3/29: Virginia Woolf, and an Eavesdropping Assignment

• A lovely essay about Virginia Woolf and her habit of "street haunting" in London can be found here.

Today, we'll be doing a little "street haunting" of our own in preparation for Creative Response #2.

We'll be headed to Trafalgar Square and its environs in order to eavesdrop on the conversations of people around us.  Trafalgar Square, specifically the base of Nelson's Tower, is nicknamed "the place where London meets." So, there should be plenty of people there.

Please record ten snatches of conversation EXACTLY as you hear them. The idea here is to hone our dialogue skills, and also practice what the American author, but total anglophile, Henry James suggested about a writer being a person "on whom nothing is lost." Perceptiveness! WE SHALL WORK ON IT!

Use good judgment. People should not know you are listening in. As Han Solo wisely said: "Keep your distance Chewie, but don't look like you're keeping your distance."

Nerd alert: Han shot first. Case closed.

Once you have your TEN snatches of conversation down, the rest of our time in Trafalgar Square is yours. Should the weather be unkind, you can gather your notes in the nearby National Portrait Gallery. St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, also nearby, is a lovely church, which has a nice café that might be good for eavesdropping, too.

We'll be taking the Bakerloo line to Charring Cross. There should be signs at CC that lead us to Trafalgar.

Additionally, the Strand, which Woolf mentions in "Street Haunting," begins at Trafalgar. You might wander that way, following Woolf's footsteps if you have time.

Virginia Woolf's bust in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury

For Creative Response #2, please use some of the dialogue you recorded in a new scene, 2-3 pages long. This scene should feature a character out for a walk. The purpose of the walk is your decision. On this walk, the character should encounter other people, either in observation or interaction. Mold the dialogue you overheard to suit your purposes. Remember dialogue serves as text and subtext.

On Tuesday 6/4, please turn in a typed transcript of the conversations you took note of, as well as your CR #2, typed, titled, and double-spaced. Also for Tuesday, please read "Strange Comfort Afforded by the Profession" in your book.

p.s. In Lowry's story, the narrator wanders around Keats' house in Rome. You can visit another of Keats' houses, here in London. Check out the link!

3/28 Jean Rhys' "The Lotus"

In preparation for Tuesday's class, please read Jean Rhys' "The Lotus" in our textbook. Here is a link to the Google Books page of the collection. You won't be able to read the entire story here, and it isn't available online anywhere I can find it, so get your book, download it via Google reader or Kindle, or borrow a friend's copy.

• Link to Rhys' Wikipedia entry

• Your first Creative Response, inspired by our time at the Museum of London, is due on Tuesday, 5/28. Please title and double-space your piece, and print a copy for me.

• For a lovely tribute to Rhys, titled, appropriately enough for our class, "Street Haunting with Jean Rhys," click here. 

•  "Hills Like White Elephants"--talking text and subtext 
•  What the Imagists have to do with fiction writers

Ezra Pound. 1884–

106. In a Station of the Metro

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

• Sharon Olds' "Visiting My Mother's College"

5/23: "Mysterious Kor," the Museum of London, and the Polynesian Triangle (yes, these are related)

Today, we're chatting about the way setting, by which I mean TIME and PLACE, affect character development.

Consider not only London, but WWII London and how it affects Pepita and Arthur in our story.

Now, prepare yourselves for MY FAVORITE WAY TO EXPLAIN HOW SETTING AFFECTS CHARACTER!

Hawai'i--all rainbows and 80 degrees, and hula-ish

Hawaiian leg tattoo

Samoan shoulder tattoo

Ta Moko, Maori face tattoos

New Zealand, in July

Tasman's Voyage

Holding a pounamu, or jade, knife, a Maori weapon of choice

The Haka

The All-Blacks version


So, setting shapes human experience, and it should shape your characters, too. Setting is comprised not just of place, but of time, of economic conditions, and weather. Even settings that are in your characters' pasts make a mark in their development.

For now, let's focus on place and time. For your first Creative Response, write a 2-3 page scene in which two characters meet in wartime London. Use the exhibits at the London Museum as your research, and try to incorporate objects you might see there.

As an added challenge, let's try to work in a line of poetry, too, a la "The Mysterious Kor."

EURYDICE
by Sue Hubbard
(take the lift down at the front of the Waterloo station to see the installation of this poem on the walls)
 
I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,

the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.

Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train's wet glass,

will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards

of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids
heavy with sleep, to the city's green edge.

Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast
the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear.
Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair.

You turned to look.
Second fly past like birds.
My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud.

This path unravels.
Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust
and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping.

Above the hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.

I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face
like your once eager kiss.

Soon, soon I will climb
from this blackened earth
into the diffident light.

Welcome to London

So our summer class begins! The focus of this creative writing course in prose fiction is on the narration of cities, specifically, the fiction we might produce set here in London.

First, some housekeeping!

To the right you'll find our syllabus, which is subject to change with advance notice.

Please check this blog before class, and become familiar with it. I will be sending you all administrative privileges to the blog so that you can post your fiction for workshop sessions.

I'll use the blog to post additional readings separate from our text, The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories, and the occasional video or website link that will be useful to us. 

Finally, I'll try to put links to the right that you might find helpful during your time in London.

In Class on Tuesday, 5/21

On Tuesday, we'll be doing some introductory writing activities, as well as using childhood memories as jumping off points.

First, let's talk a bit about the history of the short story with these two examples in mind:

Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Chekhov's "The Chorus Girl."

Let's follow this link to read an excerpt of Barry Unsworth's Losing Nelson.

Activity (to be done in class):

Think of a childhood memory where an animal is at the center of the memory.

Now, think of a realization you had about an adult in your life. This realization should be a separate memory, one unrelated to the animal memory.

Write a 2 page scene in which you conflate these two memories, with the animal memory triggering the revelation. Do feel free to loosen the shackles of truth here. By that I mean--this isn't nonfiction. Use your real memories to INVENT new scenarios and characters.


Homework for 5/21:

Elizabeth Bowen. I do not really know if she believed in ghosts;)

For now, our first reading is Elizabeth Bowen's "Mysterious Kor," in which we'll talk about time as a kind of setting, the "size" of the modern short story, and how character is developed through action. Here is the full text of the story in case you don't yet have the book.

It will be helpful to know that the "mysterious Kor" in the story is taken from a poem by Andrew Lang:

She

To H. R. H.

Not in the waste beyond the swamps and sand,
The fever-haunted forest and lagoon,
Mysterious Kor thy walls forsaken stand,
Thy lonely towers beneath the lonely moon,
Not there doth Ayesha linger, rune by rune
Spelling strange scriptures of a people banned.
The world is disenchanted; over soon
Shall Europe send her spies through all the land.
Nay, not in Kor, but in whatever spot,
In town or field, or by the insatiate sea,
Men brood on buried loves, and unforgot,
Or break themselves on some divine decree,
Or would o'erleap the limits of their lot,
There, in the tombs and deathless, dwelleth SHE!

Creative Response #1 will be a brief 2-3 page scene in which two characters interact with one another in wartime London. To help with setting the scene, we'll be visiting the Museum of London on 5/23, and specifically, looking at the People's City exhibit. Extra points if you can work in a line of poetry into your scene!

But don't worry about writing this response tonight. Let's visit the museum on Thursday for inspiration. Remember to bring your notebooks and pens.