Brain Pain discussion

The core reading for each year will be “The Spine”. This will be a sort of vertical tasting through the various genres of difficult fiction. For 2012, our inaugural year, we’ll read Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Julio Cortázar, and David Foster Wallace – a cross-section of the 20th century’s challenging novels. (For details, see “The Spine 2012” folder) For each of “The Spine” novels, there will be background information and links to supporting reference materials. There will be a main discussion thread for discussing only the text. An additional thread will be provided for “Questions, Resources, and General Banter”. This will help keep the discussion thread focused on the text.

The folder titled “Lit Crit and other Mind Benders” will be a place to discuss works by literary theorists. At the beginning, we will read and discuss works that explore mainstream story telling. These texts will form a kind of theoretical base-line from which to explore how challenging novels depart from the mainstream. Every few months, and additional theoretical work will be added to expand our knowledge base.

There will also be two shorter side projects, each a grouping of four or five books that are related in their formal elements. One will begin in early spring, the second in the fall. In keeping with our Brain Pain motif, these reading projects will be called “Cluster Headaches”

These sections will form the core of the Brain Pain project. Some additional folders and projects are in the planning stages. Announcements will be sent out as each element is added.