The Great Gatsby
discussion
If we could the replace Gatsby on the school required reading list...
So, let me understand this -- today's kids should only be assigned YA novels set in the present? Really? We shouldn't expect them to stretch their brains at all? Fitzgerald's book is in my mind, timeless and it teaches the story of American values better than almost anything else I can think of. Would we replace To Kill A Mockingbird because it's set in the last century? Besides, even if it is considered a "1920s" book, shouldn't our students know something of the way the mainstream thought and lived then? NO lessons for today? IMHO, replacing TGG shows more of a desire to move the section along and less of a desire for them to actually learn something beyond the lowest common denominator. But that's me.
Richard wrote: "So, let me understand this -- today's kids should only be assigned YA novels set in the present? Really? We shouldn't expect them to stretch their brains at all? Fitzgerald's book is in my mind, ti..."HERE, HERE!
... of course, I should mention that I'm old-school, c. 1952, so that probably affects my opinions some.
Richard wrote: "... of course, I should mention that I'm old-school, c. 1952, so that probably affects my opinions some."If you were born in 1952, you'd be my wife's age. I am older school than that, har, har! ;-) Maybe we should just throw up our hands and just assign Fifty Shades of Gray, Twilight, and Hunger Games. One reviewer commented that it was not that the kids don't read, it is just that they all read the same things. However, these youngsters will be paying for my Social Security soon and I hope they will able to do better than service jobs or pretty soon we'll all be asking, "Can you afford French fries with that burger?"
Monty J wrote, "What appealed to you about the book? For me it was so-so. No one's explained to me what's so appealing. I thought the writing style was a bit stilted. It was good in places, but too often it felt like the author was trying to impress me with witty and pretty language instead of telling the story. Complex sentences are irritating to me, slowing down my comprehension."There is the same problem with art that there is with people. If you don't see why someone's attractive, it's hard to explain it.
What captures people is the premise of the grand gesture, first of all of a many given extravagant parties just hoping the girl he loved might drop by. Second, there's the language which is far beyond "good in places". It's some of the best writing in American literature. A very famous example is the description of Jordan and Daisy when Nick first seems that at Tom's and Daisy's house. This is not the forum to take you through it.
There's the complexity of theme. Fitzgerald is both critical and completely sympathetic with Gatsby. One source of the novel, uncontroversially, is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". Yet where Kurtz's degeneration is an unarguable descent into "horror" after he goes to Africa to make money (in order, by the way, to marry the girl he loves), Gatsby's criminality never quite becomes horror. What's going on here? The other major source is Eliot's, "The Waste Land" -- the "Valley of Ashes" is pure "Waste Land" -- as is the condemnation. But again it's more complicated -- there is the middle ground between East Egg and the Valley of Ashes, West Egg. And Fitzgerald's feeling are decidedly mixed. Daisy might not have appreciated Gatsby's parties, but Fitzgerald certainly did.
A taste for Gatsby is not eccentric nor uncommon. When the editors of Modern Library voted on the greatest novels in English in the 20th century, The Great Gatsby came in #2 after Ulysses. When the Radcliffe Publishing Course voted, Gatsby came in #1. The significance here is the number of people who had it on their ballots.
Looking at a less august panel, of the 1,893 reviews on Amazon, 1048 were 5 stars, 433 4 stars.
The point I'm making is that this book is one of those that tends to be loved, not admittedly by everyone, but by a large percentage of people who like to read. I loved it at 14, 25, and the two or three times I read in my late 50s because my niece just read it in high school and it instantly became her favorite book.
But I think that your remark "Complex sentences are irritating to me, slowing down my comprehension" is worth comment.
An awful lot of literature involves complex sentences.
If that's your standard, there goes Shakespeare, most of the poetic tradition, Hawthorn, Melville and Henry James in the 19th Century and Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf, Mann and Proust in the 20th.
Everything isn't written to be understood quickly and without effort. Those aren't the values of serious literature. Some things need to be read slowly and carefully. Gatsby is in fact not particularly difficult to read -- but you miss it if you go too quickly.
To some extent, it fair to say people go to school in order to learn to read complex sentences.
I don't think Fitzgerald was showing off. I think trying to create literary art -- he wanted, consciously, to bring the values of Keats to fiction.
I think he was exceptionally successful at it.
Bill wrote: "Everything isn't written to be understood quickly and without effort. Those aren't the values of serious literature."Excellent post, btw. I wish there were more like yours (although you duplicated a paragraph.)
You and I come at literature from opposite ends of the spectrum. In my book any work of art--be it literature, painting, music, ballet or whatever--is better the less it relies on outside references for a full understanding. It is what is on the page that warrants merit, not borrowed impetus.
Shakespeare and the others are imbued with brilliance and certainly worth studying, but only the elite few can fully enjoy them.
Art is for the people, not just an exclusive privileged elite who have the resources to attend college or graduate school. That's pre-twentieth century thinking. This is the problem with the authors you named. This is why Hemingway was such an overnight phenomenon. He kicked Fizgerald all over the map and hadn't even attended college, let alone the Ivy League.
Writers like Hem, Steinbeck, Chekhov, Carver and Tolstoy democratized literature and freed it from its encrusted moorings. The more writers we have like them, the more informed the masses become, the more liberated they become from ignorance, the greater the socio-evolutionary potential of humanity.
You may not consider theirs as "serious literature," but it's the literature that matters most because of its potential to improve the future, which is, after all, the highest purpose of literature.
We need both kinds, but I'm inclined toward one end of the spectrum.
Monty J and Bill bring up good points. I think it's good when we can challenge ourselves to read literature that is more complex in nature, but I also don't want the majority of my literature to require me to have cliff notes and study notes just to be able to follow the storyline. I don't want to have to read and re-read sentences just to make sure I understand. Reading should also be fun and pleasurable and have a flow of pace. I also don't think that not wanting to always be challenged when I read a book makes me some kind of dimwit. A lot of people on this thread seem to imply that if you didn't understand the book or didn't love it you must not be on their level.There should be a balance of both, but I'm leaning more towards Monty J on this one.
A story is a way to educate people without them knowing it. Definitely let the kids choose his her own books from a bigger list so that they can find an era/author/ subject they are into. They should pick the one they are most interested in and least. Exposure to something they like will keep their faces in the kindle and off of jersey shore or whatever they watch now. Picking something they don't think they will like will expose them to an area that they may learn something from, Likely a type of person they may not be comfortable with. Maybe they can cooperate with people better if they know more about them.
Licha wrote: "I think it's good when we can challenge ourselves to read literature that is more complex in nature, but I also don't want the majority of my literature to require me to have cliff notes and study notes just to be able to follow the storyline. I don't want to have to read and re-read sentences just to make sure I understand. Reading should also be fun and pleasurable and have a flow of pace...."I don't think anyone is saying people should only read challenging books. My issue is with the attitude that a difficult or challenging book is somehow a bad book because it's not immediately accessible to everyone. This supposedly democratizing idea doesn't get applied to any other endeavor.
If someone only wants to ski bunny slopes, that's fine. What's not fine is then turning around and saying the diamond slopes aren't proper ski slopes because they're difficult and frustrating and inaccessible to people who didn't grow up near mountains or who can't afford a lift ticket, or people who simply don't like repeatedly falling on their face in order to get better.
Reading most great books demands work, just like playing great hockey, building a great house, or climbing a great mountain. No one says you have to do it, but you may be missing out on some great views.
Licha, I completely agree with your comment. This is just a discussion, which would be best approached with an open mind, but there is so much vehement distaste for even suggesting replacing Gatsby with something more age-relevant from some, it really turned me sour to the whole thing. Good, valuable, challenging books are being published all the time. The attitude that beloved classics are the only books worth teaching, and, like Licha said, if readers don't love or revere them as much as those particular commenters do they're somehow stunted or shallow is ridiculous to me. I adore Gatsby, but it's not the only decent book ever written, and while I don't think we ought to teach the Hunger Games or Harry Potter, there is a long list of books published in the last twenty years that students may respond to more enthusiastically than something their parents read in high school but would still yield challenging analysis and discussion.
Whitney wrote: "This supposedly democratizing idea doesn't get applied to any other endeavor. "I don't consider this a bad thing. And here's why.
Pre-twentieth century, the vast majority of the working class couldn't read or write. Books were the domain of the wealthy class. The masses didn't read Shakespeare in school because the vast majority of them didn't go to school. Accordingly, literature was skewed toward those with plenty of leisure time and an educational background in the classics like Greek mythology. (Many creative writing programs today still emphasize mythology!)
The nineteenth century was a transition toward literacy in the working class, but literary style, long established, was slow to change. This is why Hemingway got the Nobel Prize in Literature--because he single-handedly grabbed the literary world by the throat and yanked it into the twentieth century.
Fitzgerald was a partial throwback because he'd received an Ivy League education that still had one leg in the nineteenth century.
Thank God Hemingway's mother squandred his college fund ($3,000) on her private retreat, preventing him from going to Princeton!
(Incidentally, democratization in English literature's been around a while. Remember Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?)
Monty and Licha,1) I removed the repeat paragraph.
2) I never said that all serious literature is difficult to read. Some is, and some isn't. I don't think The Great Gatsby is at all difficult. And it doesn't depend on outside references -- I was merely using them to suggest some of its richness. Most people who love the book aren't even aware of its sources.
3) This isn't a discussion of what people should or shouldn't read. People should read whatever they want. This is a discussion of what we might "replace" The Great Gatsby with in high school, and it has transformed into a discussion of whether it should be replaced.
4) What I was saying is that being able to be understood quickly is not a value of serious literature. That's NOT the same thing as saying no serious literature is simple. It's that the value is art -- not simplicity. If simplicity works, fine. If complexity works, fine. All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the most powerful novels I've ever read, and it's extremely simple (although I think "fun" is really the wrong word here.)
But the history of English literature involves a whole hell of a lot of complicated sentences that are best read slowly. I think it should be read. I think schools should teach it. I think people should be educated to read it.
And I don't have a problem with footnotes. :-)
5) Shakespeare is the writer that far and away provides me the most pleasure. He's also not on the end of a spectrum. He's right in the center of Western literature.
I would put have put Sophocles second but I haven't read him for such long time -- so I don't know what I'd think anymore. Keats and Yeats are my favorite poets -- Keats tends to be easy, Yeats is sometimes difficult. I spent a lot of time on "The Waste Land" last year. But touchstones have included for me Brecht and Wilde's plays Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress and Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess."
I personally find Count Tolstoy the most brilliant and most enjoyable of all novelists and his ability to write character leaves me with my mouth open. I don't find the Count much of a democrat though. I can't think of another novelist in his class.
Chekhov's plays are difficult for me although I love Uncle Vanya and saw two productions of it on stage last summer. I've seen all the major plays on stage at least once in the past few years. I wished I could saw I love the short stories -- I'm trying actually -- but I don't find him personally sympathetic. I wish I did. I know, I know -- everyone loves Chekhov. The fault is mine, I'm sure.
I can't read Ulysses , but I think it's my problem not Joyce's. :-) Maybe I'll get through Proust someday, maybe not. If I were younger, I'd have more confidence of being able to.
I haven't read Hemingway for years. I liked Hemingway at the time. Now, not so much. I'll never read The Grapes of Wrath. For a variety of reasons it's not the sort of book I'd enjoy. And I find Carver highly talented but not my kind of fun.
I'd rather read Borges.
I love voice, language, wit, depth and vision.
I don't think literature has a purpose, and I don't think it has any potential of creating a better future.
And what's with "the masses"? Did we suddenly all get transported back to 1932? :-)
Whitney wrote: "My issue is with the attitude that a difficult or challenging book is somehow a bad book because it's not immediately accessible to everyone."You're twisting my words out of proportion and need to reread what I wrote.
To be clear, I never said Gatsby was a bad book. I merely asked why someone thought it was so great and cited a concrete example of something that didn't appeal to me.
Both kinds of literature are valid. I clearly cited why I preferred one over the other. But I didn't say the other was bad.
Monty J wrote: "Whitney wrote: "My issue is with the attitude that a difficult or challenging book is somehow a bad book because it's not immediately accessible to everyone."You're twisting my words out of proportion and need to reread what I wrote...."
I never said these were your words. I wasn't even replying to one of your posts.
Whitney wrote: "Monty J wrote: "Whitney wrote: "My issue is with the attitude that a difficult or challenging book is somehow a bad book because it's not immediately accessible to everyone."You're twisting my wo..."
My apologies.
Whitney wrote: "Monty J wrote: "Whitney wrote: "My issue is with the attitude that a difficult or challenging book is somehow a bad book because it's not immediately accessible to everyone."You're twisting my wo..."
Not referring to your words either, Licha. And lest I cause anymore unintended umbrage, I did not intend to cast aspersions on the words of any particular person involved in this discussion. Just commenting on a general zeitgeist, that I see reflected somewhat in some of the comments here.
Actually, as influential as Hemingway's style came to be, the writers who dragged the world into the twentieth century were the modernists. So it was actually Joyce, Woolf, Proust, etc. that are relevant. And in fact there are some aspects of "The Great Gatsby" that are highly modern. When it came out, by the way, it didn't have great critical response. People thought it was just journalism. They didn't get it until after he died.
Shakespeare was highly popular entertainment in the 19th century. He didn't become just for the elite until the the end of the 19th early twentieth.
And Fitzgerald wasn't a particularly great student and never finished Princeton.
Literature follows its own course. Some of it requires education and study and some doesn't. But you don't want to bring to down the level of people without education.
You want to improve the schools so that education is better and more commonly available.
You don't do serious physics, Chinese or mathematics without school. Sometimes school is essential to appreciate lit also.
And the purpose of literature is not give them "a lesson" without their knowing it. It's a way to teach how to read and write.
Bill wrote: "Actually, as influential as Hemingway's style came to be, the writers who dragged the world into the twentieth century were the modernists. So it was actually Joyce, Woolf, Proust, etc. that are relevant. "Apparently the Nobel Academy had a different view.
Right there with you on Grapes, only i read it, dang it. so angry at JS for wasting so much of my time, and even more so for making me hate the people i should have related to. He had me hoping the Joads would ALL die. Hemingway is pretty good for the transition for YA to adult novels, but genrally has almost nothing in the way of quality writing. loved the old man and the sea as a kid, but tried to read several of his book as an adult. i would as soon read stephen king or john grisham. I love that today's authors include more women and people of color and stories from the working class, but i do not see how having new good choices makes the old educated white male centric writing a bad choice. in my life there is room for joyce, faulkner, agee, twain, shakespeare, fitzgerald, maugham, greene, as well as daphne, willa, toni morrison, gloria naylor, alice hoffman, barbara kingsolver, garcia marquez, amy tan, harriet doerr, melinda haynes, clyde edgerton, bailey white and a hand full of light weight fun mystery writers, parker, burke, grimes, rendell, and other, as well as any number of new writers that i run into and fall in love with.I fail to see why our students cant have at least as broad a base for reading as i have, afterall, i am a middleaged college dropout....
Well, not exactly, Monty. They gave the Nobel Prize to Hemingway and to Steinbeck also. They also gave the Nobel prize to T. S. Eliot, Faulkner, Mann and Beckett. And Luigi Pirandello. And Harold Pinter.And a bunch of people I've never actually heard of.
Winning the Nobel is NOT particularly helpful in arguing about the development of 20th century literature -- or even in identifying the best writers.
Uplandpoet,You wrote, "I fail to see why our students cant have at least as broad a base for reading as i have, afterall, i am a middleaged college dropout...."
Maybe because they have to read other things also and high school isn't all that long. :-)
Bill: I have to disagree with one point. The purpose of literature is definitely NOT to teach anyone, especially high school students how to read. Has any of these authors of what we call literature ever mentioned anywhere, "Gee. I hope someone learns to read from this."?Grade school primers teach us to read. YA novels may encourage enjoyment. But the purpose of literature is a deeper comment on the human condition, or exploring a certain zeitgeist.
We must already know how to read in order to approach real literature.
Lara wrote: "Bill: I have to disagree with one point. The purpose of literature is definitely NOT to teach anyone, especially high school students how to read. Has any of these authors of what we call litera..."Lara, once again I will argue that there is reading and then there is READING. Most of my students know how to decode words and sentences, but there is more to reading than that. In fact, I don't the majority of readers would like reading if all they were doing was decoding. I think we all have a craving for story telling, but that can be satisfied in many ways other than reading, i.e. movies, television, even video games. Why do some of us select reading as the medium of choice?
I certainly agree with you about the difference between reading and READING. And I do agree that many students need the reinforcement, even through college, on how to go beyond merely decoding the words and sentences. I reinforce these methods using shorter, in-class pieces. But, I will never agree that teaching reading and writing is the PURPOSE of literature or even teaching literature, as Bill mentioned above.
point takenBill wrote: "Uplandpoet,
You wrote, "I fail to see why our students cant have at least as broad a base for reading as i have, afterall, i am a middleaged college dropout...."
Maybe because they have to read o..."
Lara,My comment was in response to this comment of Nicole's:
A story is a way to educate people without them knowing it.
I don't think there is a "purpose" to literature, which I said in a different post.
The purpose of literature courses, in my experience, is to teach people how to think and write critically about literature/writing and the most crucial skill is what's conventionally called "close reading." A text closely read can reveal patterns of meaning, ironies, symbols, contradictions not immediately apparent.
The practice of literary criticism is the practice of "reading" a work and communicating that "reading." "Reading" in this sense is synonymous for understanding, analyzing, synthesizing, interpreting -- in short thinking critically about works of literature.
If that's not why we teach literature -- we may choose to read it for all sorts of other reasons -- why DO we teach it? That's what they were teaching in all the lit courses I ever took.
Bill wrote: "Well, not exactly, Monty. They gave the Nobel Prize to Hemingway and to Steinbeck also. They also gave the Nobel prize to T. S. Eliot, Faulkner, Mann and Beckett. And Luigi Pirandello. And Harold P..."Correct. Wordsmithing isn't enough to earn a Nobel Prize.
Per the Academy: "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction...."
Wikipedia sheds some light on the topic. [Nobel's choice of emphasis on "idealistic" or "ideal" (English translation) in his criteria for the Nobel Prize in Literature has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word idealisk translates as either "idealistic" or "ideal". In the early twentieth century, the Nobel Committee interpreted the intent of the will strictly. For this reason, they did not award certain world-renowned authors of the time such as James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Marcel Proust, Henrik Ibsen, and Henry James. More recently, the wording has been more liberally interpreted. Thus, the prize is now awarded both for lasting literary merit and for evidence of consistent idealism on some significant level. In recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. Hence the award is now arguably more political.]
Bill: I totally agree that all you said is important. And those are all skills that I hope my students gain through the study of literature.But it's actual purpose goes far deeper, and may be different for each work studied. The purpose, to be brief, is the message the writer is hoping to convey about life, humanity, the world.
Teaching close reading is a way in, and the critical writing is a way of expressing our understanding. But those are not the ends, merely the means of relating to a work. It is the message itself, the writer's intent that creates the purpose. And it is this that should govern what we choose to teach. Therefore, as I have said above, it's not about whether or not Gatsby can be replaced. It's about determining what outcome is expected from students, and the overall goal of the course and choosing the best books to reach that end. There are hundreds of choices if all we are looking for is good writing with literary craft. But if you are looking for a work that explores the spirit of modernism and the ugliness often covered by the gilding of the Gilded Age, the choices become much more narrow.
If I do catch the author trying to teach me, i get very turned off. if an author has a message, i find it is better if they do like i advise my friends to do to correct a bowling throw. "dont move your arm, just think ab out moving your arm, that is enough" so if the writer wants to fight for social justice, or insist on racial superiority of that we ought to give our money to the poor, or cook them in a furnace, if the author thinks about that, whichever it is, and then writes me a great tale that has no bearing on his beliefs, or vice versa, his message will get me 9 times out of ten. if he preaches from the roof tops, even if i agree with him, as in steinbeck, i end up hating him, and all the "good guys" in his book!just this uneducated veteran reader's take, but i am pretty sure i am right for more readers than not.
The purpose of literature courses, in my experience, is to teach people how to think and write critically about literature/writing and the most crucial skill is what's conventionally called "close reading." A text closely read can reveal patterns of meaning, ironies, symbols, contradictions not immediately apparent."(Another excellent post. You're batting 500+.)
I would augment this with a clarification of something I alluded to earlier, along with two further brief, I hope, stipulations.
In my book, the highest, most noble purpose of literature, but not the only purpose, is to inform, lift, inspire and advance mankind. This may not be the conscious intent of an author in a given work, but rather the effect on readers as a whole. (Gad, look at me. A complex sentence. Drat. John Gardner's in the wings applauding. Hemingway's throwing rotten tomatoes.)
And now the stipulations.
A), literature allows us to communicate between generations; and B), each work of literature contains the potential for personal meaning unique to a given reader that is independent, and possibly different, from what the author intended or what a given teacher is capable of comprehending or communicating. Therefore, it behooves authors to place a premium on clarity to avoid being misunderstood.
Teachers of literature should therefore avoid didacticism and proselytizing and encourage individual interpretation.
First of all, I'm not arguing that "The Great Gatsby" is not the best book for you to use given what you're trying to do with your students. I'm clearly on the side of the teacher choosing the books, not the students. I'm also on the side of using The Great Gatsby just because it's great, easy to read, American and short. It's hard to find other books that are all four. And can be read by high schoolers.
But I do have a problem with the notion that the purpose of the novel is "the message the writer is hoping to convey about life, humanity, the world."
For one thing, the writer may have written a story that he wanted/felt he needed to tell without hoping to convey a particular message about life, humanity and the world.
I would agree with the concept of the "intentional fallacy" as developed by I.A. Richards in the, what?, 1930s? as one of the bulwarks of the New Criticism. The meaning of a work cannot be found in the intention of the author. I thought actually that was pretty well established even in the era of deconstruction.
I do think people may often read to find some greater understanding about life, humanity, and the world -- as well as rejoice in purely literary values -- but whether the writer intended that or if it's even necessarily and unarguably in the text -- is another question.
Just what is "The Waste Land" about anyway? Okay -- that's a tough one.
But what is Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" 'about' -- that's an easy poem to read but not see easy to decipher. There's an interpretation that only seen referred to that suggests it describes a rape -- which I'd bet was not in author's mind (or ever in mine),but it does underline what I think are two interesting problems. The knight is certain he knows what the lady says, but he doesn't understand her language. And she is crying and we have no idea why. I bring up this poem not only because I've thought a lot about it but Bruccoli, Fitzgerald's biographer, said it was the central paradigm (or some such thing) of Fitzgerald's work.
So...hmmm.
I'm not entirely convinced that what Fitzgerald was doing in The Great Gatsby is wonderfully clear either. It has been one of my favorite books for 50+ years but I think there are a lot of unanswered questions -- and I'm not sure that Fitzgerald, who wasn't much of a philosopher would be able to give satisfactory answers.
There are obviously strong elements of romantic tragedy, romantic farce, social satire, social criticism, and lots of examples of literary impressionism as a style -- but whether they're all tied up into something that's unarguably "what the writer was hoping to convey" is not something I can buy into. The critics who look at it MERELY as "social criticism" seem to be blind to who Fitzgerald was an a writer.
I also don't think writers always know what they're doing -- their experience writing may be of telling story without fully understanding its implications. They may be better writers than critics and so the message the writer hoped to convey, even if knowable, may be the least interesting part of what he wrote.
I remember reading once that a critic sad Wordworth's "Preface" to the Lyrical Ballads was A+ literary history and B+ criticism. :-)
Uplandpoet: I do agree with the spirit of your post, but remember, this is a thread regarding works that should be taught, and why to teach them, and so necessarily, it will regard authors, or teachers, teaching lessons.Bill, I will have to continue to disagree with you, and in a way, the New Criticism. And as far as the story itself, maybe this is the message. I never mentioned didacticism, or forcing my interpretation upon students. I try to stay away from that and give them plenty of opportunity to discuss meaning of their own.
But literature is not created in a vacuum. It is a reaction to our individual and collective history. As Monty said, in order to be worthy of teaching, it must accomplish many things at once. And you are so right in saying the author is not always aware of all the layers of meaning. But that doesn't mean they aren't a product of his subconscious and his paradigm.
I will admit that 'life, humanity and the world' sounds, at the same time, both grandiose as well as too simplistic. But I will continue to maintain that it is the substance of the work itself that is more important than the skills we use to discuss and analyze it.
not sure how you ought to do it, but as much as i love good writing, i never got an assigned book in school that i didnt end up hating, unless i had read it before and managed to love it in spite of what some english lit teacher did to it. my quandry is that i do appreciate, in theory, what english teachers do, but it is almost like they need to stay away from a good book, because in variable, dissecting the frog kills it.Lara wrote: "Uplandpoet: I do agree with the spirit of your post, but remember, this is a thread regarding works that should be taught, and why to teach them, and so necessarily, it will regard authors, or tea..."
maybe you should only teach really horrible books, and then after you explain what made it horrible, let them read a good book and tell you why it was so much better than the terrible book you tore apart in class!!!??Uplandpoet wrote: "not sure how you ought to do it, but as much as i love good writing, i never got an assigned book in school that i didnt end up hating, unless i had read it before and managed to love it in spite o..."
Lara, i am seriousUplandpoet wrote: "maybe you should only teach really horrible books, and then after you explain what made it horrible, let them read a good book and tell you why it was so much better than the terrible book you tore..."
Lara wrote, "But I will continue to maintain that it is the substance of the work itself that is more important than the skills we use to discuss and analyze it."I don't disagree with that formulation. I also think what draws us to think about a book, if we have a choice in the matter, is how it makes us feel, how it relates to our own sense of the world, whether it confirms it, challenges it, or simply deepens it, puts another spin on it.
I think we read a book, it engages us, we think about what it's all about, either the "vision" or insight into the "human condition" or simply the confluence of ideas -- whatever -- and then make arguments from the text to show why we think that's what going on. In some cases we go beyond the text and make arguments from a broader context.
I think almost no one goes into it just to make arguments for the sake of arguments. I never meant to suggest that.
But because I don't believe there's a knowable "truth" to the text or a knowable "author's intention" I think what can be taught is how to read a text and how to make an argument.
I just don't know that we can say what the substance of a work of art is in any definitive way or separate it from our own reading of the work.
It seems altogether too easy -- and perhaps unfair -- to read a work, draw our conclusions, and then attribute it to an authorial subconscious which can't be proven.
But presenting the vision we find in the work isn't a passionless or trivial affair. Thinking about life isn't passionless or trivial -- or certainly not all the time.
I just don't think we can attribute the thoughts to the author's intention or the work of literature itself. What we say is forever marred by what we've read and how we read -- and reading is always a collaborative process. Like loving.
So that's my disagreement.
But I bet you're a great teacher.
Lara wrote: "But literature is not created in a vacuum. It is a reaction to our individual and collective history."Gave me butterflies.
Uplandpoet wrote: "...dissecting the frog kills it."Intriguing metaphor. Good teachers are aware of this. It helps if students are as well. It's an impossible job. I don't know how they do it.
The path to every good doctor is paved with dead frogs.
Beth wrote: "Licha, I completely agree with your comment. This is just a discussion, which would be best approached with an open mind, but there is so much vehement distaste for even suggesting replacing Gatsby..."Thank you Bethany. You understood exactly what I was trying to say.
If I may add in response to several of the other posts here, I do think that classics should still be taught in high school, but other books should be mixed in as well. That's how I was exposed to so many great books when I was in school. Most of us had this strong, prejudiced reaction towards certain classics, but ultimately I'm very glad I was exposed to them, the ones I liked and the ones I didn't. I think in addition to the assigned books, kids should be allowed to pick a classic of their own choice, or even like Nicole suggested, a book they think they will dislike to expose them to something different or to show them that the book was not bad after all. Read a popular book as a class and discuss why it's so popular. The choices are endless. Literature does not have to be limited to only classics. But please, don't get rid of them either. They are valuable books and classic for a reason.
Whitney wrote: "Whitney wrote: "Monty J wrote: "Whitney wrote: "My issue is with the attitude that a difficult or challenging book is somehow a bad book because it's not immediately accessible to everyone."You'r..."
No offense taken, Whitney. I was also speaking in general terms. You have valid points. I was only trying to say that not all the books we read have to be challenging. I sometimes want to get lost in a simple, enjoyable story. Other times, I want a book that's going to teach me something. (Although I believe that even simple books will teach us something about the human nature.)
As much as I love Gatsby, I agree it shouldn't be taught in High School. I read it junior year, and didn't mind it then...but a lot of the rest of the class hated it, and it has a terrible reputation from so many people being forced to read it and not getting it.Plus when I was forced to read it again--in college--it completely opened up to me and became one of my favorite novels. Another book I had a similar experience with was the Scarlett Letter. Actively hated it in HS and came to love it in college.
Works with a more immediate hook for younger students probably do more to encourage reading...Catcher in the Rye, The Old Man and the Sea, maybe On the Road if the school can get away with the sex/drug use.
I'm 16, if I was forced to read some modern Ya books in school, I think I would die. I mean I like some Hunger Games and Harry Potter but that's about it. The classics are some much better. If reading great books in school was taken away that would be something to mourn.
Diane wrote: "Gatby is not age-relevant to today's high school students. If we could the replace Gatsby on the school required reading list, with something that's both age relevant
..............
What would you suggest as replacement? "
I say, to partially quote your discussion topic, we should NOT replace the book Gatsby because kids think Twilight is the best book ever published.
Beth wrote: "The attitude that beloved classics are the only books worth teaching, and, like Licha said, if readers don't love or revere them as much as those particular commenters do they're somehow stunted or shallow is ridiculous to me."Thank YOU! When I posted the original question, I asked for suggestions that are Well Written, but a lot people missed that part of the request.
Accessible literature doesn't mean it can't be well written, or that it had to be YA.
The Handmaid's Taleby Margret Atwood, or Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. American Godsby Neil Gaiman.
The Cinder House Rules, The Book Thief.
Atonement. ...there are so many possibilities out there.
Although I would not 'replace' Gatsby because I do find it relevant and it serves my course well, I also teach Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is full of literary value, satire and the students find it fun. It helps to give students some explanation of British terms and references they might not be familiar with. But the book is great for teaching more contemporary social criticism, the difference between microcosm and macrocosm and a host of other literary concepts.
A modest proposal: Teach "Gatsby" alongside "American Psycho," and do a little comparative history on American Greed, although the Overprotective Mothers of America would probably frown on Bret Easton Ellis's violent work.
Life of Pi. More relevant and contemporary, but you can still get a lot of mileage from analyzing it.
Ira wrote: "Life of Pi. More relevant and contemporary, but you can still get a lot of mileage from analyzing it."I agree. There's lots that can be milked from this novel. It's perfect for analyzing and having great discussions on the concepts the story brings up.
Diane wrote: "Beth wrote: "The attitude that beloved classics are the only books worth teaching, and, like Licha said, if readers don't love or revere them as much as those particular commenters do they're someh..."YES. Anything by Ian McEwan, really. His novels often have young characters. Or Kazuo Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go has youthful characters, but with a very cerebral and troubling theme. Similarly, Life of Pi is a great option. Also, Alan Bennett's plays are brief, but jam-packed with all sorts of brilliance. I think The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is another good option, perhaps for high school freshmen. Room by Emma Donoghue is rather dark, but certainly not as much as Lord of the Flies, which has been taught for years. Some of the political and sociological issues brought up in Ender's Game would be very teachable, and it's absolutely age-relevant. And those are just the ones I had been thinking about in the last few days! There are so many wonderful books, and I love the idea some people have tried to discuss on here about providing a list of options from which students can choose their own assigned reading.
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And I learned much from both of their styles, seems like the rich folks i have met either gained their wealth illicitly, or inherited it from someone who did.
Monty J wrote: "Eve wrote: "And he was. It was a truly American story. Rags to riches. All done on one's own. A self made man."
Gatsby made his fortune illicitly. He was a crook. Are you saying that's American? M..."