ACL 1001
Reading Contemporary Fiction
Semester 1 2010
Footscray | St Albans

Lecture 1
Introduction

by Ian Syson

Reading Contemporary Fiction is the introductory unit for all literary studies students at Victoria University . Followed in 2 nd semester by Poetry and Poetics.

In it we look at a number of examples of contemporary fiction from around the English speaking world with a focus on ways of reading.

• Plurality of meaning

Text books

• Kalinda Ashton, The Danger Game
• Witi Ihimaera, The Uncle's Story
• Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
• Toni Morrison, Tar Baby
• Unit Reader

The unit begins by introducing you to theoretical and practical questions relating to the reading of contemporary fiction.

The substantive reading in the unit involves looking at Australian writers and issues before moving offshore to New Zealand , then Canada and the United States .

The texts are chosen partly because of the way the exemplify the issues we are trying to teach and partly because they are good and interesting books in their own right.

I'll take you through some housekeeping issues now � but your tutor will look at the unit outline and the assessment more closely in your first (or next) tutorial.

Issues:

• lectures
• Tutorial times
• Relationship between lecture and tutorial
• Typical week's structure (week 4)
• Assessment
• All assessment items must be performed

Even though this is a unit about contemporary fiction, I'd like to start off by reading a poem by the Australian poet Geoff Goodfellow, called "Poetry in the Workplace")

Goodfellow points out that this poem was written in response to a claim by Lindsay Thompson, General Manager of the South Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry that Goodfellow's 1990 Community Writers Fellowship awarded by the Literature Board of the Australia Council was "a waste of time.... They had their chance to learn poetry at school. It's a bit late now" (qtd. in Goodfellow, "On Being a Cultural Activist" 4).

They had their chance
to learn poetry at school he said
it's a bit late now

but Mister Thompson's
talking out of school
his standards measured
by dollars
not sense

from Enterprise House
on leafy Greenhill Road
you can bet he'd be
well-versed

he'd know the 100% write-off
for removing asbestos
from out-dated public buildings�
but as for blue asbestos claims
it's a bit late now

& maybe Mister Thompson knows
a sonnet has just fourteen lines
but would Mister Thompson know
the weight of workers'
steel-capped boots
or just that weight of coin
required to replace a pair?

& would Mister Thompson know
how families deal with death
when a scaffolder takes a dive?
would Mister Thompson then respond
to a union call for increased safety?

or would Mister Thompson simply say

it's a bit late now .

There are a number of points I'd like draw here.

According to Thompson:

• poetry (or literature or fiction) is seen as something you do in school. There is no serious use for poetry beyond that.
• literature is something for the immature
• literature is useless and gets in the way of productivity
• literature is antithetical to the kind of work and people you will find on a building site
• I suspect he thinks poetry is effeminate

For Geoff Goodfellow, the case is very different:

• literature is for the whole of your life
• the more you mature, the more literature can become relevant
• literature is useful and can be a boost to morale and productivity
• literature is not out of place on a building site and as GG has demonstrated can appeal to building workers if targeted in the right way
• poetry can be masculine if not downright blokey

Now I, and hopefully you as well, happen to agree with Goodfellow and disagree most heartily with Lindsay Thompson. Literature has given me a whole range of experiences, pleasures and knowledges that would not have been available through any other source.

One question is just what is Lindsay Thompson afraid of. I think that the answer to this is a fairly simple one, though it does bear a lot of exploring:

• Literature is a form of knowledge, activity and writing that attempts to speak profoundly about human experience.
• It is not afraid of pain, emotion, weakness, argument, power or oppression. It is not afraid of imagining, nor the quest for beauty.
• In short, literature is an inherently radical form of human activity.
• And this is why someone like Thompson, whose interests are so much tied to the political, economic and cultural status quo, is deeply afraid of poetry and by extension literature. A society which gave poetry the serious attention it deserves would look radically different from the one Thompson admires.

In many ways the dynamic of opposition between Thompson and Goodfellow encapsulates the kinds of issues we will talk and learn about this semester.

It's only right that I should emphasise to first year students that they live in a society which, in the main, is not aware of the significance of literature or the way it has influenced the very make up of society. A society which is, superficially, antagonistic to literature.

This is to do two things: first to alert you to the marginal nature of the discipline you are venturing into and second to underline its fundamental importance to the aims of an arts degree.

You have left school and have now come to university and the sorts of independence and responsibilities that you will learn and find here. Significantly, you have already broken one of Mr Thompson's golden rules through the very fact that you are sitting in this class: you have left school and are still taking the chance to learn about literature.