Not politics! BOOK QUESTION!

[tzikeh]

Or rather, books question.

I'm in this completely awesome Practical Criticism class. We read theory from a variety of disciplines, and then we read a novel, and write papers where we apply any particular theory to the novel. Anyone who's taken a similar class knows what I'm talking about.

Descartes's Discourse on Method (humanist, cogito ergo sum and methodological skepticism)

Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (structuralist, sfd/sfr, pre-existing spoken word favored over written word)

Freud's Ego & Id, Femininity (semi-structural/semi-post-structural, unconscious, progression of Oedipus Complex, failure to remotely understand women)

Lacan's The mirror stage... (semi-structural/semi-post-structural, the Imaginary, the Ideal I, the inability to exist in the Real)

Derrida, Of Grammatology (post-structural, deconstructionist, elimination of sfd/sfr and impossibility of the existence of Transcendental Signified, written word equal to spoken word)

Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (structuralist Marxist, [WTF], Repressive State Apparatus, Ideological State Apparatuses)

Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman (post-structuralist, relationship between language and male bodies/female bodies, deconstruction of Freud's Femininity)

Judith Butler, Edward Said, T.S. Eliot, and some queer theory are all yet to be read.

For this class, we have two assigned novels: Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh (which, btw, I strongly recommend as a great freakin' book, regardless of whether or not you're going to pick it apart with literary theory), and Foe by Daniel Coetzee. Occasionally, the prof also uses Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. I'm sure there are a few other novels she rotates into the syllabus, but I haven't asked.

So. I need your help for my own little project. What are some novels you would recommend for a class like this? What have you read that is rich enough to provide fodder for viewings through a variety of different lenses that can translate into four-or-five-page essays? The only two I can think of off of the top of my head are House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which is way too long for a class like this, and Was by Geoffrey Ryman, which the prof is reading right now on my suggestion.

Please comment with suggestions! and show your work--I may not know anything about the novels you suggest.

ETA: Please try to keep suggestions to books written in the past twenty years or so. She's not interested in classics, thanks!

Comments

[iko.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Neuromancer by William Gibson?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Show your work! Why would that be a good choice?

[iko.livejournal.com]

Well, Neuromancer is interesting linguistically (being the first usage and definition of the words "cyberspace" and "ICE") and it's such an influential work of science fiction. I could write about the presentation of the dystopia in a near-future society, drugs and other such dependencies, the nature of artificial intelligence, identity and personality in a world with AIs and avatars, etc. Just a lot of interesting topics that can come from reading the book.

I just thought that if you had House of Leaves and Fight Club on a list of books that could be interestingly explored by your class, Neuromancer would be one that I would also put on that shelf.

[batdina.livejournal.com]

Personally I'd probably go with Wuthering Heights; it's short but also does enough strange that you could use any of those reading strategies to come up with a five page paper pretty easily.

I don't read a lot of modern fiction, but it strikes me that Atonement might work here too.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

She is looking for modern fiction, definitely. I'll give Atonement a look-see. Thanks!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino? I could write essays using several of the various literary theories you mention on this book (more if I knew more of them), and I was a science major. If I could do it, just think what real lit people could do! On the other hand, I'm quite sure that literature majors have been all over this book many, many times. Also, it's a work in translation, which could be a problem.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

That looks fascinating! (Went to amazon.com immediately). Though yes, translation could be a problem.

Hm.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Awesomely worth reading regardless of its potential use in your class, let me just say.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

:D sounds like it!

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

The one I was mentioning yesterday -- Octavia Butler's "Kindred", which is variously classed as sf and as African-American Lit. There's a skintillion things in it to pick apart (plus I think everyone should read it).

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

That looks FABULOUS. I'll give it a read when I have a chance.

[dorothy1901]

The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham. I'm recommending it from personal experience. I originally read it around the same time I first read Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels. Pagels' analysis of the scrolls from Naj 'Hammádì strongly affected my reading of Maugham's novel about a man searching for spiritual knowledge. I feel that The Razor's Edge is the kind of book that mixes well with theory.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

She's very much looking for books written after 1980 (preferably 1990). I should have said that--editing now to add to the original post.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I've taught the Bedford St.Martin Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism before and the ones i thought worked best were the novella length classics. They tend to be rich enough to sustain the five different critical approaches but not so long to bog down readers.

The thing with pomo fiction (which I love to death, don't get me wrong :) is that it's often overdetermined, i.e., it's hard to say something interesting poststructural or psychoanalytic about a text where you know the author had read derrida and lacan...

My personal choices would be Turn of the Screw (because I fell in love with both Lacan and poststructuralism via Shoshana Felman'sd brilliant reading), which is rich for feminism, psychoanalysis, but even a Marxist class reading... Other texts I've taught that worked well were Heart of Darkness (you can do a mean feminist reading when looking at the absent woman who *is* his last words if she's at the center of the colonial enterprise), The Awakening and The Dead (though I tended to do a lot of historicism on that one)...

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

it's hard to say something interesting poststructural or psychoanalytic about a text where you know the author had read derrida and lacan...

That's the point, though -- to see where these theories play out in the novel. I should have said that she's looking for modern (not necessarily po-mo) fiction in the original post -- edited to add.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

well...all but the awakening i mentioned are high modernist.

or am i misunderstanding you here?

[bkwyrm.livejournal.com]

Nabakov's Pale Fire, because of the unreliable narrator. And Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, because WOW there's a lot of themes in that one.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I've edited the original post; I should have said she's looking for novels that were written after 1990 or so.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

ok. sorry. so contemporary...not modernist at all.

that changes everything :)

1990. wow. that narrows the field...

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

sadly i stopped reading much fiction after 1990 :)

how about snowcrash? I think it might offer an interesting structural/poststructural reading and ISA's alive and well in Gibson world...

can you get away with using popular culture and applying theory to it???

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I think so. I was thinking Diamond Age, for both ISAs and gender.... but again, long book.

*sigh*

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

OK, I just went through the booker list and realized that the ghost road's after 1990. I adore Pat Barker (talk about psychoanalytic readings :)



remains of the day's 89 but a great book (and short)--many of the others might work well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Booker_Prize)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh - Remains of the Day = AWESOME

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

it's so wonderful to talk about history (both 30s, 50s, and 80s) through this book!!!

hey, what about Kureidhi? I haven't read the buddha of suburbia but heard great things

[kaneko.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it's too long for the purpose, but Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Loud_and_Incredibly_Close) could be a good candidate.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I would suggest Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. It deals with exploration of unknown cultures, religious conflict (internal and external), faith and ethnicity, there's a great deal of world-building (it is classified as SF, but I would argue that the book is much, much larger than that), history (Sephardic Jews, Jesuits, you name it), and love, fear, curiosity, courage, death... you name it.