Writing California
(Course plan)

This course aims to present a number of ways in which place and writing can meet. The textualized location of choice is California, with a specific bias towards representations of rural California(s) of the past, present and future. The genres of writing presented will include fiction (also science fiction/fantasy); poetry; and creative non-fiction in the form of nature writing, travel writing, anthropology texts, memoirs and (auto) biographies etc. Writers will include Ursula LeGuin, Richard Brautigan, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, John Muir, Barry Lopez, Alfred and Theodora Kroeber. The theoretical background for the course will be provided by discussions of place and setting in literary theory, as well as a general discussion of representation/mimesis and identity as currently employed in cultural and literary studies.



The California Condor

Primary texts (excerpts from the following works):

Richard Brautigan: A Confederate General from Big Sur
Henry Miller: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch
Jack Kerouac: The Dharma Bums; Big Sur
Gary Snyder: Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems; A Place in Space
John Muir: The Mountains of California; My First Summer in the Sierra
Barry Lopez: Crossing Open Ground
Alfred Kroeber: Handbook of the Indians of California
Theodora Kroeber: Ishi in Two Worlds; Ishi - Last of his Tribe
Ursula K. LeGuin: Always Coming Home

List of  other "California Fiction"


Theory:

John Brinckerhoff Jackson: A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time
Michaels, Reid & Scherr (eds.): West of the West: Imagining California
Lyon, Thomas J. (ed.): This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing


Course Plan

3/9: Introduction: Place and specificity in text. (Key quotes, Gerald Kennedy)
Case: Woody Guthrie: (If you ain't got the) Do Re Mi (lyrics) (MP3-file)
(Other California lyrics)

17/9: Memoirs and fiction: Big Sur: Dreams - Case: Henry Miller & Richard Brautigan
Texts: Henry Miller, from Big Sur and The Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, pp. 1-38 & Richard Brautigan, from A Confederate General from Big Sur, pp. 15-63

24/9: Memoirs and fiction: Big Sur: Nightmares - Case: Jack Kerouac
Text: Jack Kerouac, from Big Sur, pp. 7-23 + 178-181
(Image of Bixby Bridge spanning "Raton", i.e. Rainbow Canyon)

1/10: Fiction and poetry: The poet as conquering hero - Case: Gary Snyder
Texts: Jack Kerouac, from Dharma Bums, p. 35-94 & Gary Snyder, from A Place in Space, pp. 183-204 & Gary Snyder, "Riprap" (a poem)
(Other Snyder poems on-line) (Snyder capsules and quotes) (Matterhorn images)

8/10: Nature writing - Case: John Muir
Texts: John Muir, from My First Summer in the Sierra, pp. 3-31 & John Muir, from The Mountains of California "The Sierra Nevada", pp. 1-14
(Photoes and other Muir images)

15/10: Nature writing - Case: Barry Lopez (Interview) (Interview)
Texts: Barry Lopez, from Crossing Open Ground, "The Stone Horse" & "Landscape and Narrative"
Additional Lopez resources: Online texts: "A Literature of Place"; The Naturalist; We are shaped by the sound of wind... (on the history of nature writing); Interview from 1986 - audio file
(Emerson-quote)

22/10: Anthropology, memoir and fiction: Ishi - California and the past (Alfred Kroeber/Theodora Kroeber)
Texts: A.L. Kroeber, from Handbook of the Indians of California, pp. 336-346 & Theodora Kroeber, from Ishi in Two Worlds, pp. 3-23 & Theodora Kroeber, from Ishi - Last of his Tribe, pp. 156-213 & B. Bower: "Ishi's Long Road Home"
(Another article on Ishi) (Official report on the remains of Ishi)

NB!! 26/10: Anthropology and Science Fiction: Always Coming Home - California and the future
Text: Ursula Kroeber LeGuin (Interview), from Always Coming Home, pp. 1-53 (Small online excerpt)