ENGL 4711

Exclusion(s): Unavailable to students with credit forENGL451. The nonfiction novel, the "novel from life," autofiction, "autobiografiction," and the new sincerity comprise just a few of the ways American novelists have tried, since the late 20th century, to remove fiction from the novel form. This course sets out to explain why, by reading fictional and autofictional texts from roughly 1965 to now alongside critical accounts of neoliberalism. Students will read a variety of literary texts by authors like Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Percival Everett, Toni Morrison, and Sigrid Nunez. While the focus will be mainly on works by American writers, our presumption will be that the problems of fictional form in late capitalist U.S.A., like the larger problem of neoliberal economics, will be legible in work from other countries. Thus, we will read Sheila Heti's "novel from life" How Should a Person Be; and students will select (as a group) any Anglophone work to add to our reading list for the final class.