Non-Fictional Prose Course

After our discussion about how to read "Fun Home" I began reading the rest of the book, paying close attention to how I had been reading it because I didn't think it was as easy a read as some others in the class had thought. For me the reading is a little stressful because I feel as though I should be reading at the pace that Bechdel would be thinking it as though its a stream of memories. I feel like my attempting to follow her timeline of events accurately might be preventing me from analyzing the text as much as I might be able to. So I'm wondering how Bechdel would want the book to be read. I find that I read all of the text for each panel before looking at the picture..I even read her labels and the spoken words before looking at the pictures so that I don't miss any of the text.

 I first read "Fun Home" in Anne Bruder's class on Women's Life Writing last spring. In that class we talked about all forms of life writing--from autobiography to blogging. Towards the end of the semester, we concluded our study with Bechdel's "Fun Home." Unfortunately I don't have my notebook from last semester here to tell me exactly what we discussed with respect to Bechdel, but because it was at the end of the semester, I do remember trying to apply and wrap up many themes we found throughout the course, to Bechdel's work as well. Throughout the course we spent significant amounts of time discussing what gives an author the authority and credibility not just to write, but to write in a way such that we the reader believe them.

 I thought our discussion about "playing the game" with Reality Hunger was interesting.  In a way, I think I played Shields' game because I didn't keep going to the appendix to check which segments were quotes and which were his words.  I knew that he included quotes, but it wasn't until after Tuesday's class that I felt the need to flip back and check what he was quoting and what he wasn't more and more.  

Reading Reality Hunger has made me see that any piece of writing is a craft of art, and then the writer rearranges the different parts of the artwork to get a complete picture, as D. Shields said: "What actually happened is only raw material; what the writer makes of what happened is all that matters."

When I first started reading the book: Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, I was so confused since I could not seem to see any structure in the narrative. I just could not see the whole picture or story that Reality Hunger is trying to show. After our class discussion on Tuesday, I realized that David Shields's book is a collection of quotes which now makes much more sense.

 Course record: 9/7/10