As an introduction to Donald Barthelme, whose fiction we will examine in class tomorrow, read this biographical sketch. After you read the sketch, compose a one- or two-paragraph journal entry that includes what you have learned about his writing style, and what you have learned about readers’ and critics’ mixed responses to his fiction.
Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” the story that we’ll read tomorrow in class, was originally published in The New Yorker, the magazine that recently featured “Katy Grannan’s Photograph of Taylor Swift.” That picture of Swift appears below. I did not include it on your assignment handout because the photograph itself wasn’t important to the exercise. The assignment asked you to explore how a writer creates an unconventional portrait of a subject by forgoing physical description and focusing instead on other elements, such as mood and contrast. That journal exercise on the Swift portrait–or a reading assignment of your choice–serves as a warm-up for your analysis.
What makes a title effective? That’s an important question to consider since the title contains the first words of yours that a reader will encounter. First, it should be descriptive; it should evoke an image in the reader’s mind. It should also be relevant to your subject; it should convey something about the writing that will follow. Lastly, it should be intriguing; it should create in the reader a desire to keep reading. With those traits in mind, review the titles of your classmates’ literacy listed below. Which of them is most effective and why?
- “Breaking through the Pages”
- “The Beauty of Discomfort”
- “A Challenge Wrapped in a Smile”
- “Editing the Story of Myself”
- “Finding My Way through Words”
- “Giving Voice to the Unheard”
- “How to Write about Myself”
- “My Eighth Grade Spanish Class”
- “The Paper that Changed my Life”
- “The Passage”
- “Prompted to Say More”
- “Reading Changed My Mind”
- “Surviving Ingrid”
- “Why I Hate the Letter R“
- “Writing is Hard”
Bonus Assignment Opportunity
Directions
- Determine which of the literacy narrative titles you deem most effective.
- Compose a comment of one complete sentence or more that includes (1) the title enclosed in quotation marks, and (2) a brief explanation of its effectiveness.
- Post your comment as a reply to this blog entry no later than 5 p.m. today, Tuesday, February 3. (To post your comment, click on the post’s title, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will then see the image of an airmail envelope with a leave comment option.)
I will approve your comments (make them visible) before Wednesday’s class.
Next Up
In class on Wednesday, we will read and discuss Donald Barthelme’s short story “The School.” That story and the texts we have studied thus far in English 1103–“MeTalk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and the excerpt from the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird–are among the pieces of writing that may serve as the subject of your upcoming analysis. Before you begin drafting that assignment on Wednesday, February 11, we will examine two more texts that may serve as your subject.
Jane Lucas 
The title “Why I Hate the Letter R” stands out to me the most because it has a clear topic that made me think “why would anyone hate a letter?” and that encouraged me to read and find out why. This tittle is effective because it makes the reader curious as to what the title means, and immediately makes you want to go find out.