Commonly, fiction is understood to be the opposite of fact—where fact is objective, fiction is subjective; where fact is value neutral, fiction is value-laden. Thus, as a class called “Reading Fiction,” this course takes these premises as its starting point in order to challenge their commonsensical status. That is to ask, then, what enables these sharp distinctions between fact and fiction? And to what effect does particular instances of it have? In posing these questions, this course does not seek to reduce one side of the binary to the other, in which fact is nothing but fiction, but rather it will attend to the formal presuppositions and methodological practices that subtend particular historical and disciplinary instances of the fact/fiction dichotomy.

To ground these abstract questions and assertions about epistemology, this course will focus on literary and historical accounts of Los Angeles in the latter half of the 20th century. As an urban/global city whose geographical position in Southern California links it up to both the Asian Pacific Rim and the “global south,” Los Angeles is fecund site for the contested visions of a “transnational” and “multicultural” future. Thus, we will examine the way in which these visions of Los Angeles, whether literary or historical, issue from particular socio-political norms of a fact/fiction dichotomy. To do so, we will pay particular attention to the form of each account and the way it comes to index those norms in its articulation of fact and fiction. Texts for the class MAY include: Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle, Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, Cynthia Kadohata’s In the Heart of the Valley of Love, Octavia Butler’s Parable of Sower, Anna Deavere Smith’s Twillight: Los Angeles, 1992, Gary Phillip’s Violent Spring, LA 2000: A City for the Future. Films for the class MAY include: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down.

The course workload includes: 10-15 pages of revised writing that satisfies the University "W" requirement, which will come in the form of two 6-7 page academic essays that perform a textual analysis of one or more of the fictional texts and thoroughly engages critical material; group presentations where you begin and facilitate class discussion; weekly pop quizzes on the course readings; daily free-writes; a substantial amount of daily reading; occasional take-home writing assignments; and engaging in daily class discussion and in-class group activities.