MPW 999 Advanced Nonfiction Memoir As History

MPW 999—Advanced Nonfiction—Memoir as History

Three Units

Spring 2008

Wednesday, 7:00 p.m. to 9:40 p.m.

M. G. Lord

Introduction and Purpose: To See a World In a Grain of Sand, or How to Knit Your Memoir Into a Larger Story (And Get It Published)

This course will explore the ways in which writers use their personal stories to comment on aspects of the wider world. “Creative nonfiction” is an evolving genre that combines recollection with reporting--a linkage beneficial to both reader and writer. Readers can relate more easily to, say, the emblematic struggles of one family than to a dry, abstract account of a social trend or historic period. Writers can focus on a subject of endless fascination—themselves—while still generating the fact-filled narratives that publishers crave.

Students will examine the work of nonfiction masters to see how they achieved their results. They will then attempt to incorporate these devices or approaches in short exercises and a long piece of original nonfiction.

Course Requirements and Grades:

In class, we will discuss texts by Mary McCarthy, James Ellroy, Diane McWhorter, Bernard Cooper, Susan Griffin, D. J. Waldie, A.M. Homes, Joel Agee, James Baldwin and others. Students will be expected to complete one short exercise, a query letter and a magazine-length story during the semester. Students will submit a rough draft of the story to me at mid-term, along with copies to the other members of the class. They will thus be able to receive criticism from their fellow students as well as from me. A final, edited version of the story will be submitted to me on the final day of class.

This is not a lecture course. My role is not to decode the class readings. I expect students to read as writers so that they can discuss what the author of the assigned text achieved and how he or she achieved it. Each student will lead one class discussion; he or she will prepare questions about one of the books on the reading list. I expect students to do all the reading. (The best writers read widely and extensively in the area in which they choose to work.)

We will also critique student work in class. Students will share useful observations about their fellow students’ writing exercises, query letters and articles. This is a breakdown of my grading criteria:

Class participation: 25%

Quality of Writing: 50 %

Exercises/ homework/ submitting work for class critique and critiquing other students’ work: 25%

More than three absences from class will prevent a student from passing the course. Class participation is critical to student grades. If there are long stretches of silence during a discussion period, each student’s grade will drop—even if he or she writes like Tolstoy.

From time to time, visitors—agents, editors or other writers--may visit this class. If this happens, students may have to deviate slightly from the syllabus. The distinguished visitor’s schedule will take precedence—just as it would in real life. Students will learn to be flexible. Inflexibility will have a negative impact on a student’s grade.

For more information about University grading policies, please refer to the USC Grading and Correction of Grades handbook, found at: or

Course Readings/Class Sessions

January 16: Introduction, or Own Your Story

Read “Why I Write” by Joan Didion, “In many ways,” Didion explains, “Writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.”

Reading Assignment:Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, which is about nothing less than the difference between truth and fiction. McCarthy juxtaposes perfect short stories about her early life with passages that detail what actually happened.

Writing Assignment: Submit an exaggerated, embellished story along with another story detailing what really happened. Please make copies for your classmates.

January 23: The Limitations of Memory, or What Is Non-Fiction?

Discuss McCarthy and exercises.

Reading Assignment: Foreword to Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock, which deals with her family’s immigration from Scotland to North America. This book falls in the ambiguous area between fact and fiction. “Such stories pay more attention to the truth of a life than fiction usually does,” Munro writes, “But not enough to swear on.”