Selected American Writers

3 units

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?" (Thoreau). In place of a wide sampling the course will focus on a few selected authors, most of them contemporary or near-contemporary, and explore the fictive worlds their writings bring forth. We will read texts closely, but we will also step back from them and consider how a writer's fiction creates a universe of character types, a network of interpersonal dynamics, a structure of values, and a vision of life; we will try to look at the world through a succession of others' eyes. Authors will likely include five or six of the following: Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Alice Munro, Milan Kundera, Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Ann Beattie.