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Reading for This Week:
Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge, pp. 1-135.

I first read about this novel in The New York Times Book Review a few years ago and decided to use it in English 239. I was surprised when I got an e-mail from the author, Kelley Eskridge, who had seen my syllabus on the Internet. She said she would be interested in participating in our class discussion as a guest, and has done so several times.

She doesn’t want her visits to inhibit your responses. She doesn’t feel there is just one way to read a book and doesn’t mind criticism. I’ll leave space for you to ask her any questions you have and she will comment on your responses whenever she has something to say.

Kelley’s participation is a valuable opportunity for us. We have been discussing writing by women all semester. We discuss the work’s effect upon us and what we think it says about the human condition, more specifically about women’s place, which we all agree must become a human place equal to that of men. But what we read is the end product of a complex process. We have never really talked about what goes into the writing of fiction, how it is done, what the writer is thinking and feeling as she writes, what she is trying to do. Now we have the chance to learn.