Intro to The Hours

AGENDA:

quick quiz on In the Lake of the Woods:
http://www.goodreads.com/quizzes/11227-in-the-lake-of-the-woods


Today---Finish writing your nonlinear narrative

Next book--The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Visit Michael Cunningham's website:

www.michaelcunninghamwriter.com/

Watch interview:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq7yjNJqry8

For more on Virginia Woolf:
www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/

On Mrs. Dalloway:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Dalloway

Finish nonlinear narrative

AGENDA:

“That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when 

the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.” 
 
-Tim O'Brien

Continue working on completing your non-linear stories 

Next book+: Michael Cunningham's The Hours

In the Lake of the Woods

AGENDA:

Finish reading book
View end of movie

6. Although it is easy to see Kathy as the victim of John's deceptions, the author at times suggests that she may be more conscious (and therefore more complex) than she first appears. We learn, for example, that Kathy has always known about John's spying and even referred to him as "Inspector Clouseau," an ironic counterpoint to John's vision of himself as "Sorcerer." At a critical moment she rebuffs her husband's attempt at a confession. And in the final section of "Evidence," we get hints that Kathy may have planned her own disappearance. Are we meant to see Kathy as John's victim or as his accomplice, like a beautiful assistant vanishing inside a magician's cabinet?

7. Why might John have entered politics? Is he merely a cynical operator with no interest in anything but winning? Or, as Tony Carbo suggests, might John be trying to atone for his actions in Vietnam? Why might the author have chosen to leave John's political convictions a blank?

8. John's response to the horrors of Thuan Yen is to deny them: "This could not have happened. Therefore it did not." Where else in the novel does he perform this trick? How does John's way of coping with the massacre compare to the psychic strategies adopted by William Calley or Paul Meadlo? Do any of O'Brien's characters seems capable of acknowledging terrible truths directly? How does In the Lake of the Woods treat the matter of individual responsibility for evil?

9. Each of this novel's hypotheses about events at the cabin begins with speculation but gradually comes to resemble certainty. The narrator suggests that John and Kathy Wade are ultimately unknowable, as well; that any attempt to "penetrate...those leaden walls that encase the human spirit" can never be anything but provisional. Seen in this light, In the Lake of the Woods comes to resemble a magician's trick, in which every assertion turns out to be only another speculation. Given the information we receive, does any hypothesis about what happened at Lake of the Woods seem more plausible than the others? With what certainties, if any, does this novel leave us

Work on your own nonlinear stories

Master Class periods 3/4

In the Lake of the Woods

The ouroboros or uroboros (/ˌjʊərəˈbɒrəs, ˌjʊəroʊ-/, from the Greek οὐροβόρος ὄφις tail-devouring snake) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.

AGENDA:


Blog post:
5. One of the few things that we know for certain about John is that he loves Kathy. But what does John mean by love? How do John's feelings for his wife resemble his hopeless yearning for his father, who had a similar habit of vanishing? In what circumstances does John say "I love you"? What vision of love is suggested by his metaphor of two snakes devouring each other? Why might Kathy have fallen in love with John?

HMWK:  finish reading the book over the weekend for Tuesday


WRITING: Work on your stories


Thursday, March 17  Master class with Sonja Livingston

In the Lake of the Woods

Agenda:

EQ: What happened to Kathy?

Continue viewing the movie and reading the book.

What are the possible endings O'Brien has presented us with?

WRITING:  continue to work on your nonlinear narrative

My Lai Massacre

Good morning everyone! This will be an interesting, but disturbing class. The material is graphic and crucially important to understanding O'Brien's historical context in In the Lake of the Woods.

AGENDA:

EQ: Why is the background of the My Lai massacre so important to understanding O'Brien's novel In the Lake of the Woods?



-We will be watching various sections of a PBS documentary on the My Lai Massacre

PBS Documentary

PBS Documentary
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004BMTTXC/ref=atv_terms_dp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0z_nfzYNjY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWchy6ykNnQ

-After watching the documentary, you will explore an interview with Tim O'Brien about his experiences in Vietnam

Interview with Tim O'Brien 

-After viewing the documentary and exploring the interview, answer the following questions (post on the blog):

1. Has watching the documentary and reading the interview on My Lai changed your reading of In the Lake of the Woods by O'Brien? Do you feel as though you can sympathize with Wade on some level, or are his actions completely unforgivable? 

2. What was your prior knowledge of the massacre? Do you think the fact that the My Lai Massacre is somewhat mysterious and unknown to many people adds to the complexity of the novel? How so? Do you think that if something of this caliber is concealed by those involved that the general public will ever know the true story? 

3. How does having some type of historical context incorporated into a fictional text effect you as a reader? What historical events or time periods are you considering for your own writing piece (this can be a list)?


WRITING: Work on Nonlinear narratives
HMWK: Read to Ch. 19 pg. 175

In the Lake of the Woods--Book vs. TV movie

AGENDA:

EQ: How does the movie adaptation for television differ from the book in its approach to the story?

Using the graphic organizer, watch and take notes comparing and contrasting the book to the television movie.

How are the characters introduced?  How is the plot introduced? How does the reader/viewer discover the back story?

Writing: Continue to work on finishing essays and begin to work on Lake of the woods story.

If you have not posted on the last blog, please post your answers to the 4 questions!

Nonlinear narrative/Metafiction/Intertextuality

AGENDA:

EQ: What is accomplished by O'Brien's nonlinear narrative scheme (see question 2)

Definitions:
Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, hypertext websites and other narratives, where events are portrayed, for example out of chronological order, or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory, but has been applied for other reasons as well.

Metafiction is a literary device used self-consciously and systematically to draw attention to a work's status as an artifact. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction forces readers to be aware that they are reading a fictional work. 

Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text. Intertextual figures include: allusion, quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche and parody.^[1][2][3] Intertextuality is a literary device that creates an ‘interrelationship between texts’ and generates related understanding in separate works (“Intertextuality”, 2015). These references are made to influence that reader and add layers of depth to a text, based on the readers’ prior knowledge and understanding. Intertextuality is a literary discourse strategy (Gadavanij, n.d.) utilised by writers in novels, poetry, theatre and even in non-written texts (such as performances and digital media). Examples of intertextuality are an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text, and a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another.
Intertextuality does not require citing or referencing punctuation (such as quotation marks) and is often mistaken for plagiarism (Ivanic, 1998). Intertextuality can be produced in texts using a variety of functions including allusion, quotation and referencing (Hebel, 1989). However, intertextuality is not always intentional and can be utilised inadvertently. As philosopher William Irwin wrote, the term “has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Kristeva’s original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion and influence.

Read review:
https://mattviews.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/415-in-the-lake-of-the-woods-tim-obrien/ 

Imagining the truth: Narrative structure and technique in the works of Tim O'Brien

Michael A Radelich, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
from abstract:
"In his two most recent books, The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods, O'Brien's role as the storyteller, writer, and arranger of his text becomes central to his art. The books are as much about O'Brien himself, how he constructs his texts, and how he works to comprehend his own psychological reality, as much as they are about his characters' splintered past and tortured present. An understanding of the books' structures and their multiple levels of narration becomes crucial for the reader, since the manner in which O'Brien presents the chapters of his prose is as equally important as the content of the prose itself. There are several narrators in these books, some who are anonymous, and some who embody aspects of Tim O'Brien, the author, himself. "

Please discuss questions 1-4 with a partner and post your responses on the blog!

Discussion Questions:

In the Lake of the Woods

by Tim O’Brien

1. Almost from this novel's first page we know that Kathy Wade will vanish, and it is not long before we discover that her disappearance will remain unsolved. What, then, gives In the Lake of the Woodsits undeniable suspense? What does it offer in place of the revelations of traditional mysteries?
2. Instead of a linear narrative, in which action unfolds chronologically, Tim O'Brien has constructed a narrative that simultaneously moves forward and backward in time: forward from John and Kathy's arrival at the cabin; backward into John's childhood, and beyond that to Little Big Horn and the War of Independence. It also moves laterally, into the "virtual" time that is represented by different hypotheses about Kathy's fate. What does the author accomplish with this narrative scheme? In what ways are his different narrative strands connected?
3. What does O'Brien accomplish in the sections titled "Evidence"? What information do these passages impart that is absent from the straightforward narrative? How do they alter or deepen our understanding of John as a magician, a politician, a husband, and a soldier who committed atrocities in wartime? What connections do they forge between his private tragedy and the pathologies of our public life and history? Does the testimony of (or about) such "real" people as Richard Nixon, William Calley, or George Custer lend greater verisimilitude to John's story or remind us that it--and John himself--are artifices?
4. Who is the narrator who addresses us in the "Evidence" sections? Are we meant to see him as a surrogate for the author, who also served in Vietnam and revisited Thuan Yen many years after the massacre? (See Tim O'Brien, "The Vietnam in Me," in The New York Times Magazine, October 3, 1994, pp. 48-57.) In what ways does O'Brien's use of this narrator further explode the conventions of the traditional novel?

WRITING:Begin working on nonlinear narrative assignment:


Your assignment:

Write a short story of at least 5 pages that:

1. Has a historical background of your choice--

2. Explores multiple narrative lines.

3. Uses a traditional 3rd person narrative but breaks it up with intertextuality and metafiction:
  a. Evidence paragraphs or sections--quotes, interviews, newspaper clippings, historical facts, etc.  
  b. Hypotheses sections--places where you as a writer question what you've written or possible endings