Also, I’d like you to submit a youtube clip of a track that you think constitutes an example of life narrative to the comments section of this post. Paula and Monica have already done so. Paula’s choice reminds me of my grandfather, who had an old 8-track cassette with this song on it:

“A Boy Named Sue” was written by Shel Silverstein, the author of The Giving Tree, and recorded by Johnny Cash at a concert at San Quentin Prison.

Monica sent Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Tuesday’s Gone”:

The name of the band, of course, comes from a PE teacher– a notorious hard-ass named Leonard Skinner– at their high school. It seems difficult to separate LS’s songs from the fate of the band who wrote and performed them. The “real,” objective world they lived in– and the plane crash that killed Ronnie VanZandt and Steve Gains– tend to intrude into the recorded music, influencing its significance.

The Temptations’ Papa Was a Rolling Stone:

Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing:

Your assignment for Tuesday (in addition to the required readings on they syllabus): send me a song (and lyrics) from youtube that you feel qualifies as a life narrative. It has to be “American.” Submit as a comment to this post by Monday evening @8 pm.

A map of the slave trade:

The vice-royalties of New Spain:

1. legal name

2. preferred name

3. place/date of birth

4. are you a first generation college student?

5. are you a military veteran?

if so, what was your job/ period of enlistment?

6. are you fluent in more than one language/ did you grow up speaking more than one language? which ones?

7. have you taken, or are you currently taking, ENG 114 (or equivalent) or a CMS course?

8. what is your primary area of study?

9. what was the best non-required book you read in the last year?

10. what was the last film you saw in a theater?

11. name three musicians, groups and/or genres you enjoy.

12. pick one. what about his/her/their music do you like?

http://analepsis.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/maps-vial-contcult-americas/

http://analepsis.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/continents-hum455/

Johnny 99  (1982)

Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month
Ralph went out lookin’ for a job but he couldn’t find none
He came home too drunk from mixin’
Tanqueray and wine
He got a gun shot a night clerk now they call ‘m Johnny 99

Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don’t stop
Johnny’s wavin’ his gun around and threatenin’ to blow his top
When an off duty cop snuck up on him from behind
Out in front of the Club Tip Top they slapped the cuffs on Johnny 99

Well the city supplied a public defender but the judge was Mean John Brown
He came into the courtroom and stared poor Johnny down
Well the evidence is clear gonna let the sentence son fit the crime
Prison for 98 and a year we’ll call it even Johnny 99

A fistfight broke out in the courtroom they had to drag Johnny’s girl away
His mama stood up and shouted “judge don’t take my boy this way”
Well son you got any statement you’d like to make
Before the bailiff comes to forever take you away

Now judge judge I got debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holdin’ my mortgage and they takin’ my house away
Now I ain’t sayin’ that make me an innocent man
But it was more ‘n all this that put that gun in my hand

Well your honor I do believe I’d be better off dead
And if you can take a man’s life for the thoughts that’s in his head
Then won’t you sit back in that chair and think it over judge one more time
And let ‘em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line

see Census Shows 1 in 2 People are Poor or Low-Income from Associated Press

Novels

Gain by Richard Powers

Outstanding. 2 narratives that counterpoint one another. In the first, a small soap-making company adapts to the rise of US capitalism and becomes a multinational corporation. In the second, Laura, a 40 year old mother of 2, discovers she has ovarian cancer.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

A sharply observed political novel about Thomas Cromwell, counselor to Henry VIII and a leading figure in the English Reformation.

Waverly by Walter Scott

Scott’s first novel. A young man joins the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland.

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

Set in de-industrialized Pennsylvania. A novel about crime and the social effects of a faltering economy.

Non-Fiction

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies by Jodi Dean

The ideas are as bad-ass as the title. Way beyond the increasingly irrelevant lib/con divide.

Ideology (2nd ed.) by John Hawkes

A really outstanding and encompassing introduction to the concept. I cribbed bits of this for lecture.

The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel by Marina Mackay

A real pleasure to read. Highly accessible. The novel is a technology for making us think about the world.

Peoples and Empires by Anthony Padgen

Empire is one of my intellectual obsessions. Padgen takes a global view. A bit stodgy for my taste, but some valuable knowledge.

There is No Bread Without Freedom by Constantine Pleshkanov

Flipping the script on the triumph of capitalist democracy and the End of History.

A Revolution of the Mind by Jonathan Israel

The radical roots of Enlightenment.

Joseph Conrad: Nostromo by Ian Watt

Ian Watt was one of the most erudite and significant writers of literary criticism in English. This volume isn’t as seminal as his classic, The Rise of the Novel, but it offers perspicuous insights into Conrad’s most demanding work, Nostromo.

Film

The Housemaid (Korea 2010)

The Robber (Austria 2010)

The Violin (US/Mexico 2005)

Beau Brummell: This Charming Man (UK 2008)

Sin Nombre (US/Mexico 2009)

Behind the Rainbow (South Africa 2008)

A Handful of Dust (UK 1988)

A Film With Me in It (Ireland 2008)

The Escapist (UK 2008)

The Princess of Montpensier (France 2010)

Blind Shaft (China 2003)

Bad Day to Go Fishing (Spain/Uruguay 2009)

Mary, Queen of Scots (UK 1971)

Quilombo (Brazil 1984)

The Trip (UK 2010)

Comedy of Power (France 2006)

Tycoon: A New Russian (Russia 2002)

Gomorrah (Italy 2008)

The Red Violin (US 1998)

How I Ended This Summer (Russia 2010)

Towards Zero (France 2007)

Cutter’s Way (US 1981)