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| [a] Literary fields RF |
Although I usually don't try to make these "texts" less terrifying (until students see that they are actually quite reasonable in the course of their studies), let me say this. If you think of "reading" as moving at the same pace through every page of text, this syllabus will seem insane. I would argue that it is not, but, then, I run the asylum. Still, the whole point of all of my teaching—and especially my teaching of first-year students of the kind who will be taking this seminar—is to teach (and for me to learn more deeply) all sorts of ways to read material, ranging from close analysis of a single page (or paragraph) to getting the "gist" of enormous swaths of text. You already understand this, don't you? Of course you do, because we're all too busy, and there is always too much to do. Learning to handle "too much" is one of my primary goals in teaching. There is more, though. You see, some things require such special attention that no "sped redin" course could ever (ever) meet our needs. What we all need to learn is how to read on multiple levels, and to target the right skills toward the right needs...almost all of the time.
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| [b] Saucy RF |
It just looks scary.
One last thing. I believe in breaking each assigned reading down so that readers can think about the structure of the book. The contents speak to exactly that, and it is one of the reasons that the syllabus is so long.
More tomorrow.
The New Yorker and the World
FYI 100
Autumn 2012
Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00-4:00
Robert André LaFleur Office Hours
MI 111 Tuesday
4:00-5:30
363-2005 Thursday
4:00-5:30
lafleur@beloit.edu …or by appointment
Required Books
Gill, Brendan. Here at the New Yorker.
Groth,
Janet. The Receptionist.
Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People.
Kunkel,
Thomas. Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross
of the New Yorker.
Mehta, Ved. Remembering
Mr. Shawn's New Yorker.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (FYI Common Reading)
Thurber, James. The Years with Ross.
Yagoda, Ben. About
Town: The New Yorker and the World it Made.
Hacker,
Diana. A Pocket Style Manual
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| [c] Tonic RF |
Students will read issues from all decades of The New Yorker’s existence, and will pay close attention to the way the magazine has been perceived in each generation up to the present. Projects will include historical fact-finding, study of rhetorical styles, and the analysis of major events, including the stock market crash of 1929, the Depression, World War II, the Cold War and Vietnam, and September eleventh.
Through
it all, New Yorker editors have
maintained that great reporting and superb writing can go together. We will
examine those claims and gain, in the process, a better understanding of
history, culture, literature, and the wider world in which we live.
Evaluation
Weekly Quizzes/Logs 10%
Weekly Essays and Sketches 30%
Midterm Paper (Review) 30%
Class
attendance and participation is expected.
More than one absence will significantly affect your grade. Late assignments will be penalized.
Final
Papers due by November 30th at 10:00 p.m.
Arrival Week (August 20-27)
The New Yorker, August 27, 2012
Cover
The Talk of the Town
Comment:
Who is Mitt Romney?
The
Pictures: Moonshine Kingdom
At
Sea: Solo
Field
Trip: Special Particle
The
Financial Page: The Track-Star Economy
Reporting and Essays
The
Political Scene: Schmooze or Lose (Jane Mayer)
String
Theorist: Christian Tetzlaff Rethinks How a Violin Should Sound (Jeremy
Eichler)
Altered
States: Self-Experiments in Chemistsry (Oliver Sacks)
Letter
from Syria: The War Within (Jon Lee Anderson)
Shouts & Murmurs
Lose
That Fat With the Cursing Mommy (Ian Frazier)
The Critics
A
Critic at Large: The Escape Artist (Leo Carey)
Briefly
Noted: Seating Arrangements (Maggie Shipstead)
Musical
Events: Fresh Breezes. (Alex Ross)
The
Theatre: Bedtime Stories (Hilton Als)
On
Television: Child’s Play (Emily Nussbaum)
The
Current Cinema: “Cosmopolis” and “Compliance” (David Denby)
Fiction
“Amundsen”
(Alice Munro)
Poems
“Edward
Hopper’s ’11 A.M.,’ 1926” (Joyce Carol Oates)
“Haste”
(C.K. Williams)
Goings on About Town
Critic’s
Notebook: Brown Thoughts (Sasha Frere-Jones)
Tables
for Two: Brooklyn Crab (Shauna Lyon)
Critic’s
Notebook: One Lucky Guy (Anthony Lane)
TV
Notes: Dance Dance Revolution (Emily Nussbaum)
Contributors
The Mail
Cartoons
Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (FYI Common Reading from Summer 2012)
Part One: Life
The Exam…1951
Clover…1920-1942
Diagnosis and Treatment…1951
The Birth of HeLa…1951
“Blackness Be Spreadin’ All
Inside”…1951
“Lady’s on the Phone”…1999
The Death and Life of Cell
Culture…1951
“A Miserable Specimen”…1951
Turner Station…1999
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| [d] Retrospect RF |
“The Devil of Pain Itself”…1951
Part Two: Death
The Storm…1951
The HeLa Factory…1951-1953
Helen Lane…1953-1954
“Too Young to Remember”…1951-1965
“Spending Eternity in the Same
Place”…1999
Illegal, Immoral, and
Deplorable…1954-1966
“Strangest Hybrid”…1960-1966
“The Most Critical Time on This
Earth Is Now”…1966-1973
The HeLa Bomb…1966
Night Doctors…2000
“The Fame She So Richly
Deserves”…1970-1973
Part Three: Immortality
“It’s Alive”…1973-1974
“Least They Can Do”…1975
“Who Told You You Could Sell My
Spleen?”…1976-1988
Breach of Privacy…1980-1985
The Secret of Immortality…1984-1995
After London…1996-1999
A Village of Henriettas…2000
Zakariyya…2000
Hela, Goddess of Death…2000-2001
“All That’s My Mother”…2001
The Hospital for the Negro
Insane…2001
Soul Cleansing…2001
Heavenly Bodies…2001
“Nothing to Be Scared About”…2001
The Long Road to Clover…2009
Week I (August
28, 30)
The Complete New Yorker (February-March 1925)
February 21, 1925
February 28, 1925
March 7, 1925
March 14, 1925
Johnson, A History of the American People,
627-977
(You need
to have this book in class with you each day of the semester)
PART
SIX ‘The First International Nation’
Melting
Pot America, 1912-1929
The Significance of Woodrow Wilson
Education and the Class System
The Advent of Statism
Wilson’s Legislative Triumph
McAdoo and the Coming of War
The Disaster of Versailles and the
League of Nations
Harding, ‘Normalcy,’ and
Witch-Hunting
Women Stroll onto the Scene
Quotas and Internal Migration
The Harlem Phenomenon and Middle
America
Prohibition and Its Disastrous
Consequences
San Francisco, Los Angeles, and
Californian Extremism
Cheap Electricity and Its Dramatic
Impact
Hollywood
The Social and Moral Significance
of Jazz
Race Prejudice, Popular
Entertainment, and Downward Mobility
Harding and Historical
Deconstruction
The Age of Coolidge and Government
Minimalism
Twenties Cultural and Economic
Prosperity
PART
SEVEN ‘Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself’
Superpower
America, 1929-1960
Government Credit-Management and
the Wall Street Crash
Why the Depression Was So Deep and
Long-Lasting
The Failure of the Great Engineer
Roosevelt and the Election of 1932
The Mythology of the New Deal
FDR, Big Business, and the
Intellectuals
Transforming the Democrats into the
Majority Party
US Isolationism and
Internationalism
Roosevelt, the Nazis, and Japan
America in the War; the Miracle in
Production
FDR, Stalin, and Soviet Advances
The Rise of Truman and the Cold War
Nuclear Weapons and the Defeat of
Japan
The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Aid,
and Nato
America and the Birth of Israel
The Korean War and the Fall of
MacArthur
Eisenhower, McCarthyism, and Pop
Sociology
Piety on the Potomac
PART
EIGHT ‘We Will Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden’
Problem-Solving,
Problem-Creating America, 1960-1997
The Radical Shift in the Media
Joe Kennedy and His Crown Prince
The Space Race
The Bay of Pigs and the Missile
Crisis
Lyndon Johnson and His Great
Society
Getting into the Vietnam Quagmire
Nixon and His Silent Majority
Civil Rights and Campus Violence
Watergate and the Putsch against
the Executive
Congressional Rule and America’s
Nadir
Carter, the 1980 Watershed, and
Reaganism
Rearmament and the Collapse of
Soviet Power
The Bush Interlude and Clintonian
Corruption
Fin-de-Siècle America and Its Whims
Wyeth and the Significance of the
Realist Revival
Judicial Aggression and the
Litigational Society
The Sinister Legacy of Myrdal
Language, Abortion, and Crime
Family Collapse and Religious
Persecution
The Triumph of Women
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 8/31
Week II (September 4, 6)
The Complete New Yorker (November 1929)
November 2, 1929
November 9, 1929
November 16, 1929
November 23, 1929
Yagoda, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It
Made, 1-241
Introduction: Our Far-Flung Correspondence
One: Metropolitan Life. 1919-25
Two: Hard Questions, 1925-31
Three: Lowlife Ascendant. 1931-41
Four: Sophistication and Its Discontents, 1938-51
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 9/7
Week III (September
11, 13)
The Complete New Yorker (August 1936)
August 8, 1936
August 15, 1936
August 22, 1936
August 29, 1936
Yagoda, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It
Made, 242-429
Five: The Bland Leading the Bland, 1952-62
Six: A Time of Tumult, 1962-71
Seven: "Love Is the Essential Word", 1972-87
Epilogue: The Years with Gottlieb, Brown, and Remnick,
1987-99
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 9/14
Week IV (September 18, 20)
The Complete New Yorker (December 1941)
December 6, 1941
December 13, 1941
December 20, 1941
December 27, 1941
Gill, Here at The New Yorker, xi-xxix; 1-193
1 Happy writers have histories
shorter than happy families.
2 The celebrated nit-pickiness of
Harold Ross has been inherited by...
3 Once upon a time, we had a writer
on the magazine whose breezy motto was…
4 The vagaries of memory!
5 I perceive that I have been doing
something odd and confusing.
6 I have hinted that the beginnings
of m professional career cost me little pain…
7 The man generally regarded as the
greatest poet in English in out time…
8 The reason I waited to marry
until the day after graduating…
9 My disappointment in respect to Yankee Kingdom Come…
10 Having demonstrated that I was
capable of writing factual pieces as well as fiction…
11 When I came to work for The New Yorker…
12 To me in my early weeks and
months on the staff of The New Yorker…
13 Poor Maloney! I must offer up a
blue-butterfly paragraph or two…
14 In my first year or so on the
staff, White, Thurber, and Gibbs were figures…
15 Happy as I was at the fair, I
was less happy at the magazine.
16 Having succeeded McKelway as
managing editor, Shawn’s first official act…
17 Ross’s success as an editor had
certain elements of the fortuitous about it…
18 To have a dead man in the text
of the magazine is awkward enough…
19 Of the many cases of mistaken
identity that I have been party to on the magazine…
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 9/21
Week V (September
25, 27)
The Complete New Yorker (August 1945)
August 4 ,1945
August 11, 1945
August 18, 1945
August 25, 1945
Gill, Here at The New Yorker, 194-395
20 Among the artists on the
magazine, my oldest friend is Charles Addams.
21 Thinking of Stanley Edgar Hyman,
I began to smile.
22 Oh, but John O’Hara was a
difficult man!
23 If Thurber was no longer a
regular member of the staff of The New
Yorker…
24 During most of the life of the
magazine, the nearest bar…
25 To our readers, there appears to
be a hierarchy of importance in respect to…
26 Among the best-known writers of
departments are Mollie Panter-Downes…
27 Shawn has always ruefully
accepted the fact that it would be necessary…
28 I began to write for The New Yorker when I was twenty-one
and now I am almost sixty.
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 9/28
Week VI (October
2, 4)
The Complete New Yorker (July 1955)
July 2, 1955
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| [e] 1938 RF |
July 16, 1955
July 23, 1955
Thurber, The Years With Ross
Foreword to the Perennial Classics Edition (Adam Gopnik)
Foreword (James Thurber)
A Dime a Dozen
Foreword (James Thurber)
A Dime a Dozen
The First Years
Every Tuesday Afternoon
Mencken and Nathan and Ross
The Talk of the Town
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 10/5
Week VII (October 9, 11)
Thurber, The Years With Ross
More Miracle Men
Onward and Upward and Outward
“Sex Is an Incident”
Who Was Harold, What Was He?
Up Popped the Devil
The Dough and the System
The Secret Life of Harold Winney
Writers, Artists, Poets, and Such
Dishonest Abe and the Grand
Marshall
The Last Years
The Complete New Yorker (November-December 1963)
November 30, 1963
December 7, 1963
December 14, 1963
December 21, 1963
Week VIII—Autumn Break
Week IX (October 23,
25)—Midterm
Week
Kunkel, Genius in Disguise
Prologue: A Hell of an Hour
1/CHILD
OF THE WEST: 1892-1924
The Petted Darling 13
Tramp 29
The Stars and Stripes 45
New Yorker
II/A
Magazine of Sophistication: 1925-1938
Labor Pains 97
Cavalry 133
II/A
Magazine of Sophistication: 1925-1938 (continued)
A Cesspool of Loyalties 169
Fleischman 207
Life on a Limb 240
Skirmishes 275
Words and Pictures 295
III/Season in the Sun: 1939-1951
War 339
Squire 375
Recluse About Town 399
Back to Algonquin 416
Epilogue: The Angel of Repose 433
Life on a Limb 240
Skirmishes 275
Words and Pictures 295
III/Season in the Sun: 1939-1951
War 339
Squire 375
Recluse About Town 399
Back to Algonquin 416
Epilogue: The Angel of Repose 433
Midterm Review Essay Due
on Sunday, October 28th by 10:00 p.m.
Week X (October 30, November 1)
The Complete New Yorker (August 1968)
June 1, 1968
 |
| [f] Plaid RF |
June 15, 1968
June 22, 1968
Groth, The Receptionist, 1-229
Introduction; or, Jack Spills the
Beans 1
Homage to Mr. Berryman 9
On Writing, Not Writing, and
Lunching with Joe 20
Remembering Muriel 45
Rough Passage through the New Yorker Art Department 69
Party Girl 96
Back on Reception 106
Fritz 126
Intermezzo 138
Fritz: The Denouement 143
A World Awry 155
A New Roommate 161
Greece: The Journey Out 171
Greece: The Journey In 187
Changing 201
A Renaissance Man 207
Mr. Right at Last 212
What the Receptionist Received 224
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 11/2
Week XI (November 6, 8)
The Complete New Yorker (August 1974)
August 5, 1974
August 12, 1974
August 19, 1974
August 26, 1974
Mehta, Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker,
1-194
A Story in The New Yorker
The Sighted Book
From Eliot House to the Picasso
Embarking on a Dangerous Profession
Eleven-Fifty
Jackknife Ben
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 11/9
Week XII (November
13, 15)
The Complete New Yorker (March-April 1987)
March 9, 1987
March 16, 1987
March 23, 1987
March 30, 1987
Mehta, Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker, 195-414
Flight of Crook-Taloned Birds
Pinning the Butterfly
Under a Tolerant Roof
Early Tremors and Shocks
The Succession Problem
“Being Honor Bred”
Aftermath
Epilogue
Talk of the Town and
“Sketch” Due by 5:00 on Friday 11/16
Week XIII (November 20)
Week XIII (November 20)
The Complete New Yorker (September-October 2001)
September 17, 2001
September 24, 2001
October 1, 2001
October 8, 2001
Week XIV (November 27, 29)
The Complete New Yorker (August 2008)
August 4, 2008
August 11,2008
August 18, 2008
August 25, 2008
Week XV (December 4)
Digital Film Festival and Discussion
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