S5. Fourteen Days, A Collaborative Novel

This course meets 5 times.

Fourteen Days is the creative effort of 36 authors who have collaborated on producing a Covid novel which occurs primarily on the rooftop of an apartment building whose tenants were unable to flee the City for their nonexistent summer homes unlike many more affluent New Yorkers who could and did.

Typical of NYC apartment buildings, most of the tenants did not know each other, and only when they were trapped by Covid restrictions did they come together for connection in a similar way that Chaucer’s Pilgrims only meet because of their individual desire to travel to Canterbury and do so at the same time.

Required Reading:

Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel. Eds..Atwood and Preston (978-0-35-816638-2)

Optional Reading:

The Canterbury Tales Penguin Classics by Geoffrey Chaucer (978-0-140-42438-6)

Marcia Tannenbaum is a longtime WISE Instructor who has been teaching Literature in various venues since she was a student teacher while at Simmons (College) University where she earned a Bachelors Degree in the School of Education and a Masters Degree in English Language and Literature.

Marcia’s roots are in New York City, the location of the apartment building which is where the novel takes place. She lived in the Bronx as a young child and in the West Village after her graduation from Simmons in 1967/1969. For her, NYC is “the City.”

The idea of a Collaborative novel is very appealing to this instructor as she has been trained as a Collaborative Lawyer and sat for many years on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Collaborative Law Council. In addition, Marcia is a fan of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. [See course description below.]