Summer 2001

Armstrong Atlantic State University
ENGLISH 7757
Contemporary World Literature
Dr. Richard Nordquist

                        Final Notes

RELATED SITES
Contemporary Lit.
English Resources
Other course sites



WORLD LIT ONLINE

SECTION 3

LINKS
--about.com
--Canadian Lit.
--Contemporary Lit.
--Postcolonial

Comments from a reader:

Sula. Agh! The burning question is: Why did Morrison create such an unsympathetic character? As a student I can answer that. As a critic. But not as a reader. Why do I want to read about a woman I don’t care about? She kills a boy and never feels anything after ward. Then she has the nerve to claim she’s a victim. Come on! And yet I like her! Not as a person, but as a character. She’s great. Why? Because she makes me feel. What do I feel? Disgust, a tinge of guilt for judging her like the rest of the town does, even hatred at times. In other words, I react to her. She has affected me.

Thing Fall Apart. This was my second time reading this book. I enjoyed it again. I especially like the beginning—with its mythical evocations—and the end—with its sense of tragedy and irony. The deserved social importance of this novel aside, it works at the most important level any novel should work at: It’s a great story.

Midnight’s Children. Wow! This book will stay with me for a very long time. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I had a problem getting into it at first, but once I did I found it (yes I’m going to say it) impossible to put down. Every cliché of positive review and criticism has and should be used for this book. It’s just amazing. After finishing my notes for this book I had to force myself to begin my next reading assignment. I wanted to change my next assignment to a re-reading of Midnight’s Children. I literally had to hide it from myself. How pitiful is that? It is a book that calls for and deserves to be read again and again, both for what it says and how it says it. Wow!

A Lesson Before Dying. I didn’t particularly like this book. Not for what it was, but for what it could’ve been. Why don’t I get to see more of the man at the center? Jefferson. I think Gaines sold his creation short by spending so little time on Jefferson. Reading Jefferson’s journal entries was great. The entire journal chapter is very powerful. And maybe it’s worth waiting for. Maybe. I just don’t get enough of the guy in the book. I want to spend more time visiting him and listening to him, to his story, to his life. I don’t appreciate Grant telling me that Jefferson is important. I want to see why he is important for myself. Show me how Jefferson affects him and the town. Don’t tell me he does so.

Libra. Disorienting. Confusing. Unsettling. Frustrating. I liked it!

One Hundred Years of Solitude. Beautiful writing. I just wish I could have seen more of what occurred in Macondo rather than being told what occurred.

The Art of the Story. Most of the selections were a pleasure to read. There were only a few I didn’t enjoy. The ones that I really liked reading wound up being the ones I decided to write about for this course. From Amis’ ‘The Immortals" to Cisneros’ "Never marry a Mexican" to Saro-Wiwa’s "Africa Kills Her Sun" these stories succeeded as stories first and "literature" second. As a reader this is what I look for. Midnight’s Children is my favorite book from this course. But The Art of the Story comes close. It simply delivers what it promises … great stories dealing with numerous issues and themes from numerous points of views in numerous styles.

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Given a senior class of Advanced Placement students I would definitely include Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in the syllabus. It offers so much and can be approached in so many ways. I also think that students can relate to it on many levels. With today’s emphasis on cultural diversity in English classes, as well as the actual diversity of the student population, this novel presents an excellent opportunity for students to connect with a culture other than the ones they are used to reading about. But the novel should not be relegated to just a cultural study. It has elements that can appeal to many different kinds of readers, different kinds of minds, and these elements can be used to teach it in many different ways.

As for the rest of the books we have studied this term, I would include all of them. Of course, not with the same enthusiasm as Rushdie’s. They are all worthy of study, even if I do not particularly like all of them. Those I didn’t enjoy might make for good discussion. For example, I found Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying somewhat flawed, especially the handling of Jefferson. My students might not feel the same way. The things that Gaines is saying in his novel are too important to exclude just because I did not fully enjoy reading it. But I would not teach it, or present it, to my class as a great book.

The one book from this term that I can see myself having difficulty teaching would be Libra. The reason being that I find it the least muti-faceted of the selections. I’m sure it can be approached from a number of views, given enough leeway. But I only see one: historical. If I were covering the issue of history as it pertains to the individual or society, then I could teach DeLillo’s work.

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My perspectives on the issue of literature representative of culturally diversity:

When I took English 201 (not a major class, but a major influence for me) I, as well as my fellow students were shocked and somewhat angry when we read the syllabus. On the pages were names we had never heard of. Aphra who? Frederick what? And Michele Fou…Fow…F…? Oh, she’s woman playwright. Oh, a fugitive slave. Oh, a philosopher. This introduction did little to calm the raging question in what I believe was burning in all our minds: How come we’d never heard of them?

As we read and analyzed and discussed representative works by these authors we learned to appreciate them. But the most important thing we came away with from this group of writings was that they, other writers than the "classic writers" we had been used to, existed, that they were worth reading. So much so that when I took my first survey classes and opened my Norton Anthology I was not surprised to see these one time alien authors’ names within its pages. In fact, I had expected them. To me, they had already been a part of the canon before I knew what the canon was.

Besides being representative of cultural diversity, these works had something else in common: their quality. I believe that offering students diverse works of literature is important, but so is ensuring that those works we teach are worth studying as works of literature, not just tools of "political correctness." In other words, we should not teach a book simply because of its author’s race. The author’s culture can be a significant part of the teaching of the book, but it should not be the sole requirement for including it in a syllabus. Doing so can lead to ghettoization. Any book we wish to teach should first be judged as literature. And what makes a book a good work of literature? That I will not attempt to answer, because it’s not the point. The point is that the question should be asked of any and every book considered for teaching.