A Brief Note About the Hyper-Real + Rudiments of A Potential Teaching Vehicle You May Revise

Brief Note Concerning fiction, reality, truth, lies, shaping of reality, mimesis, simulation, feigning and virtual reality: I would highly recommend you read a small excerpt of the writing of French critic, Baudrillard, a key writer on the way our culture grooves on living in simulated realities and the impact of this life on our minds and ways of being. His language, like many postmodern critics', may be alienating to you, so I will request that, at minimum, you read about Baudrillard's theory of simulation and hyper-reality. I believe that given the generation of our students and the topic of fiction, it is important that we understand these aspects of our culture.
One possible link: http://www.semiotexte.com/

I continue to be surprised when I hear students speak of celebrities, such as Britney Spears, as if they were their next door neighbor or best friend. I cannot quite "wrap my mind" around what this means. I would be interested in comments if any of you have insight into this.

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Rudiments of an exercise for the pleasure of your revision:

I always recommend students take notes on the reading. Here are the instructions I give them on how to take notes. Do not take notes while reading or with the book open. Read the story twice. The first time, do not stop for any hard words or for anything. Keep reading even if you do not understand. Wait at least a day, and read the story again. If you need to look up words, do so. After you finish reading, put the book away, and write down a list of the major characters in the story and main things that happened. Do not put every detail in. What is the main conflict in the story? How is it resolved? If you were the author and were on a major television interview show and the host asked you why you wrote the story, what would your answer be?
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How to begin working on the essay:

Here are some questions I recommend. I'd like to hear what you think of them, and what other ideas you may have.

1. I like to begin where students are, so I ask them to write down what they know about their topic. After they list what they know, I ask them to go back over each item, and see if they can remember where each part of their knowledge came from and if they can come up with some convincing support for each aspect of their knowledge (but all of this is still in note form).

2. Then, we brainstorm about historical/cultural influences that may be important to the topic they chose.

3. We look over everything we've noted so far, and we decide what is most important and what is less important and make two columns.

4. I ask the students to explain why the "most important column" contains the points they selected and to explain in writing why those particular points need to be the focus.

5. I then ask them to list ways in which their connection to the topic is different than anyone else's in the class or anyone's at all.

6. Then, we go to the stories and look at finding how the stories teach about the topic and exactly where they do so.

7. They pick out the specific examples and, most importantly, explain the connection of these examples to the topic.

8. I ask everyone to write down why they care about the topic at all, and why they think I or any reader should care about it at all.

9. Then come the tough questions: How do you plan to make me, your reader, care about your topic?

10. What exactly are you going to teach me in your paper? What is it you have to say? Why is your paper important? If it's not, you're wasting your time and your audience's time;why bother, and why would Dr. Pruss devote 26 years to teaching this subject if all we were going to do would be is write about things that did not really matter?!!!