Description

Mark Danner

Description: We will focus on reading and analyzing long nonfiction: how it is reported, how it is structured, how it is written. We will do some writing but the emphasis will be on close reading and plenty of it. Authors will include, among others, V.S. Naipaul, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Janet Malcolm, Bruce Chatwin, George Orwell.

Syllabus

January 17: Introduction, The Nonfiction Novella

January 23: V.S. Naipaul, “The Return of Eva Peron,” “George Orwell,” “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell, “Marrakech”

January 30: Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Soccer War

February 6: Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

February 13: Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (Paper, “Establishing Voice and Place”)

February 20: John McPhee, A Sense of Where You Are

February 27: Thomas Whiteside, Twiggy and Justin George W.S. Trow, Within the Context of No Context [Trow, My Pilgrim’s Progress]*

March 6: Ian Jack, “Gibraltar” James Fenton, “The Fall of Saigon”

March 13: Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders

March 20: Philip Gourevitch, We Regret to Inform You That We Will Be Murdered… V.S. Naipaul, “In A Free State”

March 27: SPRING VACATION

April 3: William Finnegan, Cold New World

April 10: Michael Herr, Dispatches Neil Sheehan, “The Battle of Ap Bac” from A Bright Shining Lie

April 17: Janet Maclolm, The Journalist and the Murderer Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman [Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives]

April 24: Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place [Paper on Book of Choice]

May 1: Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia [Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines]

[[May 1: Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind Timothy Garton Ash, The File Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting]]

May 8: Truman Capote, In Cold Blood [Norman Mailer, Armies of the Night]

optional route on May 1