Contemporary Narrative Reports

In-Class Contemporary Narrative Reports
(5 minutes + Handout for class)

Please choose a contemporary (no older than 1970) narrative (novel, play, film, or digital work) not on the required reading list for which you will become the “speaker” for the seminar. Your chosen narrative should have some significant feature that marks it as outside mainstream narrative form or function. (If you have a question about whether a particular narrative would be appropriate, please talk to me.) You may want to read or view a work connected to your project. The purpose, as with the research report, is for members of the seminar to share knowledge and perspectives on the subject by bringing a selection of additional texts into the ongoing discussion.

A report should introduce the text to the members of the seminar quickly and comparatively by outlining the work’s narrative innovations and hermeneutical challenges in connection to works we will read in common. If there’s a connection to an assigned text, I’d like to schedule your report for the same week – for example, you might read another work by an assigned writer or you might want to view a work which replies to, or tropes on, an assigned text.

I’d like you to arrange the following kinds of information on a one-page, single-spaced handout, two-sided if necessary. Please duplicate enough to distribute one to each member of the seminar.

Bibliographic Data: Everything needed to write a citation according to MLA style, plus page length. Please note the existence (or absence) of index, bibliography, illustrations, appendices, or other features.

Excerpts from the Text: Please reproduce two or three short excerpts which suggest something important about the work that you’d like to comment upon in your spoken report. If you are discussing a film or digital work, these excerpts may take the form of clips or bookmarked moments in the work.

Excerpts from Reviews: Please find at least two reviews or critical articles (more if you have room on your pager or if you find there’s controversy in the assessments) and transcribe (photocopy and paste-up, if you like) a telling sentence or paragraph from each. Cite the sources for your reviews.

Along with the handouts, I’d like you to present a spoken commentary: Please prepare your own remarks about the work for informal presentation in five minutes (no longer) to the seminar. In your report, describe your reaction as reader/viewer/enactor of the work, your sense of its potential uses for other researchers, and your assessment of the work’s strengths and weaknesses. If you wish and if you have room on the handout page, add some notes keyed to your remarks.

A short listing of potential narratives for you to consider presenting is below.

A (Very) Selective List of Related “Problematic”
Contemporary Narratives

• Amis, Martin. Time’s Arrow, or, The Nature of the Offense
• Aoineko, dir. Fragile Machine
• Bantock, Nick. Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence
• Barlow, Sam. Aisle
• Barth, John. Coming Soon!
• Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions (especially Fictions and The Aleph)
• Burgess, Brooke, dir. Broken Saints (DVD version)
• Calvino, Italo. The Castle of Crossed Destinies
• Cortázar, Julio. Hopscotch
• Coupland, Douglas. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
• Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves
• Doctorow, E. L. City of God
• Eco, Umberto. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
• Figgis, Mike, dir. Time Code
• Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen
• Gaiman, Neil and Dave McKean. Mirrormask: The Illustrated Film Script
• Gaiman, Neil. Sandman (especially Endless Nights)
• Gillespie, William, Scott Rettberg, Dirk Stratton, and Frank Marquardt. The Unknown
• Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Hesse, Herman. The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi)
• Jaime Kane 1982-2005 (15-day alternate reality game)
• Joyce, Michael. Twelve Blue
• LeGuin, Ursula K. Always Coming Home
• Luhrmann, Baz, dir. Moulin Rouge
• McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, #16 (especially Robert Coover’s “Heart Suit”) or #13 (ed. Chris Ware)
• Mitchell, David. Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas
• Montfort, Nick and Scott Rettberg. Implementation
• Moore, Alan. Watchmen
• Moulthrop, Stuart. Reagan Library
• Moulthrop, Stuart. Victory Garden (available from Eastgate Systems)
• Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire
• Nolan, Christopher, dir. Memento
• Pavic, Milorad. Dictionary of the Khazars or Landscape Painted with Tea
• Rodriguez, Robert and Frank Miller. Sin City
• Spiegelman, Art. Maus or In the Shadow of No Towers
• Tykwer, Tom, dir. Run Lola Run
• v., isabella. … she’s a flight risk
• Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions
• Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest
• Ware, Chris. Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth
• Winterson, Jeanette. The Powerbook
• Wittig, Rob. Blue Company
• See also: Rettberg, Scott. Kind of Blue