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Syllabus for Masterclass in Hyperfiction

books connect all of us

  1. ron silliman
  2. andre codresque
  3. d h lawrence
  4. steinbeck but not hemingway
  5. hopscotch
  6. slaughter house five
  7. franny & zoey
  8. subterranean blues
  9. howl
  10. all mcelhenney’s work on hyperfiction, fiction, short-short story, and narrative non-fiction
  11. bright lights, big city
  12. generation x
  13. my gastroenterologist
  14. if the river was whiskey
  15. gravities rainbow
  16. infinite jest
  17. the odyssey
  18. marcus arraleaus meditations 2023 translation with scholarly notes
  19. italo calvino, if on a winter’s night a traveler
  20. william gibson, neal stevenson, and the altered carbon guy – modern sci-fi masters
  21. n love, human intelligence, human connection across time
  22. anaïs nin, journals
  23. virginia wolfe, the waves (to the lighthouse is an easier start)
  24. ulysses, joyce (portrait of the artist is an easier start, or the short story ‘the dead’)
  25. kafka on the shore, mirakami
  26. orwell, all texts
  27. sexton & plath heartbreaking poetry of the end
  28. tolkien middle earth saga
  29. ill earth wars of thomas covenant
  30. i have no idea why i’m not using capitalization – this is not a poem
  31. james and the giant peach, dahl
  32. iching – the big grey and yellow volume from some university
  33. siddhartha, herman hesse
  34. razor’s edge, maupassant
  35. dune, herbert the master world-builder, better the second and third read
  36. steps to freedom, rashad feild
  37. paz, neruda, rulfo, marquez
  38. shantaram, the prose rushes like a hit of an opioid
  39. i know you’re anticipating the bible here, but it’s not really a source, read it if you like, but don’t devote your entire life to it, or dianetics, scientology, mormanism, shakers, freaks.
  40. the dancing wu li masters
  41. embrace tiger, return to mountain
  42. rose, lee young lee
  43. all the words of naomi shiabe nye, written, spoken, performed
  44. robert bly, john herald lee, dan jones
  45. the seven story mountain, thomas merton
  46. the dark night of the soul, writing through the darkness, thomas moore
  47. johnathan livingston seagul, richard bach
  48. metamorphosis, kafka
  49. asmov, niven, bova, heinlein, clarke – epic sci-fi masters
  50. leaves of grass, walt whitman, read on the banks of the river running through Oxford University in the summer of 1986.

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