Ronosaurus's Metablog on Metafiction

Ron Richardson (and you if you want to read something with me!)
Metaclass on Metafiction
899-03: Special Study
Guided by Dr. Geoffrey Green

The Course Silly-Bus

I. Premodern Postmodernism

February 5th

The Arabian Nights. Ed. Muhsin Mahdi. Trans. Husain Haddawy. 518 pgs.
Introduction and first ten nights due by February 5th. 45 pgs.
Remainder due May 14th. (Read nightly as a bedtime story.)
Description: Stories saving lives, stories changing lives. Stories within stories within stories within stories.

Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. 1353. Proem and First day (first three stories). 41 pgs.
Description: A collection of 100 novellas, a medieval allegorical work best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic. (Online edition.)

February 12th

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Prologue and Tale of Sir Thopas” and “The Prologue and Tale of
Melibee.” Canterbury Tales. 1400. 48 pgs.
Description: In Canterbury Tales, there is a character named Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer’s portrait of himself is unflattering and humble. He presents himself as a reticent, maladroit figure who can barely summon a tale to mind.

Cervantes, Miguel. Don Quixote. 1605. Reread 19 metafictional passages. About 50 pages.
Description: Cervantes created a fictional author, a Moorish chronicler named Cide Hamete Benengeli, but mentions himself and other works of his in the books. In the second volume, Don Quixote is told of the publication of the first volume. Throughout there are references to technique and explanations of narrative choices.
List of metafictional passages: http://www.bookrags.com/notes/dq/TOP5.html

Due by February 27th:

Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. 1759-1769. 544 pgs.
Description: Tristram Shandy begins to tell the story of his life, but keeps needing to digress to set up each scene, which in turn needs a digression to set that scene up and so on. Also very inventive typography. More postmodern than the postmodernists.

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary.” 1965. 38 pgs.
(On Google books)

Due by March 14th:

de Laclos, Pierre Choderlos. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. 1782. 448 pgs.
Description: An epistolary novel, a novel told in letters, which normally gives an air of authenticity, but the author admits in a preface that it is a novel. (I am still not wholly sure why it is metafiction, but Dr. Green insisted that it was essential.)

II. Modern and Postmodern and Postpostpostmodern

Due by March 20th:

Hoover, Paul, ed. Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. 679 pgs.
Due date: A poem a day starting March 19th. No finish date.
Lewis, Pericles. The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism. 2007.
Review to pg. 161. Read 161-247. 86 pgs.
Appignanesi, Richard and Chris Garratt. Introducing Postmodernism. 1995. 173 pgs.
(an excellent introductory book with comics and illustrations)

Due by March 27th:

Suess, Dr. And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. 1937.
–. On Beyond Zebra. 1955.

Borges, “Pierre Mernard, Author of the Quixote.” 1941. Collected Fictions. 8 pgs.
–. “The Maker.” 1960. 35 pgs.
(Including mini-stories titled things like, “A Dialog about Diagog,” “The Plot, “A Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote,” and “Borges and I.”)

Salinger, J. D. “The Laughing Man.” Nine Stories. 1953. 18 pgs.

Due by March 26th

April 10th:

Nabokov. Pale Fire. 1962. 299 pgs.

Due by April 17th:

Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. 1965. 152 pgs.

Due by April 24th:

Barthelme, Donald. Snow White. 1967. 181 pgs.

Due by April 31st:

Barth, John. “Lost in the Funhouse.” The Contemporary American Short Story. 1968. 21 pgs.

Gass, William H. “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country.” American Short Stories Since 1945.
–. “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction.”

Ballard, J. G. The Atrocity Exhibit. 1969. 110 pgs.

Due by May 8th:

Coover, Robert. “Seven Exemplary Fictions.” Pricksongs and Descants: Fictions. 1969. 48 pgs.
(Which includes: “Dedicatorio y Prologo a don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra”)

Barth, John. “Dunyazadiad.” Chimera. 1972. 64 pgs.

Michaels, Leonard. “I Would Have Saved Them If I Could.” American Short Stories Since 1945.

Due by May 15th:

Green, Geoffrey. Voices in a Mask. 2008. 231 pgs.

Semester Extension

Calvino, Italo. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller. 1979. 259 pgs.
Hofstader, Douglas E. Dialogues from Godel, Escher and Bach. 1979.
Auster, Paul. “The Locked Room.” New York Stories. 1986. 138 pgs.
Barth, John. The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. 1991. 81 pgs.
Wallace, David Foster. “Octet.” Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. 1999. 30 pgs.

III: Metafilm

8 1/2
Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes)
Adaptation
Barton Fink
Being John Malkovitch
Dark City
The Dark Half
Day for Night
Donnie Darko
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Into the Woods
Les Mepris
Living in Oblivion
The Long Goodbye
Marat / Sade
Memento
Misery
Peeping Tom
Rosencrantz and Guilderstein are Dead
Scream
Scream 2
Spider
Stranger than Fiction
Synechdoche
The Truman Show

IV. Further Reading

Acker, Kathy. Don Quixote.
Ballard, J. G. Chronopolis: The Science Fiction of J. G. Ballard. 1979. (One or two stories)
Barnes, Julian. History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters.
Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse. (Full collection of stories.)
Barthelme, Donald. Sixty Stories. 1970. 63 pgs. (Remaining collections and review Come Back Dr. Caligari and Unspeakable Practices.)
Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. 1353. (Remainder.)
Borges, Collected Fictions. (Unread fictions.)
Burgess, Anthony. The End of the World News.
Carter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Prologue and Tale of Sir Thopas” and “The Prologue and Tale of
Melibee.” Canterbury Tales. (Unread tales.)
Danielwsi, Daniel. House of Leaves.
Dick, Phillip K. Valis.
Ende, Michael. The Never-Ending Story.
Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.
Gardner, John. Grendel.
Gide, Andre. The Counterfeiters.
Gogol, Nikolai. The Overcoat and Other Stories.
Goldman, William. The Princess Bride.
Grudin, Robert. Book: A Novel.
Hoover, Paul, ed. Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. (Remainder.)
Joyce, James. Finnegan’s Wake.
Kostova, Elizabeth. The Historian.
Michaels, Leonard. “I Would Have Saved Them If I Could.”
Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen.
Murakami, Haruki. Kafka on the Shore.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried.
O’Nolan, Brian. At Swim-Two-Birds (1939).
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club.
Reed, Ismael. Mumbo Jumbo. 1972. 218 pgs.
Sorrentino, Gilberto. Mulligan Stew.
Voltaire. Candide.
–. Zadig.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle.