Geoffrey Rockwell, Matt K., and I have been discussing Delillo’s Cosmopolis, Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, and Power’s Plowing the Dark on and off over the past few weeks. I wanted to keep track of the conversation since it has dipped into Geoff’s archives (note to self: a useful blog tool would let you easily keep track of one’s conversations in other blogs, without creating an entire post about it to Trackback).

Feel free to join in the comments – I know many of those (2 or 3 people) who read Misc. have read at least one of the above novels…

Related Misc. Posts (wherein one or more of these books is discussed, with no guarantee of thoughtfulness or relevancy):

(second blog-tool question: is there any way, without creating annoyingly specific categories, to autocreate a “related entries” list based on keywords or something?)

 

2 Responses to Cosmopolis: Plowing the Pattern

  1. Matt K. says:

    Missed your original question, and the rest of Geoff’s thread.

    Very deliberate decision to teach two novels. First, I think students can’t really get a feel for an author until they’ve read at least two different works. So I wanted to give them that opportunity. Underworld and Cosmopolis offer some interesting contrasts–big and little, pre- and post-9/11. We’ll see how it works out. Notice, no White Noise 😉

  2. Jason says:

    I did notice – was that because it’s his ‘known’ work? Or did you want the same general setting for both novels?

    I agree on teaching across novels – should prove interesting. I do wonder, though, if teaching two novels written relatively closely together provides as much perspective as some with more distance between them? Not quibbling – I’m sure there’s plenty there to discuss in any case.

    If you can’t tell, I’m jealous that you weren’t teaching these classes when I actually had coursework requirements. :-p

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