You have a lot of freedom and choice in this course. I think that’s a good thing–and hope you do, too–but it can also pose problems. You have to make those choices! This is the first step in becoming an active reader… deciding what you will read.
My basic advice would be to read what seems to you interesting, what seems to align with your own tastes and concerns. On the other hand, I would also suggest that you choose at least a couple of texts that seem foreign and strange, that are perhaps not the kind of thing that you would naturally choose to read. Challenge yourself!
To help you in your choice, as you ponder how to fill out your course contract (PDF), here are some comments. You may also find it helpful to look ahead at the course lectures, though these do not at all pretend to be exhaustive… nor do the notes below. There is always more in a text than you expect.
- Marcel Proust, “Combray.” This is a required text, so you have no choice. It is also by far the most famous of all the books we are reading. You can just about get away with reading only the first part, but I do hope (and strongly suggest) you read the whole thing. You may find it a bit slow going at first. It’s about childhood, memory, and more.
- Roberto Arlt, Mad Toy. Not too long, this is the picaresque tale of a teenage boy in early twentieth-century Buenos Aires, who goes from minor robbery to something like respectability as he tries to ease himself into the lower middle classes. A good preparation for the Piglia novel we read later. Themes: class, urbanization, betrayal.
- André Breton, Nadja. A man (who happens to be a prominent Surrealist writer) meets a strange young woman on the streets of 1920s Paris, and briefly becomes obsessed with her. This is his semi-autobiographical account of that affair. Themes: love, desire, madness.
- María Luisa Bombal, The Shrouded Woman. This is a required text, so you have no choice. It’s also quite short: more a novella than a novel. I think you’ll like it. It’s about gender, memory, and how a life is lived.
- Alberto Moravia, Agostino. Another short book, and not very difficult. It’s about a young boy and his summer holiday at the beach (where he learns more than he ever expected to learn), families, sexuality.
- Carmen Laforet, Nada. A longer book, but another easy read. It’s about poverty, cities, friendship, and (odd) families. It’s also about someone more or less the age of most of you–a university student–so you may find yourself identifying with the protagonist.
- Joseph Zobel, Black Shack Alley. A longer book, but again not difficult. If you are at all interested in issues of race or postcolonialism, you should read this one. It’s about growing up in Martinique, poverty, education, and writing.
- José María Arguedas, Deep Rivers. Another one of several of the books that we are reading that is about childhood and growing up. But this one is set in the Peruvian Andes, and so is also about (post)colonialism and racialization. Themes: indigeneity, race, colonialism, childhood
- Mercè Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves. This is a required text, so you have no choice. I like this novel a lot. But you may find it a bit depressing. It’s about a young woman and mother in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, for whom nothing quite goes right until (spoiler alert) things start perking up a bit at the end. It’s also about war, cities, and gender.
- Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star. This is a short, experimental novel about a young woman, a migrant from the Northeast of Brazil to Rio Janeiro, where she lives a precarious existence, with almost nothing to her name. But the book is also about what it means to write about such a woman: the narrator is almost as much of a character as she is. It asks what we can ever know about a fictional character, or even about anyone else. Themes: poverty, life, death, narration.
- Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. This is a book about books, and you (yes you!) are a character, a reader who keeps trying to finish his book but never can. A postmodern tour de force. It’s about reading, writing, and desire.
- Marguerite Duras, The Lover. An autobiographical account of a young girl’s affair with an older man in what was then French Indochina (now Vietnam), combined with fragmented reflections about her family, memory, and the effects of time passing. Themes: gender, love, aging, and loss.
- Norman Manea, The Trenchcoat. This is short–again, more novella than novel–but you may find it a little slow. It recreates life under Communist government in Eastern Europe, and so has a bit of the atmosphere (but none of the action) of an espionage novel. It’s about paranoia, suspicion, and awkward dinner parties.
- Ricardo Piglia, Money to Burn. This is a required text, so you have no choice. Written in the style of a thriller, it’s about a gang of thieves who stage a heist in Argentina and then hide out from the law in neighbouring Uruguay, until they find themselves surrounded. It’s about crime, society, and (surprisingly) sexuality.
- José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons. A rather strange book about a man who invents the past and the people who come to him looking for a new past, all narrated by a gecko (who may or may not bear a strange likeness to the Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges). It’s about memory, politics, death, and disguise.
- José Saramago, Death with Interruptions. Wouldn’t it be good if we no longer had to die? Not according to this novel by a Nobel prize-winning writer. It’s about death (of course) but also life, love, and regret.
- Valeria Luiselli, Faces in the Crowd. A strange book, but beautiful and thought-provoking. It’s about a mother, writing about her Bohemian days as a young woman in New York City, when she became obsessed with an obscure Mexican poet. Themes: memory, modernity, and writing.
- Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend. This is long–perhaps the longest of any of the options you have–but it’s really great and moves at quite a pace. NB the HBO adaption is meant to be good, too. It’s about growing up in postwar Italy, and also about friendship, gender, and class.
I hope all this helps you in your choice… but again, in the end this is your choice. Make it wisely!
