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Suggested group proposal

maht91's picture
Submitted by maht91 on Tue, 10/05/2010 - 10:16pm

When we gathered in groups today to write down a group proposal, we looked at all the books that the other people proposed and tried to find the most interesting and most suggested forms of writing. We decided that the best way to continue this semester is to choose different mediums, some of which we have explored earlier this semester such as graphic novels, and others that we have not yet studied, such as documentary and film. We considered dividing the books to a variety of categories to explore diverse forms of writing.

The books are listed in the order we thought would transition us from the books we read so far to where we could be:

1. History: Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

2. Science: Spook by Mary Roach

3. Ethnographic: Children of Crisis by Robert Coles

4. Non-printed medium/documentary/film: "True Life: I Hate My Face," MTV

5. Memoir: The Alcoholic by Ames and Haspiel

6. End of Non-fiction: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

We decided to order the books starting from impersonal stories to personal genres to explore questions of fiction and non-fiction. We thought to end the semester with A Million Little Pieces as a way to close the loop we started at the beginning of the semester with questions about Truth, Reality, and Non-fictional prose.

 

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AyaSeaver's picture

I almost don't want to read

Submitted by AyaSeaver on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 3:21pm.

I almost don't want to read Frey because we've already dealt with some of his drama. I feel like there is so much confusion and complication there. Yes we could definitely have an interesting discussion about whether memoir/non-fiction has to be fact checked but I feel as if we have already had part of that conversation twice and also, we've already had it about Frey. 

Spook and The Alcoholic both seem really really interesting though. I think they connect rather well to the way the form, construction and content of nonfiction is at once factual and fictional, artistic--realist?

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