Novel Study Sales Pitches

1. Novel Study Sales Pitches

2. Purpose: • Choice = more interest/ownership • Connections/Echoes/Cross-Pollination • Challenge • Coverage: • Nationality • Gender • Time period • Style • ***Warnings • brutality

3. Connections • Speculative Fiction • “[Humanity’s] worst appetites and weaknesses---and [humanity’s] ultimately exhilarating spirit” • Haunting • SATIRE! • The rest I will leave up to you…

4. 1984– George Orwell • Dystopian Society • Impact: • Big Brother • Thought Police • thoughtcrime • 2+2=5 • The third purpose of satire • Politics, power, freedom, control, deception, surveillance, propaganda, war, media, love, history, rebellion, despair

5. 1984 – George Orwell • “People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.” • “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”

6. White Noise – Don DeLillo • Awarded the Jerusalem Prize (the theme of freedom of the individual in society)first American to win • Postmodern • Readily apparent connections to our everyday lives • First Person P.O.V. • Humour (see for yourself) • Consumerism, Technology, Death, Media, Pollution, Materialism, Family, Pride, Modernity, Fear, Anxiety, Silliness of Academics, Lack of Individualism

7. White Noise – Don DeLillo • “We are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.” • "What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes from computer to computer. It changes and grows every second of every day. But nobody actually knows anything."

8. Blindness– Jose Saramago • Nobel Prize for Literature (1998) • Frightening/Fascinating concept • Narrative style (structure, our role) • Allegory • Opportunism, Disaster, Violence, Brutality, Power, Control, Redemption, Guilt, Civilization or a lack of it, Despair, Sexism, Survival, Barbarity, Selflessness, Compassion

9. Blindness – Jose Saramago • “Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.” • “What meaning do tears have when the world has lost all meaning” • “Animals are like people, they get used to everything in the end.”

10. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood • Controversy • Dystopian – response to Orwell? • Atwood: • Among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history • Divides her time between Toronto and Pelee Island! • First person P.O.V. • Sexism, Media, Control, Power, Surveillance, Purpose, Fundamentalism, Social Class, Perseverance, Rebellion

11. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood • “There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last. I know why there is no glass…and why the window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn’t running away they’re afraid of. We wouldn’t get far. It’s the other escapes….”

12. Your Criteria… • What do you look for in a book that you are choosing for a novel study in class? • Think about who you are as a reader