Here are seven potential paper topics for your final essays, which are due in class on the last day of the quarter (3/13). Your essays should be 5-7 pages in length (though feel free to go longer), double-spaced, printed in a serif font (Times New Roman, most likely) and stapled. Papers should also be written in MLA format, complete with a "works cited" page (I'll provide links for those of you who aren't familiar with MLA conventions); those which do not follow the format will be docked points. Please, please, please be sure to back up your ideas with sufficient evidence from the texts (and please cite this evidence properly). Also note that "5-7 pages" means that, at minimum, your essay makes it all the way to the bottom of the 5th page, and ideally onto a 6th page (and that doesn't count your "works cited" page). Works which do not meet the minimum length requirements will automatically receive an F.
Within the next day or so, I'll probably add one or two more topics, so if none of these strikes your fancy keep an eye out for (or suggest) an alternate topic.
1. In Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, and Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., an abstract idea—trout fishing and baseball, respectively—becomes a frame through which the author is able to depict a broad array of human (and distinctly American) experiences. Explore the various permutations of these ideas, citing and analyzing concrete examples from each book, and draw some general conclusions about what makes each idea malleable enough that it can serve so many different situations. Conclude by making some general comparisons between the two novels.
2. Compare the use of song as an intertextual device by Vonnegut (Bokonon’s calypsos in Cat’s Cradle), Coover (Sandy Shaw’s baseball ballads in The Universal Baseball Association…) and Donald Barthelme (in the stories “City Life,” “An Abduction from the Seraglio” and “How I Write My Songs”). What purpose do these lyrics serve within each text, both within the narrative itself, and as a meta-narrative device? What comparisons can you make between each author’s use of this technique, and what’s the overall effect on you as a reader? Can you offer any thoughts as to why the authors might have chosen to include song in their works?
3. Having read a short story collection and a novel each by Robert Coover and Donald Barthelme, what conclusions can you make about each author’s approach to short and long-form works (for example, how they sustain a narrative, what conceptual or structuring techniques they employ, etc.), citing similarities and differences. Likewise, what comparisons can you make between Coover and Barthelme’s idiosyncratic style of fiction?
4. Explore the role of uncertainty in several (at least three) of the texts we’ve read this quarter—particularly in regards to endings, or a general confusion as to how the stories’ events unfold. What comparisons can you make between the ways in which each author treats this unknowingness? How many different postmodern characteristics are present in each of these texts? What’s the overall effect of this nebulousness on you as a reader? Ultimately, does it matter whether the conclusion is clear or not, or do the means supersede the ends in these works of fiction?
5. Examine the depiction of sex and sexuality in several (at least three) of the texts we’ve read this quarter. How does it fit into the overall narrative of each text: is it a gratuitous and lurid attempt to spice up the story, or does it serve a more integral function, furthering ideas central to the plot or characterization? Are there any ways in which the author’s use of sex is emblematic of postmodernism? How might this sort of visceral content relate to the era in which these texts were written?
6. Though all of the authors we’ve looked at this quarter have been male, women play important parts in all of their works, serving in a wide variety of roles. Analyze the gender dynamics present in several (at least three) of the texts, discussing the ways in which women are depicted and demonstrating the full spectrum of female characterization. Does any one author emerge as particularly sensitive to the opposite sex? Does anyone seem excessively misogynistic? (Thanks Camellia for suggesting this question!)
7. All of the works we’ve read this quarter (with the exception of The Dead Father and about half of Barthelme’s stories) were written during the 1960s, a period of tremendous social tumult in America. Explore the generation gap — marked by tensions between the establishment and counterculture, repression and freedom, the pursuit of business versus pleasure, changing values and ideals, etc. — as it’s portrayed in several (at least three) texts from our reading list. Which characters represent a youthful vitality, and what forces do they struggle against? What choices and narrative details are evidence of a new philosophy coming to the forefront?
Thanks to the quick work of Mark Lindsay and Jenny Lesser, Robert Coover's reading and discussion have now been segmented and added to their own PennSound author page. If you missed the live webcasts, you can follow this link to to listen or watch.
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