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Elegant, eclectic and clever, Gore Vidal reminds young writers that a peek into the fabulous history of the word essay, an etymological poke into the labyrinth of essay’s past, yields another word you might not have expected to run across: attempt. You see most people think of an essay as a finished product--a dull, lifeless, inert textual body with a static introduction, an "ABCD" body, and a clear lets-tie-up-all-the-pieces conclusion. You will not write this kind of essay, opting instead to produce something that is less product and more process. That’s right, I am asking with no little nostalgia to return to the origins of the essay. Your only task is to make a sincere attempt to produce a set of ordered reflections, a group of carefully arranged tasty words which respond in some way to the novels, films, short critical treatments and lectures you have worked through and will continue to work through in the coming weeks. Are you writing for HighLanzbomNericcioScott&Vogt? --in a way, of course you are. But in order to do well on this assignment, you must forget about me. The only people who count are the readers you write for: the audience for your paper. Who are they? Well, they are a lot like you. They are impatient and easily bored. They like specific details; they love direct, succinct quotes woven carefully into the fabric of an essay. If you are going to write about an image, they want to see a reproduction of that image. They hate misspellings and passive verbs. They like tangy language which is fresh and not filled with stupid clichés. Specifications: 3-5 pages tops, cleverly titled, double-spaced, 1-inch margins top and sides, proofread, chock-full of active verbs, due Tuesday November 25 at noon under my door, Adams Humanities 4117. Late papers will not be accepted. Early papers, in most cases, will be cherished lovingly--that is, you are encouraged to run your work by me in advance. All A-level critical speculations will integrate carefully selected direct quotations from the primary texts. One last bit of advice, do NOT plagiarize ANY material from the internet; unCITED material = PLAGIARISM; also, if you are going to "quote" a passage from an illustrated text, go to the bother of xeroxing the image and incorporating it INTO your essay. Choose ONE of the following prompts... 1 Fiction Redefined Redefine the term "Naked Eye/I" using Riley, Rivera-Garza and Hartley as your textual allies. 2 Dialectical Dance I have argued in class that we might benefit constructively by seeking to complicate our notion of the dialectical relationship that obtains between literature and culture, between narration and nation. Do the works we have read thus far support or dispute this effort? Use at least THREE works as you identify specific phenomena in culture that finds itself represented/critiqued/supplemented in literature. 3 Sexual Fiction or Fictional Sex Explore the relationship between sexuality and fiction in the work of Tanizaki and Rivera-Garza. 4 Damn Literary Criticism Find a piece of literary criticism on two or three of the works we have read this term in a scholarly journal published within the last 20 years that you TOTALLY disagree with. Incorporate a critique of this published scholarly study as you produce your own critically informed interpretation of one of the works we have read thus far this semester. 5 The Dating Game As we read in Walther, Vincent Van Gogh had a difficult time on the dating scene. A friend of Van Gogh, John Ellis, knows this interesting girl named Enid Coleslaw. He sets them up on a blind date. How do you think they’ll get along? Where will they go? What will they do? Will their date be successful? Will they meet again? Make up a scenario, incorporating specific knowledge you have from your readings of these two people. 6 Poetry and the Visual Arts Compare Martin Espada’s "Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits" to Van Gogh’s "Still Life with Open Bible." Find the commonality in each medium. 7 Chicano HipHop meets Japanese Infidelity You are Tomas Riley and are hanging out at Kimura’s house having dinner with Kimura, Ikuko, and Toshiko when Ikuko has a little too much to drink and blacks out. You overhear her mumbling, telling her plans to off her husband, the professor. You need to warn the professor, so you write him a letter. What do you say? Write the letter incorporating direct and/or adapted phrases you ‘sample’ from the California writer. 8 Funny Guys Write a short essay on the dynamics of contemporary COMEDY. If you look close enough, you’ll find humor in the writings of Tino Villanueva, Martin Espada, Daniel Clowes, and Michelle Serros. Find some examples on some or all of these writers. How does humor to help get their point across. 9 Interrogating the Hegemonic As we learned in class, "hegemony" is the domination of ruling beliefs through consent, the internalization of beliefs so deeply that people think they are voicing their own opinion when in reality they are voicing what the ruling system wants them to voice. Choose and three of the writers, artists, and poets we’ve studied so far, and talk about how they have been able to dissent from hegemonic rule. Use examples from their work. 10 Racism and the Psyche Using the works of Villanueva, Espada, and the writers in the Pacific Review, discuss the effects of racism on the psyche. 11 Self Destruction How does self-destruction operate in The Key, Ghostworld, and the work of Cristina Rivera-Garza? Any similarities, any correlations, any ideas on how the ancient urge to destroy oneself surfaces again and again? 12 Repetition Compulsions and Iteration Drive Discuss and draw cogent conclusions about repetition in the work of Tino Villanueva, Junichiro Tanizaki, and Hal Hartley. 13 Politics and Art In "A Massacre in Oaxaca" (Gobshite), Hutchinson writes: "These are ghost towns, full of humble adobe or concrete homes but empty of men. Migration to the US is the only way to earn a descent wage." What these men have to look forward to, however, is basically a form of servitude. Write an essay that explores the picture of migrant and low-wage workers, portrayed by three of the following: Espada, Villanueva, "Forest/Desert Vision" (Pac Review), Van Gogh, "White Owned" (Pac Review). Some discussion of how these artists are attmepting to influence politics through their art should be included. 14 Pondering Death In "Circus Man" (Pacific
Review), "Floozy" (Gobshite) and "Una & Ultima" (Pac Review), children
misunderstand something related to sexuality and create their own definition
or image to fill in the gap of their understanding. While sex is
one major gap in our knowledge as children, death is one of the major holes
in our understanding during adulthood. Find two instances in the
works we have read so far that show artists trying to grapple with the
issue of death. Then write a paper that compares these responses
to the unknown to those of the children in the pieces listed. Make
sure to use quotes and specific examples to fully answer the question.
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