Highly recommend making some friends in the class early on to be able to bounce ideas off of each other. If not then you should be fine if you relate everything to how the state of the world is deteriorating.

Don't get scared by the lectures, sometimes he rambles on and will diverge from the focus. Pay attention to the passages he brings to light in class from the short stories. WHen answering the short questions/short essays, he will accept anything as long as you explain it - i've never heard him say "that's wrong". The final essay for his class "the good, the bad the weird" only focuses on 3 stories out of all the stories (around 10 in total) that we've read, so don't worry if one of the stories is a bit unclear. Best teacher i've gotten in english hands down!