One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and The Color Purple for comparison with the novels. When we read a poem, I want students to roll the words around in their mouths and try them on for size. I do the preacher in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and they respond as the congregation. Our Baldwin even stayed in character as he fielded questions from the class. Also Rises , I wear a Pamplona t-shirt, put up bullfight posters, and tell them how it felt running with the bulls.
Classroom is theater and teaching is a performance art.
So even though I may be teaching Saul Bellow's Seize the Day for the fiftieth time, I always remember my original enthusiasm, never repeat myself exactly, and rely on the students and my own inspiration to reveal new things about the novel. Doing research on authors such as Bellow and writing about their works has helped to keep the fiction alive for me and for the class. In my lectures and discussion, I relate American literature to the history and culture in which it was created and also try to help the students discover its relevance to contemporary America. For example, I compare One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Color Purple as best-sellers made into successful films, Cinderella stories riding popular trends of their respective times. One of my most influential teachers used close Socratic questioning to lead to inevitable conclusions about literary form.