COUNTER-CANON: Structure as sabotage

This is a Counter-Canon night about what happens when writers turn the machinery of storytelling against itself. Hayes takes a Gwendolyn Brooks poem and rebuilds it word by word into something new. Barthes argues that the author is dead and the reader is the one who makes meaning. Barth writes a story about a boy in a funhouse that keeps stopping to tell you it's a story. Each text treats form not as a container but as a weapon. The question is: what are they fighting?