Essay

Your non-assessed course essay is due in by Tuesday of week 7 (check Turnitun and you'll see).

I'm not going to distribute essay questions for this project -- if you're interested as to what the final assessed essay questions look like, I've stuck last year's paper on Moodle: you'll see it there as a Word file at the top.

What I'd like you to do is write a 1000-1500 word essay or review about any of the novels on the course. The only constraint upon you is that you must contextualise the novel. You may choose to do this in a number of ways:

(a) you could write an essay on any of the novels contextualising it in terms of the other shortlisted titles for that year's prize: comparing and contrastng it with the other fiction published that year.

(b) you could contextualise your novel in terms of a theoretical or critical approach, discourse or genre: connect The White Tiger to postcolonial theory, for instance; read The Blind Assassin in the context of misery memoirs, or science fiction.

(c) or you could contextualise with respect to the Booker itself, take your chosen novel as a starting point for an analysis of the cultural or social significance of the prize, or prize culture more generally.

Martel Links

Rather thin on the ground, these. Start with the reviews in the previous post.

Here's one interesting article: June Dwyer, 'Yann Martel's Life of Pi and the Evolution of the Shipwreck Narrative', Modern Language Studies (35:2, 2005), pp. 9-21

James Mensch, 'The Intertwining of Incommensurables: Martel's Life of Pi', in Corinne Painter and Christian Lotz (eds), Phenomenology and the Non-human Animal: at the Limits of Experience (Volume 56 of Contributions to phenomenology; Springer 2007). This is an interesting essay, but be warned: it's hard philosophy rather than literary criticism (the book's blurb: 'The question of the relation between human and non-human animals in theoretical, ethical and political regards has become a prominent topic within the philosophical debates of the last two decades. This volume explores in substantial ways how phenomenology can contribute to these debates. It offers specific insights into the description and interpretation of the experience of the non-human animal, the relation between phenomenology and anthropology, the relation between phenomenology and psychology, as well as ethical considerations')

Most of Christine Lorre's essay on the novel is available on google books.

You might enjoy Merritt Moseley's overview of 'The Booker Prizes for 2001 and 2002: Cool Young Authors and Old Codgers' The Sewanee Review (111:1 2003), pp. 157-169

Also: I mention in lecture the plagiarism row that flared after Martel won the prize: the accusation being that he had lifted important elements straight from the Brazilian novelist Moacyr Scliar's novel Max and the Cats. You can read more about that here, and here. Scliar's prior novel is about a young boy stranded in a lifeboat with a panther, you know. Martel's own account 'How I Wrote Life of Pi' isn't very forthcoming on this topic. On the other hand, this Library Journal article is rather forgiving to Martel. Some interesting questions about plagiary raised here, I'd say: relevant to the novel (but also to students writing essays and so on)

One final link: as I mention in the lecture, animal fables have a long history in human culture. Probably the best book on the way 'beasts' have signified in human culture and self-image is by the philosopher Mary Midgeley: it is called Beast and Man: the Roots of Human Nature (1978; rev; ed., Routledge 2002), is in the library, but is also available (or at least, a good chunk of it is) free to read on Google Books.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi (2002)

WEEK 4. YANN MARTEL, LIFE OF PI (2002)

‘It is as the author says, a novel which will make you believe in God – or ask yourself why you don’t’ – Lisa Jardine

‘It is the nugget of a good idea, but it is spread out over 300 pages by an author who seems to have a knack for making the fantastic seem utterly mundane’ – Finlo Rohrer

Yann Martel was born in Spain, lives in Montreal, speaks French as a first language and writes fiction in English. His third book, Life of Pi, won the first Booker Prize to be sponsored by the financial services group Man (known from then on, officially, as the ‘Man Booker Prize’).

Editions:

Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2002; Edinburgh: Canongate, 2003).

2002 Shortlist:

Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters
Carol Shields, Unless
William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
Tim Winton, Dirt Music

2002 Judges:

Lisa Jardine (chair), David Baddiel, Russell Celyn Jones, Salley Vickers, Erica Wagner

Topics:

• Children and Animals
• Modes of Veracity: truth, literalism and metaphor
• Narrative and Belief

Reviews:

Justine Jordan, ‘Animal Magnetism’, The Guardian, (25 May 2002)
Tim Adams, ‘A Fishy Tale’, The Observer, (26 May 2002)
Judith Palmer, ‘Life of Pi’, The Independent, (22 June 2002)
Jonathan Kiefer, ‘Fascinating Life of Pi Gives Readers a Reason to Believe’, San Francisco Chronicle, (23 June 2002)
Gary Krist, ‘Taming the Tiger’, New York Times Book Review, (7 July 2002)
Bryan Walsh, ‘Castaway with Karma’, Time, CLX, vi (2 September 2002)

Some Carey Links

[1] In the lecture I make reference to the 'Jerilderie Letter', the most significant surviving example of Kelly's own writing. You can see a facsimile of this letter here, or read the whole thing more easily on wikisource.

[2] Google books has most of this collection of essays on Peter Carey's fiction edited by Andreas Gaile, Fabulating Beauty: Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005), including the following (or most of the text of the following):

'A Contrarian Streak': an interview with Carey.

Carolyn Bliss, '"Lies and Silences": Cultural Masterplots and Existential Authenticity in Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang'

Susan K Martin, 'Dead White Male Heroes: True History of the Kelly Gang and Ned Kelly in Australian Fiction'

[3] If you're interested in the historical Ned Kelly (and who wouldn't be, especially after reading Carey's novel) there's a wealth of material online. Wikipedia is not always to be relied upon, of course, but their page on Kelly is pretty good, and contains links to a deal of other sites.

[4] Also, since this is a course on literary prizes, you may be interested to discover that the Crime Writers Association of Australia run The Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing.

Kell and the Gang

PETER CAREY, TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG (2001)

‘I think they only gave it to me out of sympathy because they know I’ve never won the Booker’ – Beryl Bainbridge on being made a Dame of the British Empire in 2001

Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943. True History of the Kelly Gang was his second Booker winner: the first was Oscar and Lucinda in 1988; Illywhacker was shortlisted in 1985.

Editions:

Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang, (London: Faber and Faber, 2001).

2001 Shortlist:

Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Andrew Miller, Oxygen
David Mitchell, number9dream
Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room
Ali Smith, Hotel World

2001 Judges:

Kenneth Baker (chair), Michele Roberts, Kate Summerscale, Philip Hensher, Prof. Rory Watson

Topics:

• The Booker Prize and the ‘Two Horse Race’.
• Australia: Fact and Fiction.
• History and Venriloquy.

Reviews:

Robert Edric, ‘Remaking Ned’, (6 January 2001)The Guardian
Jane Rogers, ‘Remaking the Myth’, The Observer, (7 January 2001)

Ruth Scurr, ‘One Mother’s Son’, The Times, (10 January 2001)

John de Falbe, ‘The Reluctant Outlaw’, The Spectator, (13 January 2001)
Kathy Marks, ‘Hero or Villain?’, Independent, (19 November 2001)
D J Taylor, 'A ventriloquist's tale', New Statesmen (8 January 2001)

Further Reading:

Ian McEwan, Atonement, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001). Though reading any of the shortlisted novels listed in this booklet would be a useful exercise, Atonement is a special case, because it won the first ‘People’s Booker’, voted for by members of the general public, thereby opening up a whole new can of worms: possibly in response, the 2001 judges broke sharply with tradition to give explanations as to why they hadn’t awarded the prize to McEwan.

Atwood

I'm reposting (from last year) a few links that you may find useful if you're thinking about, or writing about, Margaret Atwood.

[1] David Ketterer, '"Another Dimension of Space": Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy and Atwood's Blind Assassin', in Jean-François Leroux and Camille R. La Bossière (eds), Worlds of Wonder: Readings in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (University of Ottawa Press, 2004) An essay in a critical collection. This includes a useful interview between Ketterer and Atwood about the novel: I quote from the interview at some length in the lecture.

[2] Eleonora Rao, 'Home and nation in Margaret Atwood's later fiction' in Coral Ann Howells (ed), The Cambridge companion to Margaret Atwood (CUP 2006) Interesting discussion of home and estrangement in Atwood's later writing, including the Blind Assassin.

[3] Nathalie Cooke, Margaret Atwood: a Critical Companion (Greenwood Press 2004) Some useful things here, although (sadly) the chapter on Blind Assassin is not one of the ones available for google-books viewing.

[4] Coral Ann Howells, '"Don't Ever Ask For The True Story": Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin' in Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction: Refiguring Identities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

Atwood's latest novel, the SF/dystopian Year of the Flood (2009) has been widely reviewed, not least by your course tutor, here.

Seminar Groups B and C, next Thursday (14th Oct)

If you're in Seminar group B or C then there's a small shake-up next week, for one week only. The lexture is at the usual time and place, but the seminar will take place on Wednesday 13th October at 1pm in Windsor 105. The session is on Atwood's Blind Assassin; so come along if you are interested in that novel. But if you can't make it, for sporting or other reasons, don't worry: you won't be penalised for non-attendance (this week only, I repeat, and stress). The week after, we go back to the regular timetable.

Peter Carey on BBC

Carey has won the prize twice already (we're looking at his Kelly Gang later this term): and if he wins next week it will be for a record breaking third time. Have a listen to what he said to the BBC about the prize.

(He may win, too: although my money's on Tom McCarthy's C ...)

Coetzee's Disgrace

The whole of Coetzee's oeuvre has gotten a lot of attention from critics, but Disgrace has been subject to more readings than any other.

Here, for instance, is the googlebooks version of Encountering Disgrace: reading and teaching Coetzee's novel By Bill McDonald, William E. McDonald (Camden House, 2009), a collection of essays on the novel.

In the lecture I discussed Lucy Valerie Graham's article 'Reading the Unspeakable: Rape in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace' Journal of Southern African Studies 29:2 (Jun., 2003), pp. 433-444.

I also quote from 'J. M. Coetzee in conversation with Jane Poyner', in Jane Poyner (ed) J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual (Ohio University Press 2006), p. 22.