​NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 

The Novel Today Summer 2025 LITR1-CE 9270 Wednesday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM; Thursday: 1:00 PM- 2:40 PM online 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. We will explore tales of two cities, New York and Los Angeles, featuring a noir intrigue involving the making of Gone with the Wind; an old man and a mysterious horse in the high desert of central Nevada; kindred spirits, a missing astronomer, and what’s written in the stars Essex, England; a famous fraud, and a sharp smart woman in London; a bat-mitzvah, a Christ¬mas play, an inter¬faith fam¬i¬ly, and a young girl’s coming of age in northern Italy; six cosmonauts traveling through space as they behold and record our blue planet. Readings: Amor Towles Table for Two; Willy Vlautin, The Horse; Sarah Perry, Enlightenment; Zadie Smith, The Fraud; AB Yehoshua, The Only Daughter; Samantha Harvey, Orbital. Students should read Samantha Harvey, Orbital for the first class.


THE NEW SCHOOL 
Mystery Masterworks: American Noir
Online/Asynchronous

A fusion of gothic fiction and the detective story, the American “noir” novel is both a distinctive contribution to the mystery novel and an impressive genre in its own right. Simultaneously dreamlike and realistic, the Noir Novel’s mean streets and nightmare alleys, along with their world-weary heroes and femme fatales have evolved into literary and cultural symbols with archetypal resonance. We will explore these novels as expressions of social and political protest and commentary, but also as aesthetically satisfying depictions of an entire psychology, or even as a manifestation of a singular type of existential philosophy. Readings include major American modern noir classics, including: Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep; Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon ; James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice;  Cornell Woolrich, The Bride Wore Black; Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man; William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley; Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water; Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock 



Summer 2025
Online/Asynchronous

A fusion of gothic fiction and the detective story, the American “noir” novel is both a distinctive contribution to the mystery novel and an impressive genre in its own right. Simultaneously dreamlike and realistic, the Noir Novel’s mean streets and nightmare alleys, along with their world-weary heroes and femme fatales have evolved into literary and cultural symbols with archetypal resonance. We will explore these novels as expressions of social and political protest and commentary, but also as aesthetically satisfying depictions of an entire psychology, or even as a manifestation of a singular type of existential philosophy. Readings include major American modern noir classics, including: Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep; Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon ; James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice;  Cornell Woolrich, The Bride Wore Black; Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man; William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley; Patricia Highsmith, Deep Water; Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock.