Day 17 March 14, 2002

1. Names. Sudden change: we will have class next Tuesday, though there’s no reading asst. We won’t have class Tues the 26^th, which is the English Festival. I’ll send a note around to those not here. Historical surveys are still due on Tuesday. We’ll start Honky on Thursday.

2. Introduce Clint, and then let him take over.

Questions I might ask, just in case:

Ø Did you have the whole book in your head from the beginning, or did it emerge in smaller pieces? Want to say anything about the episodic quality?

Ø What elements of your personal experience are in it?

Ø What about all that stuff about the carnival? Place where the usual patterns break down? Or a good place to have people run into each other?

Ø Small towns: knowing too much about each other, and not enough at the same time?

Ø What about religion? This book doesn’t make the snake-handling reverend out to be as much of a grotesque as we might expect—in fact he praises Nolan as a repo man who’s helped save the guy who’s snakebit.

Ø What’s the relation between humor and “seriousness” in a book like this one?

Ø What about Buddy Pilot and the phrase “unaffiliated rebel”? About the mentality of somebody that shoots arrows through windows just to make a point?

Ø When Alma enters the book, she seems so sweet and charming that I found myself almost hoping that Nolan would end up with her rather than Laney, who shows few redeeming virtues in my mind. Is that OK?

Ø What about father-son relations? Somebody found a web site (NARTH) arguing basically that men become gay if their fathers are bad to them. What about the war story Nolan’s father tells? Has he always felt inferior to his father the hero, and this helps him recognize that his father has his own griefs and losses?

Ø What about the ways men define themselves as men? Nolan’s difficulties with who he is? Cf. Celie in Color Purple? The student who thought Nolan should have confronted Steve more directly long before, and Laney too. Why doesn’t he?