2021-22 Pomona College Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
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ENGL055A PO - Topics in Contemporary Literature: Impossible Novels

When Offered: Fall 2021.
Instructor(s): J. Lethem
Credit: 1.0

The novel is an impossible pursuit, but some are more impossible than others. If, as in the poet Randall Jarrell’s definition, “a novel is a prose narrative of a certain length with something wrong with it,” then the novels studied in this course might be called, for their formal strategies or imaginative or verbal excesses, “prose narratives with more than a few things wrong with them.” Making uncommon demands, they raise the risk/reward quotient for their readers (and, obviously, their authors as well), and exchange the usual consolations of fiction for the possibility of plunging the reader into an unforgettable experience, even as they beg to go unread or at least unfinished. Letter grade only. May be repeated once for credit. (H5)
Satisfies the following General Education Requirement(s), subject to conditions explained in the Degree Requirements section of this Catalog:
Area 1



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