DOMENIC STANSBERRY

VERMONT COLLEGE SEMINARS

The following menu links are for Domenic's students in the MFA Program at Vermont College

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REQUREMENTS
Creative
Critical
Reading

SAMPLE READING LISTS
The Novel
The Short Story
Non-fiction


CRAFT READIINGS (Required)
Fundamentals of Form and Technique





CREATIVE REQUIREMENTS

Between 20 and 30 pages of Creative Work each packet (6,500 to 8,500 words).


CRITICAL REQUIREMENTS

All students: An informal letter summarizing and reacting to books on the reading list. This letter may also contain questions about your own work-in-progress.

In addition:

First and Second Semester Students: One formal critical paper per packet, between 1,200 and 1, 500 words, devoted to examining an aspect of craft as related to one or more works from the student’s reading list.

Third Year Students: Critical thesis. In-depth examination of literary work designed to help advance your understanding of process and technique, in ways that can be useful to your own work. This can be academic in style, or more informal—including journal or diary formats, graphic arts and multimedia.

Fourth Year Students: Lecture presentation. (Again, these can be formal talks, or multi-media presentations.)


READING REQUIREMENTS:

10 books per semester.

One of the advantages--and challenges—of the Vermont College MFA is the opportunity it offers students to build their own course of study for each semester.

My own opinion is that the literature is vast, and there are lots of angles in--but I encourage students try to build their reading lists in a cohesive way around a topic of investigation relevant to their creative work—particularly in regards to issues of form and technique.

Below are several sample reading lists. These are by no means comprehensive--and students are not limited to the categories or books here. The point of these sample is to show lists organized by some principle.

In reality, the possible topics are endless. (See Quick Lists for more ideas.)

SAMPLE LISTS--FICTION STUDENTS

COMING-OF-AGE NOVELS

The following is a cross genre list of what might be loosely called coming-of-age novels. In critical papers, these books might be examined for underlying structural similarities, as well as the use of point of view and other technical elements.

Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Little Friend, Donna Tart
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin
The Wizard of Oz,, L. Frank Baum
History of Luminous Motion, Scott Bradfield
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
Ellen Foster, Kaye Gibbons
Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers


ROGUE WOMEN WRITERS

This is a list drawn, in part, from a course taught by Gillian Conoley at Sonoma State. The list examines the convergence of three different formal tendencies under the general theme of women as outsiders—captivity narratives, experimental fiction, and allegorical paradox.

Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Mary Rowlandson
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs.
Nightwood,, Djuna Barnes
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
A Good Man is Hard To Find, (story collection), Flannery O’Connor
Property, Valerie Martin
The Essential Kathy Acker, Kathy Acker
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
In a Lonely Place, Dorothy Hughes
Roses Medalion, Camille Roy
Pamela: A Novel, Pamela Lu


CRIME FICTION
This list gathers books from different aspects of the tradition— hard-boiled, parlor mysteries, courtroom drama, heist and gangster novels, as well as noir portrayals of the interior consciousness of criminals themselvers. (For an understanding of the early roots of the tradition, one would want to also want to take a close look at certain works by Poe, Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Maurice Renards—as well as the influences of German expressionism as exemplifed in the work of filmmaker Fritz Lang.)

Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
I, The Jury, Micket Spillane
Ten Little Indians, Agatha Christie
In a Lonely Place, Dorothy Hughes
The Getaway, and Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
Anatomy of a Murder, Robert Traver
Chester Himes, A Death in Harlem,
Double Indemnity, James Cain
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Compulsion, Meyer Levin
They Shoot Horse Don’t They, Horace McCoy
The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell
Strangers on a Train, , Patricia Highsmith
Silence of the Lambs, , Thomas Harris
Motherless Brooklyn, , Jonathen Lethem
Angels, Dennis Johnson
Pulp, Charles Bukowsku



QUICK LIST IDEAS
These are incomplete lists—starting points for investigations…

PSYCHOKILLER AND MISFITS
Silence of the Lambs , Thomas Harris: American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis: A Good Man is Hard to Find , Flannery O’Connor; Diary of a Rapist , Evan Connell; In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse , Dorothy Hughes; The Talented Mr. Ripley , Patricia Highsmith


EXPRESSIONIST WRITERS
Kafka, Poe, Denis Johnson, Bruno Schultz, Waltzer, Knut Hamsun, Djuana Barnes…etc..


FABULISM
Sci-fi, Fantasy, Magic Realism-- writers ranging from Poe to Valerie Martin to Ray Bradbury to Margaret Atwood, to Philip K. Dick, to Haruki Murakami


EXPERIMENTALIST MOVEMENT

Opacity: Gertrude Stein, William Gass, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon
7O’s and 80’s: Coover, Borges, Cortazar, Barth, Hawkes, Oates
Beyond Narrative: Ben Marcus, Leslie Scalapino, Patricia Lu


ADAPTATIONS
Mary Reiley by Valerie Martin (Retelling of Jeckyl and Hyde from point of view of the maid.
Grendel by John Gardener, (Retelling of Beowulf from p-o-v of the monster
Salems Lot, Stephen King (Retelling of Vampire legend set in contemporary U.S.)


MULTI-GENERATIONAL NOVELS
Go Tell in on the Mountain , James Baldwin
War and Peace , Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons , Turgenev
East of Eden , Steinbeck
Sunlight Dialogues , John Gardner.
Mr and Mrs Bridge , Evan Connell
HouseKeeping , Marilyn Robinson
The Stolen Jew , Jay Neugeboren
Sometimes a Great Notion , Ken Kesey


OTHER TOPICS
Gothic Novels, Vampire novels, Social Realism, The Romance Novel, Historical Fiction



SHORT STORY: ROOTS AND MANIFESTATIONS
This list is intended to give a general sense of the tradition, starting with the “earliest” manifestations of the short story, then moving forward—by leaps and bounds—to modern and contemporary periods. It leaves much out, and for that I apologize.


Root Works: Aesop’s Fables, Canterbury Tales, Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Seminal Figure in Popular, Gothic and Expressionist traditions: Edgar Allen Poe

Seminal Figures in the Yarn: Mark Twain (“Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”) and Eudora Welty, “Why I Live at the PO”

Four Influential Story Collections from the early to mid-Twentieth Century: The Dubliners, James Joyce: A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor; Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson; Red Calvary, Isaac Babel

Seminal Figures in the Realist Tradition: Ernest Hemmingway, Willa Carther, Stephen Crane, James Baldwin, Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, James Baldwin, Ray Carver, Richard Yates—and contemporary offshoots, Alice Munro

In the pulp tradition: Dashiell Hammett, Isaac Asimov, Ursula LeGuin, Harlan Ellison….(Take a look at magazines such as Black Mask, Amazing Stories, etc…)

In Gothic, Expressionist and Fabulist traditons: Poe, Hawthorne, Kafka, Mary Shelley, , Bruno Schultz, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shirley Jackson, Julio Cortazar, Leslie Silko, Joyce Carol Oates, Jean Toomer

In Experimental Tradition (metafiction and recent variants) —Robert Coover, Wiliam Gass, John Barthe, John Hawkes, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Ann Phillips, BenMarkus, Jorge Luis Borges, Lydia Davis.

International Anthology: The Art of the Tale, ed. Helprin.

Contemporary Anthologies: The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, ed. Ben Marcus



CREATIVE NON-FICTION

The intention of this list is to give some sense of the early roots of the tradition, moving forward to contemporary times, including works that including various formal manifestation; journals; captivity narratives; reflections on nature and philosophy; memoirs; biography; and topical investigation. Students

Life Writing (Biography): Eminent Victorians , Lytton Strachey, Walt Whitman: A Life, Justin Kaplan ;

Captivity Narratives: Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson , Mary Rowlandson; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , Harriet Jacobs

Diaries: Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank; Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Warsby Julius Caesar

Autobiography and Reflection: The Confessions of St. Augustine , Walden Pond Thoreau, The Year of Magical Thinking , Joan Didion

Topical Investigations
The Soul of the New Machine , Tracy Kidder (computers)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , Hunter Thompson (politics, gonzo style)
Imagining Robert , Jay Neugeboren (mental illness)
The White Album , Joan Didion (essays on counterculture)
Salvadore , Joan Didion (politics)
Autobiography of a Face , Lucy Grealy (deformity and personal identity)
The Hand: How its Uses Shape Brain, Language and Culture, Frank R. Wilson; Salvation on Sand Mountain , Dennis Covington (Snake Handling and Evangilicsms)
Summer Game , Roger Angel (baseball)
The Yellow Wind , David Grossman (Palestine and Israel
Terra Infirma , Rodger Kamenetz (Grief)
Laughing in the Hills , Bill Barich (horse racing)
Desert Solitaire , Edward Abbey (environmental consciousness)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , Annie Dillard (environmental consciousness)




CRAFT READINGS

Reference Texts:
Theory of the Novel , ed. Phillip Stevick
Short Story Theories , (First Edition) ed. by Charlies May
Grammar as Style , Virginia Tufte
Writing for Story , Jon Franklin (non-fiction)
The Screenplay , Syd Field (screen writers)


Craft Fundamentals:

On Plot:
Read segments on tragedy, VI-XX in Poetics of Aristotle. In Wikipedia, look up Gustav Freytag and read about Freytag’s Pyramid. Also read Poe, “Principles of Composition”, and his review of “Twice Told Tales” for his notion of singular effect. Read “The Dead” by James Joyce and consult a literary dictionary to gain an understanding of the notion of literary epiphany.

Also, "The Structure of the Modern Short Story," A.L. Bader in Short Story Theories.

On Technique:
“Technique as Discovery,” by Mark Schorer in Theory of the Novel

On Point of View
“Distance and Point-View: An Essay in Classification,” by Wayne Booth in Theory of the Novel.

On the Creation of Scene:
“Uses of Summary, Use of Scene and Art of Narrative,” by Phyllis Bentley in Theory of the Novel.

On Dialogue
Study “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Killers” by Ernest Hemmingway

On Style:
Read Virginia Tufte, and/​or sections on style in Theory of the Novel

On Character
“Flat and Round Characters,” Forester; and “The Human Context,” Harvey, both in Theory of the Novel.