L358 16018 TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION
Edward Comentale

2:30p-3:45p TR (30 students) 3 cr., A&H.

This course will focus on American fiction as it responds to drastic changes in twentieth-century culture and registers the many promises and pains of an emerging modernity. We will read both modern and postmodern fictions as they address the major upheavals of twentieth- century life, such as the industrial transformation of the South, the demise of vernacular culture and the rise of mass consumerism, the transition from landed property to credit culture, the violence of world war, and battles over civil rights and gender equality. We will also read this fiction as it addresses the impact of these changes on the psychology of the individual and the terms of individual identity, as they dissolve traditional means of belonging and create new and radical forms of selfhood. Relatedly, we will explore this fiction as it marks a revolution in literary form, as it develops new means of description and storytelling (stream-of- consciousness, irony, collage, black humor, citation, etc.) to convey the emotional and psychological complexity of the modern world. Throughout, our reading will be supplemented by other cultural forms - we will look closely at how twentieth-century fiction incorporates and revolutionizes the standard techniques of vaudeville, folk and blues music, pulp fiction, film, slapstick, television, and graphic fiction.

Texts will most like include: William Faulkner - The Sound and The Fury; F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby; Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God; Dashiell Hammett – Red Harvest; Flannery O’Connor – A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories; Nathanael West – Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust; William Burroughs – Naked Lunch (Grove Press); Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper); Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections.

This is a discussion-based course, so both attendance and participation are appreciated. In addition, you will be assigned a brief in-class presentation and three formal papers of 5-6 pages each. Throughout, grading is based primarily on your commitment and effort to learn both inside and out of the classroom.