ENGL 265-01, Modern American Novella, Spring 2009

Abstract

In this course, we will be reading an eclectic group of texts, some organized by period and subject matter, others by craft and aesthetic. We will not be studying these texts in chronological order, as one might expect, but in ascending order of interpretive difficulty. We thus begin with brilliant but comparatively accessible noir fiction by Horace McCoy and James M. Cain and conclude with the most opaque text, The Pedersen Kid, written by William Gass in professed emulation of the undisputed master of the American novella, Henry James, whose ghost tale, The Turn of the Screw Gass rewrites into another harrowing ghost story. We will also read some of the most celebrated practitioners of the genre in the period spanning the 1930s to the 1950s: Katharine Anne Porter, Truman Capote, and Nathanael West. All of these novellas arre tour de force performances by writers exploring the liminal terrain between the short story and the novel; these novellas are great and memorable reads.