On Literature and Teaching

  For a few months now, I have been re-reading novels in order to find out which ones I want to use in class next year. It’s for a Master’s module on contemporary literature, and the texts I’ve been using over the last few were: ·        Barry Unsworth: Morality play ·        Magnus Mills: The forensic records society ·        Samuel Beckett: Endgame ·        Jamaica Kincaid: The autobiography of my mother ·        Charles Yu: How to live safely in a science-fiction universe But I want to change, and it’s not easy: first because it’s hard to kill your darlings, and that’s what you do each time you change the list. But second – and more importantly – because texts are tools as much as they are themselves: it’s about what they give us as novels, and what we can do with them as tools in class. And that distinction is really c...