Lawyers and Literature about the course “The issue is no longer whether reading literature should be part of the lawyer’s training. Rather, the issue is how we can best read law-related literature to make us better lawyers. While the larger question is how we read, we must also examine the question of what to read.” [William Domnarski, Law-Literature Criticism: Charting a Desirable Course with Billy Budd, 34 J. Legal Educ. 702 (1984)] We'll use the first meeting of the class to: get a better sense of what the course is all about, explore what you'll be doing in the course, review the readings you'll be asked to undertake, briefly outline the course writing you will be asked to do. In preparation for this first class meeting you should peruse the course website. It provides an indepth commentary on both the nature of the course and selected readings. You will want to read: [Studying Literature] [Teachers' Work] As you read these first assigned stories, you should also begin to peruse the following: Reading Law, Reading Literature Enemies of Reading Assumptions About Literature What You Bring With You Making Yourself a Subject of Study Reading Lawyer Stories Thinking About Our Lives as Stories Working With Stories Strategies for Reading In the background of all your reading: What is this story doing here (in the course)? And there are a host of questions that accompany this basic one: What am I supposed to do with this story? How am I to talk about this story with my colleagues (my fellow students and the teacher)? How am I supposed to made use of the story to further my education as a lawyer? At times we'll try to be explicit and raise these questions directly, while at other times we'll let them reside off-stage (where they may still be a significant influence on our conversation about the stories). These questions raise a still more basic question, one you may well think too basic to be taken up in a serious way--how do I read? (How is one to try to read this story?) In thinking about these basic questions you may find it interesting, even as you begin the course to think about the s-t-r-a-t-e-g-i-e-s you use in reading: [Reading Strategies] [If you begin reading a section of the course website and find that it doesn't provide you any help in thinking about your work for the course, and your reading, simply move on to something that will help.] Assignments will be marked on the assignments page with double purple bullets: You should read, as part of the assignment, the Instructor's Note if there is one available. I have assembled a selection of web resources to accompany some of the readings. You'll also find some of the course readings online. A course reading found online will be noted by a hypertext link to the webpage as e.g.: Jeremy Gilman, "The Real World of Law School" [online text]. If you try to access the online text source for a story and it doesn'tt work, please notify me by email and I will try to promptly correct the problem. The web resources are indicated on the various webpages with a "web resources" image: The web resources are not assigned reading. Links to these resources are provided not with the idea that they provide direct guidance on how to read, interpret, or work with a particular story but because they provide information about the author of the reading, other "readings" of the story, and critical commentary and scholarly exploration of themes found in the story. (In some instances, the linked resources may be of greater interest to graduate students in literature than to law students.) If, during the course of your reading and web browsing, you find web resources of interest to the class please pass them along and I'll make them available, either by announcement, or by adding them to the relevant "web resources" page of the course website. I have tried to map out and schedule (at least in some tentative fashion) an entire semester of readings. It would be foolish to try to follow this schedule and not allow for more or less discussion of particular readings given your interest (and my energies). Consequently, we'll try to follow the schedule but will vary it as necessary as we proceed. After each class meeting I will update the assignments page and will add the evening's assignment to the Assignments Archive page (which you can access from the homepage of the course website). Course Readings In this course of reading--Lawyers and Literature--I expect to: explore the possibilities and obstacles to learning about ourselves as lawyers from literature; puzzle over the relation of the "real" and "fictional" aspects of the lives we live as lawyers; explore how being a lawyer opens up and closes down important aspects of our personal lives; identify strategies we use in reading and understanding lawyer stories; participate in and learn more about the dynamics of conversation by which we try to put lawyer stories to use. Jerome Bruner, a respected elder in the world of psychology, argues that we should "constantly be inquiring about the interaction between the powers of individual minds and the means by which the culture aids or thwarts their realization." Bruner contends this inquiry "will inevitably involve us in a never-ending assessment of the fit between what any particular culture deems essential for a good, or useful, or worthwhile way of life, and how individuals adapt to these demands as they impinge on their lives." [Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education 13 (1996)]. The legal profession is a distinct culture which aids and thwarts the realization of individual minds and lives. Lawyers and Literature examines, from a literary perspective, how a lawyer's life is enriched and diminished by the very culture that makes it possible. Assigned Readings: Four novels: Albert Camus, The Fall (New York: Vintage Books, 1956) Pete Dexter, Paris Trout (New York: Penguin Books, 1988) Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Popular Library, 1960) Walker Percy, The Second Coming (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980) Major excerpts from a novel: Leslie Hall Pinder, On Double Tracks (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Ltd., 1990) Two novellas: "The Death of Ivan Ilych," in Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories 95-156 (New York: New American Library, 1960) Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" The short stories include: J.S. Marcus, "Centaurs" in J.S. Marcus, The Art of Cartography 17-23 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) selected stories by Lowell B. Komie in Komie's The Legal Fiction of Lowell B. Komie (Chicago: Swordfish/Chicago, 2005) "Weight," in Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1990) "Puttermesser: Her Work History, Her Ancestry, Her Afterlife," in Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers 3-19 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) selected stories by John William Corrington from John William Corrington, The Collected Stories of John William Corrington (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990)(reprinted in the Legal Studies Forum) The scheme for devising your grade for the course is more fully explored on a separate webpage. If you have troubles with the course website (other than the inevitable inoperative links to external websites)(which I check on a regular basis but never often enough to insure that every link every day is operable) please let me know. If you have questions, concerns, hopes, or fears, concerning the readings, the course, or your grade for the course, you are welcome to consult with me. I will, barring some unforseen circumstances, promptly reply to your email message. I'll be delighted to meet with you and discuss the course, and your writing, at any time. Drop me a note by email, or see me before or after class, and we'll find a convenient time to meet. Most "law and literature" courses are unlike what we've set out to do, and to read, in Lawyers and Literature. One of the few efforts, that I've found, that describes the difference between the traditional "law and literature" course and the "lawyers and literature" course that your taking is explored in William Domnarski's " Law and Literature," 27 Legal Studies Forum 109 (2003) [on-line text]. Domnarski is, as you may recall, the author of the review of John William Corrington's stories which I handed out in class. Lawyers and Literature might be viewed as a project of two associated "movements" in contemporary jurisprudence: "law and literature" and "narrative jurisprudence." See: James R. Elkins, "A Letter to “Law & Literature” Students in Australia (4/5/04)," appeared in Law, Memory & Literature 20-33 (Australian Legal Philosophy Students Association, ALPSA 2004 Annual)(2004) [on-line text] James R. Elkins, "What Exactly, is "Narrative Jurisprudence?" [on-line text] Lawyers and Literature is, most simply stated, a course comprised of stories, about stories--stories of, by, and about lawyers and the complex lives they (and we) live. James Boyd White on stories, their basic nature and their place in lawyer: an excerpt from James Boyd White, Heracles Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law 169-175 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) [on-line text]   Lawyers and Literature Home Page