Prose Sentencing + the Sutured Subject

Instructor: Gail Scott

Date: Saturday 29 January 2011 12-4 PM

What happens to the subject, the sentence, and narrative when the usual driver is not One, but pieces of every thing? What happens to narrative when the question “who speaks when we speak?” becomes a suturing together of available materials? What might be the nature of the sentence and the relationship between sentences? The poet Rilke noted: “A trace or path or groove appears where the frontal and parietal bones of the ‘suckling infant (to use Rilke’s anatomically correct term) have grown together.” As if the brain were projected onto its enclosure, where “the naked eye is now able to read the coronal suture as a writing of the real . . .” If that suture may be seen as a trope for where the intrinsic and extrinsic meet–how to write it? Where is authorship? Critical awareness? The desire big or small for story? For the workshop, which will be part lecture, part writing practice, students may circulate, a week in advance, a page using sentences that perhaps answer in part the above concerns. The discussion will be followed by writing and critique based on various approaches to the question of “sentencing” where there is not One. Suggested readings and links will be circulated prior to the workshop.

Fee: $125.00