NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
Masterpieces of 20th Century Fiction Spring 2024 LITR1-CE 9031-
Course Meets Every Three Weeks Monday 1:00-2:40 PM Margaret Boe Birns mbb2@nyu.edu
Study five major 20th-century classics that have passed the test of time: one of the greatest anti-war novels of all time, written by a German veteran of the first World War; an existential crime novel set in the Malay Archipelago by a far-travelling novelist central to the modernist movement; a novel of love, anger, and revenge in a ménage à trois in Paris on the brink of World War II by France’s foremost feminist philosopher; an epic American novel of the rise and fall of a brutal populist in the Depression-era deep South; a groundbreaking English novel of “inner space” that explores identity, liberation, revolution, social breakdown and madness. Readings: Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front; Joseph Conrad, Victory; Simone de Beauvoir, She Came to Stay; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men; Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook.
Students should read Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front for the first class.
The Novel Today Soring 2024 LITR1-CE 9270
Wednesday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM; Thursday 10:00 AN-11:40 AM; Thursday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM Margaret Boe Birns
Discuss major new work by today’s top writers, including emerging novelists, award-winners, and established favorites, all of whom are central to today's cultural conversation. We will investigate a variety of inventive narrative strategies, explore the psychology of numerous fascinating characters, and examine important topics within a context of changing times, changing lives and a changing world. Together we will explore: a piano virtuoso and her double in a journey across Europe; two progressive thinkers, marriage, and sexual freedom in the heady atmosphere of fin de siècle London; a lone woman homesteader n a magical Montana in early twentieth century America; a mixed-race fishing community on Malaga Island, Maine; an autobiographical French novel in which a postcard received in 2003 with the names of family members killed at Auschwitz leads to a moving, life-changing investigation; an enigmatic artist known only as X whose life-span ends in a dissolving century America; an invited guest who cuts a swath through various social circles in the late-summer Hamptons; a strange Shakespearean brew of power, property, progressivism and dark plots in contemporary New Zealand; a heartbreaking new David Copperfield in contemporary Appalachia; moral panic, social anxiety and young love in Coalfield, Tennessee. Readings: Deborah Levy, August Blue; Tom Crewe, The New Life; Victor LaValle, Lone Women; Paul Harding, The Other Eden; Anne Berest, The Postcard; Catherine Lacy, Biography of X; Emma Cline, The Guest; Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood; Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead; Kevin Wilson, Now Is Not the Time to Panic. Students should read August Blue, by Deborah Levy for the first class.
THE NEW SCHOOL
Dark Green; Eco-fiction for the 21st Century Asynchronous Online Course
This course will explore a selection of important ovels in which nature or the environment or the climate are central characters in their stories---the new genre of ecofiction. With narratives populated by scientists, artists, activists, mystics, militants, nature gods and goddesses, psychic trees, seabirds, seeking spirits and simply everyday heroes, our stories will consider today’s environmental crisis, but will also address the fascinating human capacity for fluid personal change and recovery. Our stories will additionally consider issues of health, wellbeing, readiness and resilience, as well the environment and racial justice, imagined potential futures, a post-secular “dark green religion,“ and the probability of a profound generational shift. Readings: Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones; Jenny Offill, Weather; Ian McEwan, Solar; Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations; ; Richard Powers, The Overstory; Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, Lydia Millet, A Children’s Bible, Ursula K LeGuin, The Word for World Forest.