I'm teaching American Crime Fiction in the fall. Course
selection for students began yesterday, I think, and the
class filled *instantly*. Let me say, in terms of designing
the course: it's easy to pick out cool shit I like, harder to
design a syllabus that has a particular rationale. I've
written and scrapped like 10 versions of the damned thing.
I'm thinking of subtitling it "Punching America in the
Mouth." -- it's all about disillusionment and the deflating
of America's most cherished dreams/fantasies: The government
cares about your well-being, the police exist to protect you,
America's a melting pot, if I work hard I'll get ahead, the
suburbs are safe and clean, money = happiness, small town
sheriffs are not sadists, etc. Tentatively, we're reading the
big guys
(Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Thompson, Himes) along w/ some
lost, or at least MIA, stuff (E.S. Holding's _The Blank
Wall_, Dorothy Hughes' _Ride the Pink Horse_, Clarence
Cooper's .... well, anything, but probably _The Scene_).
We'll also listen to some Johnny Cash and somewhere in there
will be a whole section on America's love affair w/ the
serial killer (featuring Hitchcock's
_Psycho_, Thompson's _Killer Inisde Me_, Westlake's _The Ax_,
and the film of _American Psycho_)
I'm teaching a grad course on same subject next Spring, but
that course will almost certainly be on black (that is,
African-American) crime fiction, esp its relationship to
American History/Politics. The course will feature black
writers, obviously, though I'm thinking of putting
Pelecanos's _Right as Rain_ in there (haven't read it yet)
just to throw a curve. That should force people to reconsider
what the "Black" in "Black Crime Fiction" means
(you're not black, are you George? Because that would fuck up
my little plan)
I have a question/challenge: if you (that is, any of you)
were designing a course introducing undergrads to American
crime fiction, what would it look like? A semester is only 14
weeks long.
If I crib your ideas ... well then I crib them. Welcome to
America.
Michael D. Sharp
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