The Children's Bach
Melbourne
:
McPhee Gribble
,
1984
Z371975
1984
single work
novella
(taught in 6 units)
Athena and Dexter lead an enclosed family life, innocent of fashion and bound towards a disturbed child. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter's past. With her three charming, chaotic hangers-on, she draws the couple out into a world whose casual egotism they had barely dreamed of. How can they get home again? (Source: publisher's website)
Students are brought into close contact with creative practice in both mainstream and emergent forms of fiction and narrative as they investigate the question 'what is fiction?'. The subject introduces a wide range of recent and modern forms of fiction writing as technical examples and thematic models. Throughout the semester students produce and collectively workshop their own writing in fiction or script. At the same time, critical debate within the class explores the limits and the possibilities of the contemporary text together with the functional operation of categories such as 'author', 'genre', 'narrative', 'performance', 'subjectivity', 'meaning', 'reading', 'writing' and 'text', including in relation to innovative formats such as hypertext or other electronic formats. Students are encouraged to choose within a wide range of fictional forms for their creative writing.
