calendar accordingly.

Easter Monday

Class 19: April 9
The quest from Class 18 continues…
Reading:
- Didion, Joan. “The White Album,” We tell ourselves stories in order to live: Collected nonfiction. No.
304. Random House LLC, 2006.
- Biss, Eula. "Goodbye to All That." The North American Review (2005): 3-7. Also in: Biss, Eula. Notes
from no man's land: American essays. Macmillan, 2011.

SPORTS?

Class 20: April 13
Didn’t see this coming? After a series of ‘girly’ topics, here are two remarkable essays on the male-
dominated field of sports, each of which tackles its media representation and physical dimension in
very different ways.
Reading:
- Rankine, Claudia. “Be Angry.” Citizen: An American Lyric. Macmillan, 2014.
- Wallace, David Foster. “Federer as Religious Experience.” New York Times, August 20, 2006.

WORKSHOPS

Class 21: April 16
In these classes we will ‘workshop’ student writing, each class reading and discussing the writing of
four or five classmates. A workshop is an exercise in editing as well as in being edited—as challenging
as it is ultimately rewarding. All students are expected to make detailed, respectful, critical notes on
each piece of writing, handing them to their authors at the end of each session.
Workshop Group 1
Assignment: Write/expand a piece (600 words max) for discussion in your assigned workshop session,
and send them to the entire class no later than 10pm, April 13 (Group 1), April 17 (Group 2), and April
20 (Group 3).

Class 22: April 20
Workshop Group 2

Class 23: April 23
Workshop Group 3

Class 24: April 27
At this point, we’ve gotten a clear picture of the essay, a form that can include EVERYTHING. Yet some
work well and some don’t. Perhaps that is because, as the Swiss writer Robert Walser says, a good
essay is “a quarry, a landslide, a raging fire that may be splendid to look at but is also very sad.” Or
maybe it should be something else, as Leslie Jamison says:

       “I often think of the subject of an essay as something like a courtyard full of questions—
       questions about grief, or longing, or memory, or empathy. Writing means walking a furious

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   9
calendar accordingly.

labyrinthine path in order to peer at them from every possible direction. Every mode of inquiry—
       history, memoir, criticism—is a doorway that opens onto this courtyard from a different angle.
       Each glance offers some gift: the pages of a medical acting script, or the humming heart of an
       fMRI scanner; the grainy resolution of old photographs or the tiny time-machines of old text
       messages. You can gaze down on the past from the obstructed aerial view of retrospection, or
       you can gaze up from a hospital table, the folds of a paper gown crinkling underneath the goose
       bumps on your arms. That’s the thrill of pushing the personal essay beyond itself: the electricity
       created between erudition and flesh is something fierce. You can move from the rigors of
       scientific inquiry to the pale vulnerability of an IV piercing a vein. You can travel that distance in
       a sentence—if curiosity demands it, if the sentiment can hold it.
              When you’re lying on a hospital gurney, it can feel like there is nothing else in the world—
       nothing but your fear, or your chill, or the promise of anesthesia, or the shadows of the surgeons
       who are about to cut you open. It can feel that way—and that feeling is a truth, but what it
       believes isn’t true at all: because you’re not the only thing in the world—the only person who
       has ever hurt, the only person who has ever worn a paper gown. In truth, there is a whole world
       beyond you, in that moment and always—a whole world of other hurting bodies, of surgeons
       and their training; there’s a whole world of hearts, heart anatomies and heart myths, hearts
       transplanted and broken. There is so much outside the false cloister of private experience; and
       when you write, you do the work of connecting that terrible privacy to everything beyond it.”

As we gear up for the final papers, we will discuss everybody’s ideas for final papers in the form of two-
line pitches presented to the entire class. Support comes from Alexander Chee, Cheryl Strayed, and
Bernard Cooper, three writers who have spun non-fiction into gold-star ‘landslides’ and ‘courtyards,’
facing the raw materials of life and somehow coming away wiser.
Reading:
- Chee, Alexander. “The Querent.” The Morning News, August 10, 2011.
- Strayed, Cheryl. “Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column #48: Write Like A Motherfucker.” The
Rumpus, August 19, 2010. Also available in: Strayed, Cheryl. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and
Life from Dear Sugar. Random House LLC, 2012.
- Strayed, Cheryl. “Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column #39: The Baby Bird.” The Rumpus, June 3,
2010. Also available in: Strayed, Cheryl. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.
Random House LLC, 2012.
- Cooper, Bernard. "The Clack of Tiny Sparks: Remembrances of a Gay Boyhood." Harper’s Magazine,
January 1991.
Assignment: Pitch 2000-word essay to the group in two lines or less

Class 25: April 30
We return to a piece of reportage from Class 13, encounter the lyric essay, and face DFW’s twin
abysses.
Reading:
- Shields, David. Reality Hunger. Random House LLC, 2010. Chapters n-q p. 131-150 (sections 384-457,
p. 214-217).
- D’Agata, John, and Jim Fingal. The lifespan of a fact. New York, NY: WW Norton, 2012. Chapters 6-9, p.
75-123.
- Lewis-Kraus, Gideon. “The Fact-Checker Versus the Fabulist.” New York Times, February 21, 2012.

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   10
calendar accordingly.

Class 26: May 4
Send in a 200-word abstract of your final paper. While you are working on those final essays (or
starting to, really), we get a glimpse of a possible future as we talk to a successful blogger: Luisa Weiss,
aka The Wednesday Chef. She will curate the readings and will answer your (parents’) most burning
question: Can you really make money writing on the internet?
Reading:
TBA

Class 27: May 11
Catching up with Céline: In this final class we look back on Céline Dion and on Carl Wilson’s book,
discuss if his approach was effective, and see how the two assigned readings elaborate/critique his
method.
Reading:
- Juzwiak, Rich. “Céline Dion is Amazing.” Fourfour, January 2, 2008:
http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2008/01/cline-dion-is-a.html [not included in the reader]
 - Juzwiak, Rich. “Céline Dion is STILL Amazing.” Fourfour, May 19, 2010:
http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2010/05/cline-dion-is-still-amazing.html [not included in the
reader]
- Powers, Ann. “If the Girls Were All Transported.” In: Wilson, Carl. Let's Talk About Love: Why Other
People Have Such Bad Taste. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.
- Brooks, Daphne. “Let's Talk About Diana Ross (In Memory of Trayvon Martin).” In: Wilson, Carl. Let's
Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.

Final paper due: May 20

* The schedule is subject to change. You will be informed about any changes via email. Please always update your   11
calendar accordingly.