Read "The School" by Donald Barthelme (on blog). Talk about why this is a story, and what makes it a story. Also: who is the narrator? How does the narrative progress?
In-class writing exercise:
Nabokov writes: “Poetry involves the mystery of the irrational perceived through rational words.” Think of irrational situations you’ve gone through, ideas, mysteries. Now think of rational words, phrases, sentences. Write a short poem intermingling the two. Good example:
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
So much depends
upon
A red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Now take your poem and “transform” it into the first paragraph of a story. IE: “The rain had stopped earlier that morning, and the red wheelbarrows beside the chicken coop was glazed with it. So much had depended on that wheelbarrow, and yet now it was abandoned, purposelessness. Mary felt herself completely connected to it, staring out from the kitchen window above the sink, telling herself there was no alcohol in the house.”
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