English 486: Literary JournalismInstructor: Dan Simmons
Phone: 608-787-9872 (home); 608-791-8217 (work); call whenever you need me; leave a message at home – I check frequently
Email:
dtsimmons@viterbo.edu;
dsimmons@lacrossetribune.com; please CC to both addresses; I’ll respond as quickly as possible
Office Hours: by appointment
Course: ENG486 . . . Spring 2006 . . . meeting times/location subject to immediate change (we’ll discuss in the first class)
Course description:
“Writers are journalists before they’re anything else. You keep coming back to journalism . . . to describe action, to narrate a sequence of events and somehow keep your own fine sensibility out of it, to simply say how the game progressed. In all the best poems you find precise reporting, and this has very little to do with the mood of the writer.”
--Garrison Keillor, Oct. 8, 1997 interview in The Atlantic Monthly
This course aims to prove and practice the link between journalism and literature.
We will read and study great writers – some fiction writers, some journalists – and analyze how their writing blends elements of both genres. Our readings will take us inside places very foreign – a Montana Indian reservation, a river village in rural China, a small town in Colombia, to name a few. We’ll read a wide variety of stories and study how the writers make the topics relevant and compelling, no matter how faraway or obscure.
Similarly, each of us will explore a place either foreign or familiar, spending a healthy portion of our semester there. We will immerse ourselves in its people, events and “scene.” We will write stories every week based on what we saw, smelled, heard, experienced and felt. In a word, on what we reported.
We will study and practice writing techniques – setting scenes, narrating action, using precise language, capturing dialogue – that define good stories. We will focus on telling true stories, about actual people, with fine style and a devotion to facts.
In class, we’ll listen to each other’s work and offer honest, thorough criticism. In some cases, a classmate’s work may warrant limited praise. In others, it will warrant only discussion about how it could be improved. Our focus always: improve.
Required texts:
Hessler, Peter. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Kerrane, Kevin and Yagoda, Ben. The Art of Fact: a Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism. New York: Touchstone, 1998.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Living to Tell the Tale. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor. New York: Knopf, 1986.
Class readings (photocopied; will be distributed during the first class)
Assignments:
Generally, every week will involve four out-of-class activities:
1) Reporting at your chosen beat
2) A written assignment (usually a “Talk of the Town” style slice-of-life story, 100-500 words; sometimes a longer, more involved story)
3) Reading a selection assigned during the previous class
4) Listening to “This American Life” (on KXLC 91.1FM Saturdays at 3 p.m. and WLSU 88.9FM Sundays at 11 a.m.)
I will inform you of your specific assignment, both in class and on email, for the next week’s class.
Class Policies:
Attendance: Show up. If you can’t, please let me know. I’m not going to record who’s there and who’s not, but with a small class it won’t be hard to discern. I offer you no threats about what will happen if you don’t join us; I will promise you amazing breakthroughs as a writer and person when you do.
Oatmeal: Start every day with it. Every good journalist does. You should, too.
Criticism: Accept it. Don’t let your ego limit your ability to hear and implement great advice from peers. In addition, give great criticism. Your classmates rely on you for it.
Sleep: Do it. You will have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead. True. But you’ll be much more alive and attentive as a reporter and writer if you leave yourself time for a long doze nightly. Or a series of short dozes daily. Be not afraid of the siesta.
Reading aloud: Get used to it. You’ll read from your own work every class. I expect you also to read your work aloud as you develop your stories. It’s the best way to hear your words and pinpoint where rhythm breaks down or sentences should end. Others may be annoyed. No matter. Read to your dog. Or to the birds. Or to your vacuum cleaner.
Passion. Have it. Share it. Don’t conceal it. Great writing occurs because the writer loves the story and must tell it in its full, vivid truth. Sometimes, the truth may be unpleasant. But the writer displays no less zeal for telling it.
Class Activities:
You will be part archeologist, part historian, part psychologist, part a bunch of other professions. Your task: gather every piece of information you could possibly dream of from your beat. And then gather more. In honor of your relentless pursuits, I will establish the following collections for you to fill:
Newseum: Every beat is full of stuff. Gather superfluous trinkets/memorabilia to give us a sense of your beat and make us laugh. Just don’t steal.
Money quoteboard: Every week, please show up with a quote from your beat. Or a bunch. We want fresh, candid words, the result of your patient, probing reporting. The money quoteboard will chronicle our adventures throughout the semester. And it will give you a reason to enjoy conversations with strange people you may otherwise prefer to avoid. Do it for the money quotes. And the insight you’ll get into your beat from its shadowy characters.
May I add my two cents? Nope, says post officePostal rate increases; No one goes postalStamps of disapprovalHave any two-cent stamps? Meiyou [Chinese for "don't have," pronounced like Mayo as in the clinic, repeated daily to waigoren at Chinese post offices when they have the audacity to ask for stamps] [add your own cheesy headline here]Stamps jump from 37 to 39 cents. Post office goes dry of two-centers at 3 p.m. Reporter meets Chinese women at post office, interviews them in Chinese:
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2006/01/10/news/01stamps.txtEditor's note to paper staff re. the story (emphasis on the last line of it):
"Props also to [me] for the late-in-the-day save on the Post Office story. [Our editor] got word in the afternoon that the 2-cent stamps were gone and sent Dan to check it out. A great bit of reporting in a short period of time provided Dan, and our readers, with a nice read that contained lots of numbers and some great detail. And leave it to Simmons to find a Chinese angle to the story. ... It's All China, All The Time with Mr. Simmons."
