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Jun
16
Lying to Tell the Truth [Elise Blackwell guest blogs]
2010 at 6am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
I met Elise Blackwell last month when she came to Fountain Bookstore to read and sign her latest novel An Unfinished Score. As we chatted afterward, Elise mentioned that she was planning the syllabus for an English course on fiction for non-English majors, entitled “Lying to Tell the Truth.” When I got over my intense jealousy for her students-to-be, I realized I just had to know more about this concept. Then I figured that you might like to know about it, too. So today, I’m beyond thrilled to share The Book Lady’s Blog with Elise Blackwell, as she discusses “Lying to Tell the Truth,” complete with an annotated reading list.
When asked to teach a large lecture course titled “fiction” this coming fall, I was terrified. I’m trained as a writer—not a scholar—and usually I teach smallish creative writing workshops. Yet I couldn’t gracefully decline (my department needs us to take turns with the big classes) and so I started to think about how I could make it work. I realized that I could bring something to the course if I taught it as a writer.
Like any novelist, I’m fascinated in the relationship between fiction and reality. I believe that the central purpose of writing and reading literature is to understand the human condition. Good fiction gives us access to kinds of truth unavailable through others means. My own first novels are (imperfect) efforts to do that. My first, Hunger, is based on a true story from the siege of Leningrad. The second, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, is about the great flood of 1927 and explores varied ways of making sense of our world: science, art, personal experience, family myth, and so on. When the phrase “Lying to Tell the Truth” popped into my head, I had my course’s shaping theme and I decided to choose books based on real events and/or people.
This is the course description I came up with:
“Lying to Tell the Truth.” In this course, we will read fiction based on real events or people to gain an understanding of fiction as a genre. We’ll grapple with questions raised by the intersection of fiction and life: Is fiction a good way to learn about history, geography, and science? Can we look to the past to understand the present? Can fiction be more “true” than historical accounts? What insights and forms of experience does fiction offer that reporting does not? What are its limits? Do writers depicting tragedies have responsibilities to the real-life victims? Can fiction offer a potent critique of contemporary culture? What liberties do writers take, and which techniques do they use to make stories come alive? How does narrative make sense of the human condition? Along the way, we’ll encounter a few celebrity stand-ins and learn about a range of historical events, from the Irish potato famine to the 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, from the Crucifixion to the rise of Ted Turner’s media empire, and from adventures of Alexander von Humboldt to the short, notorious life of Billy the Kid.
Other criteria also guided the reading list for 250 University of South Carolina non-English majors, many of them freshmen. From these students I sometimes hear “I don’t like to read” or “I only read nonfiction—fiction doesn’t mean anything.” So one of my tasks is conversion: to get students who think they don’t like reading to enjoy a book or two and to convince the empiricists that fiction is a valid route to wisdom. For this I need a wide range (something for everyone) of relatively short, accessible books. Some obvious contenders for a spot on the syllabus are tragedies, so humor should be in the mix. I’d also like to avoid books students likely have read for other classes (and which term-paper factories will read for them), ruling out such classics as The Things They Carried. And—since I’m the person who has to talk about these books and passion is contagious—I want books that I admire, even love. Here’s what I came up with:
The Farming of Bones, by Edwidge Danticat. This book is a beautifully written account of the 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. (I’ll have the students also read Rita Dove’s poem “Parsely,” which is about the same tragedy.) This book is nearly flawless in its handling of the elements of fiction and makes a story that should be too sad to read impossible to put down. It also does one of the things that fiction does best: it humanizes people across differences.
Ship Fever, by Andrea Barrett. The title novella will allow us to consider not just the Gross Isle tragedy but about the social and political causes of the Irish emigration following the potato famine. Another example of fine prose, it will also let us consider immigration more generally and will introduce science as a theme. Continuing with that theme, we’ll read “The English Pupil,” which features Linnaeus in old age and perhaps another story in which scientists are characters. I have an interview with Barrett in which she talks about wanting her fiction to have “content,” and I may share with my students a little of my own experience making fiction out of history and science. For many students, writers are just dead authors—not people who have (or had) lives, ideas, passions, quirks.
Measuring the World, by Daniel Kehlmann. This book also sports scientists as main characters (and introduces some world history and geography) yet it’s largely comic. It follows mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt, who took very different approaches to understanding the world. Because Kehlmann’s portrait of Humboldt is at odds with some biographical accounts, a guest speaker with a very different take on Humboldt will visit and I hope spark some great discussion.
Barabbas, Par Lagerkvist. This short existential novel will allow us to extend the discussion of how fiction writers take liberties with the historical record—and to explore characterization and point of view. (I may show a few clips of the 1961 film in which Anthony Quinn plays Barabbas.)
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje. This is the shortest book on the list, yet the most structurally challenging. It mixes historical source, photographs, and poetry with stretches of Ondaatje’s gorgeous prose to make something that can be labeled fiction. (Ondaatje is also one of my favorite writers.)
The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead. This book isn’t an obvious choice at first glance, but I wanted to assign it because the author will be reading on campus and because I love it. On closer inspection, the novel fits perfectly because it’s an inversion of what we’re doing. Rather than making fiction using actual events or people, Whitehead reveals a true human experience through an entirely invented world. It’s also fiction that contains a lot of idea—another form of raw material from the “real world.”
I am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett. This will be fun! The main character is Not Sidney Poitier (a name that sets up all sorts of “who’s on second” jokes), and Poitier’s films appear. Though Not Sidney is not Poitier, other “real” figures loom large, particularly Ted Turner. I also chose this book because the author is from Columbia, South Carolina, and attended a high school that some of our students attended. The book is also hilarious—and that comedy will help grease the conversational wheels as we discuss Everett’s portrait of southern racism.
Love in Infant Monkeys, Lydia Millet. Like Everett’s novel, this collection of stories uses real-life celebrities (plus an amusing Sharon Stone imitator). We’ll continue our discussion of how fiction writers take liberties with life’s raw materials and how they critique culture. Each of the stories also features an animal, and together they speak about the human-animal relationship. A guest lecturer from the philosophy department will introduce us to the basic ethical arguments about that relationship, so we can discuss the advantages and limitations of fiction as a vehicle for thought and opinion. What kinds of argument can fiction make?
Senselessness, Horacio Castellanos Moya. A bizarrely comic treatment of a horrific and intentional tragedy, this is an intellectually challenging but easy-to-read short novel. The unlikable and largely unreliable narrator is assigned to edit over a thousand pages of factual documentation of genocide and human-rights abuse in an unnamed country a lot like Guatemala. Even as the narrative undermines itself, it accurately portrays some of the worst human rights abuses we know about. This novel drives straight at questions of truth and narrative, of reality and perception, and so I’m using it despite my worries about how students will respond to the narrator and graphic content.
Have I chosen well? Will I survive the repeated acts of public speaking? Will I convert dozens to reading? Ask me in December.
Elise Blackwell is the author of four novels: Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, Grub, and, most recently, An Unfinished Score. Her short stories and cultural criticism have been widely published, and she directs the MFA program at the University of South Carolina. For more information, visit her website.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Rebecca Schinsky
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What an interesting and excellent choice of books! I wish I’d had such a thoughtful teacher for my introductory English classes. I’ve added many of these books to my reading wishlist just now
.-= A Bookshelf Monstrosity´s last blog ..All Things Kid Lit: Pigs to the Rescue =-.
OHHH!!! I am getting nostaglic for my days as an English major. I am also jealous of her educational freedom. The college classes that I teach are all composition-no fiction. I only get that kind of freedom in my HS English classes. This selection sounds wonderful, and I love the idea. I might even steal it, and then lie about it
.-= Jen-Girls Gone Reading´s last blog ..WWW Wednesday =-.
great reading list. I’ve been a fan of Andrea Barrett for years. Ship Fever is one of my favorite collections of short stories. And, of course, love Elise and her work! wish I could take her class.
I’ve read two of those (LOVED Farming of the Bones) and have Ship Fever somewhere on my shelves. Sounds like a fun class!
I really wish that I was able to take this class! Those books all sound great and the discussions are bound to be interesting.
.-= beastmomma´s last blog ..Sister-in-Law’s Wedding =-.
This is a great list, and I love the unusual choices she made. Now I want to read all of them
. I also went looking for Percival Everett’s bio because I went to high school in Columbia, SC too, but I was disappointed to learn he went to my rival high school. Oh well.
.-= Rachel´s last blog ..NYC/BEA/BBC Wrap-Up, Part 4 =-.
I rarely wish I were back in school, but listening to the description of that class makes me want to take that class! What a reading list!
.-= Sandy´s last blog ..Garden Spells – Sarah Addison Allen (audio) =-.
Can I take the course? I now want to read ALL of these books; I think I’ve only heard of one and just a few of the authors. FABULOUS.
.-= Cae´s last blog ..Sister Outsider =-.
What a great reading list! And I want to take the course! It sounds so interesting. I guess I’ll just have to add some of the books to my own TBR pile
I don’t think I’ve heard of any of those books, at least not in detail. That, to me, signals a really good, not lazy, intro English syllabus. I’m really missing school and literature right now!
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This is a great post, making me wish I could take the class too! I love the book selection, but equally I love the care she’s put into the selections, and the context of each book – guest speakers, discussion of the historical record, etc. to make the experience of literature meaningful and immediately relevant for these students. I see literature in much the same way – as able to speak to us in a way that may at first glance seem trivial or ‘not true’ but that really has a deeper core of truth in it that speaks directly to the human condition.
Ooh, I miss my English major days, this course sounds amazing! I’d never heard of any of those books before but I would gladly read all of them now.
.-= Meghan´s last blog ..Review: Day for Night, Frederick Reiken =-.
I appreciate all these enthusiastic comments. May my class be filled with so many readers! Thanks, kindly, for helping me get excited about teaching this course.
Ooooooh! I’m moving to South Carolina so I can take that course!!
My! I wish I could register for that!! That reading list looks awesome!
.-= Aths´s last blog ..Review: One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni =-.
I am so glad to see someone else out there with this attitude toward teaching. I teach Composition and Literature, and in each course, I take liberties with the syllabus.
My greatest moments in teaching are when students who profess hating to read come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed a particular book or story. It’s such a great feeling.
.-= Jenn´s last blog ..I have a confession…. I’ve been cheating. =-.
[...] (via a guest post on The Book Lady’s Blog) reminded me that there are some really beautiful and important reasons to read fiction. She mentions Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried as an example of her argument that fiction [...]
[...] from someone interesting, well, that’s just made of win. I saw glimpses of this when I had Elise Blackwell and Belle Boggs share annotated reading lists recently, and I knew I had to keep it [...]