Joe Cinque's Consolation
Sydney
:
Pan Macmillan Australia
,
2004
Z1132428
2004
single work
prose
(taught in 26 units)
'In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care.' (Source: Pan Macmillan website)
Garner takes 'a deliberately subjective and "literary" approach' to her material with an 'emphasis on a sympatheitic authorial persona as the source of the reader's perspective' (Susan Lever 'The Crimes of the Past: Anna Funder's Stasiland and Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation'. Paper delivered at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference 2006).
The Slap
Crows Nest
:
Allen and Unwin
,
2008
Z1739894
2008
single work
novel
(taught in 40 units)
'At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own.
'This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event.
'In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.
'What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.' (Publisher's blurb)
Subject objectives/outcomes
At the completion of this subject, students are expected to:
a. Have demonstrated creative, imaginative and fluent practices as writers;
b. Have developed their self-reflective critical and editing skills;
c. Have gained an insight into their own writing habits;
d. Have honed their skills in analysing the writing of others;
e. Have a clear understanding of the limits and possibilities of a variety of contemporary forms of creative prose, and how each differs from other prose forms.
Content
Reading
We approach the readings as writers, looking closely at the work of others to understand the choices and possibilities open to us. The readings include exemplary texts; critical essays; and reflections on the writing process. We shall be doing a close study of the readings, looking in detail at the idea of scene and dramatisation and the representation of reality. We shall pay particular attention to texture (description, character, place, language, rhythm), to time (elapsed time, speeding up, slowing down, pausing, lateral movement) to character and movement, and to the relationship of style, structure and subject matter.
The critical essays and the reflections on writing will be discussed in class.
Writing
Students will present a seminar paper reflecting a close reading and analysis of the examples they choose to illustrate the exploration of their topic. The examples should be photocopied and handed out the week before their seminar date. Each student will present their own writing for discussion in workshop either in small groups or to the whole class, at least twice during the semester. They will give one another oral and written feedback. The learning that takes place in a workshop stems from their involvement in the work of others as well as in their own. When considering a work, we find ways to raise questions and to locate problems through constructive criticism offered with goodwill and generosity.
Objective(s): a, b, c, d
Weighting: 50%
Task: To present creative writing for discussion in workshop at least twice, and to hand in for assessment one polished piece of creative work. Length: 3000 words or equivalent.
Assessment criteria:
* Technical accomplishment of writing style
* Originality of ideas
* Dramatic and effective structuring of work.
Assessment item 2: To present a seminar paper reflecting a close reading and analysis of the chosen topic
Objective(s): c, d, e
Weighting: 50%
Length: 2000 words.
Assessment criteria:
* Demonstrated insight into the themes, techniques and issues chosen.
* Capacity to apply themes and issues arising from work under discussion to creative practice
* Effective presentation of the topic.
Students who have a reason for extended absence (e.g., illness) may be required to complete additional work to ensure they achieve the subject objectives.
Style Manual: for Authors, Editors and Printers, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 2000.
Dykes, Barbara. 1992. Grammar Made Easy. Sydney: Hale & Ironmonger
Strunk, William & White, E. B. 1979. The Elements of Style, 3rd Edition. New York: MacMillan Publishing
Narrative Technique
Brande, Dorothea. 1981 (1934). Becoming a Writer. London: Macmillan.
Browne, Rennia & King, David, (Eds). 1993. Self Editing For Fiction Writers. New York: HarperCollins Publishers
Dillard, Annie. 1989. The Writing Life. New York: Harper & Row Publishers
Disher, Garry. 2001. Writing Fiction: an introduction to the craft. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Goldberg, Natalie. 1986. Writing Down the Bones. London: Shambhala
Grenville, Kate & Sue Woolfe. 1993. Making Stories: how 10 Australian novels were written. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hirsch, Edward. 1991. How To Read A Poem and Fall In Love with Poetry. Florida: Harvest Books
Hodgins, Jack. 1993. A Passion for Narrative: a guide to writing fiction. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
King, Stephen. 2000. On Writing. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Lodge, David. 1992. The Art of Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Lodge, David. 1997. The Practice of Writing - Essays Lectures, Reviews and a Diary. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Pack, Robert and Parini, Jay (Eds). 1991. Writers On Writing, A Bread Loaf Anthology. Hanover: Middlebury College Press, University Press of New England
Stern, Jerome. 1991. Making Shapely Fiction. New York: WW Norton & Co
Walker, Brenda (Ed). 2002. The Writers' Reader. Sydney: Halstead
Narratology
Booth, Wayne. 1961. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Genette, Gerard. 1980. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Todorov, Tvetan. 1977. The Poetics of Prose. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Screen Writing
Aronson, Linda. 2000. Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of Writing for the Screen. Australian Film Television & Radio School: Allen & Unwin
Dancyger, Ken. 1995. Alternative Scriptwriting/Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush. Boston: Focal Press
McKee, Robert. 1999. Story — Substance, Structure and Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. London: Methuen
Seger, Linda. 1994. Making a Good Script Great. Hollywood, Calf.: Samuel French Trade.
1992. The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. New York: Henry Holt & Co
