I’m excited to announce the print side of my post-print fiction reading list:
- Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
- Don DeLillo, Mao II
- Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
- Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper
- Anne Carson, Nox
Each of these works offers a meditation upon the act of reading or writing, the power of stories, the role of storytellers, and the materiality of books themselves as physical objects. In addition to these printed and (mostly) bound texts, my English Honors Seminar students will encounter a range of other unconventional narrative forms, from Jonathan Blow’s Braid to Kate Pullinger’s Inanimate Alice, from Christopher Strachey’s machine-generated love letters to Robert Coover’s deck of storytelling playing cards. Along the way we’ll also consider mash-ups, databased stories, role-playing games, interactive fiction, and a host of other narrative forms. We’ll also (a heads-up to my students) create some of our own post-print beasties…
• Don DeLillo, Mao II (Penguin, ISBN 978-0140152746)
• Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (Pantheon, ISBN 978-0375703768)
• Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper (Mariner, ISBN 978-0156032117)
• Anne Carson, Nox (New Directions, ISBN 978-0811218702)
Can’t wait…granted, I haven’t heard of any of these texts before (except for House of Leaves and Braid) but it’s always exciting going into an English class and getting to read non-canonical texts.
Nifty! I’ll have to pick these up.
I’m a big fan of the Inanimate Alice series, I’d be interested in reading more about how you plan to use it.
Interesting, I’ll have to pick these up. I’ve been meaning to read more DeLillo, I have a friend who highly recommends him.
I’m a big fan of Inanimate Alice. I’d be interested to read more about how you plan to use it in the class.