Full-text As I Lay Dying

Follow this link to a page that gives you many different options to view or download William Faulkner’s  As I Lay Dying.  I would recommend downloading the .PDF version if you want to print pages from this edition.  Keep in mind that the book you will find in the file contains two novels, The Sound and the Fury, which we are not reading, followed by As I Lay Dying, which we are reading.  If you go to page 345, you will find yourself at the start of As I Lay Dying.  If you choose to print, be sure not to print both novels!  Also, you might see if you like printing it two pages per page, so that it looks more like an open book–this will save you paper and might make it easier to carry around.  Even if you have a copy of the novel, you might want to use this full-text version to search the text for a particular name or phrase as you continue to work on it.  Please let me know if you have any trouble using this site.

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“Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa

Follow this link for a copy of the poem and audio of the poet reading it.  Or listen here to a different reading of the same poem.

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Poetry

In our next class, we will begin the poetry section of our course.  In addition to reading “Poetry” by Marianne Moore, please also read “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins.  Since this poem is not in our text books, please print a copy to bring to class with you.

Moore revised “Poetry” several times, and we will look at a few different versions.  Here are a couple–we will look at a few others in class as well.  The most famous of the revisions can be found in this Slate.com article, “Marianne Moore’s ‘Poetry’:  Why did she keep revising it?” which provides an interesting interpretation and discussion of the longest and shortest versions–which are also the first and last, and, as I stated, the two most well-known.  Here is another interesting site to read, especially since it offers footnotes to explain some of Moore’s lines.

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Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”

Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”  can be found here, since it was initially published in The New Yorker before his short story collection came out.

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Hemingway’s Theory of Omission or Iceberg Theory

In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway’s nonfiction book on bullfighting, he describes his “theory of omission” or “iceberg principle”:

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.  The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.   The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”

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“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

There is an error on your syllabus!  is not on page 701–it’s not in the text book at all. Instead, you can find it here. Be sure to read it and post a reading response.

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“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

You can find the full story here.  Be sure to have finished reading the story before Wednesday’s class, to have written a reading response to it, and to have a copy of it with you.

After reading the story, you might look at this page about “The Story of an Hour.” Does this offer you any helpful information about the story or its author?  Note that this page is part of the official Kate Chopin website–what does that tell us about its accuracy or authority?

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Susan Glaspell’s _Trifles_

The first reading for our course, Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, is in the text book, Literature:  A Portable Anthology, starting on page 958.  If you do not yet have the text book, you can still read the play here.  However you choose to read the play, you must 1-bring a copy of the play to class on Wednesday, either by bringing the text book or by bringing a printout from the online source, 2-spend approximately 20-30 minutes after reading to write yourreading response on the blog, and 3-comment on someone else’s post with a well thought-out reply.

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