Here is a link to the Guardian article I mentioned today:

Drawn from life: why have novelists stopped making things up?

And here is a link to the Hal Foster book I mentioned:

The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture

Hello Class, I’ve been informed that our classroom has been changed to Room 525 for the rest of the Summer term. I’ll see you there tomorrow.

Best, Peter

Ready to get started! Here is our reading schedule for the Summer:

June 5 Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

        New domesticity and the focus on family dynamics in fiction.

June 12 Naomi Alderman, The Power

       The role of speculative fiction in representations of gender.

June 19 Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

        Recasting the historical epic through Japanese Korean culture.

June 26 John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

        Utilizing genre fiction to directly engage the subject mental illness .

July 3 Gabriel Tallent, My Absolute Darling

        Redefining the stakes and boundaries of new culture wars.

July 10 Jeffrey Eugenides, Fresh Complaint

        Re-examining the short story in contemporary fiction in the absence of theme.

July 17 Ali Smith, Winter

        Allegory and the fantastic at the edges of the novel.

July 24 George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

        The state of the "experimental novel" and traditional notions of the "in between."