40 towns began with the two courses in reading and writing creative nonfiction, emphasis literary journalism, that I taught at Dartmouth College in 2013. We began the course by listening to documentary radio producer Larry Massett's "A Night on Mt. Shasta" (the fourth story in this episode of Hearing Voices) and subscribing to Valley News, a remarkable local paper we read to begin developing our sense of the region in which we'd find our stories. So we began with the fantastical and the factual. Between the two courses, the books we read all or most of were:
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Lauren Slater, Welcome to My Country
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead
James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
John Berger, A Fortunate Man
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men
The books we read parts of were:
Norman Sims, ed., True Stories
Lawrence Joseph, Lawyerland
Rosemary Mahoney, Whoredom in Kimmage
Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing
Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel
Peter Dexter, Paper Trails
Tracy Kidder, Hometown
Tom Bissell, Magic Hours
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Lucas Mann, Class A
Kathleen Norris, Dakota
Ben Hecht, 1001 Afternoons in Chicago
William Craig, Yankee Come Home
Greg Bottoms, The Colorful Apocalypse
Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days
John McPhee, Pieces of the Frame
Additional essays we read were:
Michael Paterniti, “Driving Mr. Albert” (Harper's)
David Foster Wallace, “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s” (Rolling Stone)
Terry Williams, "Voices from the Tunnel" (Grand Street)
Leslie Jamison, "Fog Count" (Oxford American)
JoAnn Wypijewski, "The Secret Sharer" (Harper's)
JoAnn Beard, "Undertaker, Please Drive Slow" (Tin House)
Matthew Teague, "The Aftermath" (Philadelphia)
Jeanne Marie Laskas, "Underworld" (GQ)
Jeanne Marie Laskas, "America is Bull" (Esquire)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, "You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!" (NYT Magazine)
Joe Tuzzo, "Toro! Toro! Torito!" (The Revealer)
Vivian Gornick "On the Street" (The New Yorker)
David Searcy, "El Camino Doloroso" (Paris Review)
Mary McCarthy, "Artists in Uniform" (Harper's)
We also looked at photographs by Robert Frank, Vivian Maier, Mary Ellen Mark, Milton Rogovin, Sebastio Selgado, Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, John Thompson, and William Eggleston.
A number of students took on extra reading in the genre or close to it, including work by Janet Malcolm, Jane Kramer, Wendy Doniger, John D'Agata, David Shields, Ted Conover, Michael Lesy, and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
--Jeff Sharlet
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Lauren Slater, Welcome to My Country
John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead
James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
John Berger, A Fortunate Man
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men
The books we read parts of were:
Norman Sims, ed., True Stories
Lawrence Joseph, Lawyerland
Rosemary Mahoney, Whoredom in Kimmage
Sonia Faleiro, Beautiful Thing
Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel
Peter Dexter, Paper Trails
Tracy Kidder, Hometown
Tom Bissell, Magic Hours
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Lucas Mann, Class A
Kathleen Norris, Dakota
Ben Hecht, 1001 Afternoons in Chicago
William Craig, Yankee Come Home
Greg Bottoms, The Colorful Apocalypse
Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days
John McPhee, Pieces of the Frame
Additional essays we read were:
Michael Paterniti, “Driving Mr. Albert” (Harper's)
David Foster Wallace, “The View from Mrs. Thompson’s” (Rolling Stone)
Terry Williams, "Voices from the Tunnel" (Grand Street)
Leslie Jamison, "Fog Count" (Oxford American)
JoAnn Wypijewski, "The Secret Sharer" (Harper's)
JoAnn Beard, "Undertaker, Please Drive Slow" (Tin House)
Matthew Teague, "The Aftermath" (Philadelphia)
Jeanne Marie Laskas, "Underworld" (GQ)
Jeanne Marie Laskas, "America is Bull" (Esquire)
John Jeremiah Sullivan, "You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!" (NYT Magazine)
Joe Tuzzo, "Toro! Toro! Torito!" (The Revealer)
Vivian Gornick "On the Street" (The New Yorker)
David Searcy, "El Camino Doloroso" (Paris Review)
Mary McCarthy, "Artists in Uniform" (Harper's)
We also looked at photographs by Robert Frank, Vivian Maier, Mary Ellen Mark, Milton Rogovin, Sebastio Selgado, Roy DeCarava, Gordon Parks, Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, John Thompson, and William Eggleston.
A number of students took on extra reading in the genre or close to it, including work by Janet Malcolm, Jane Kramer, Wendy Doniger, John D'Agata, David Shields, Ted Conover, Michael Lesy, and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
--Jeff Sharlet