posted
No. Maybe I have to read something other than Herzog, but I had to hold my nose to get through that book. The writing was fine, but the characters were worthless and unmusical.
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quote:Originally posted by Fyfe: I guess what I'm saying here is that I'd have a hell of a time choosing a syllabus for Am.Lit., but I wouldn't have chosen most of what appears on this syllabus, which I feel could only be worse if Sister Carrie were on it.
Jen
This is similar to the arguments against Shakespeare sylabi that include Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc. In fact, I don't think there is ANYTHING wrong with a single author on your list, and think they are all worthy of a class in romantic to modern lit. Of course as a student you feel that what you study and do should be relevant, new, and altogether different from the past. This is the reason I so enjoyed a Shakespeare program I attended in London which focused on Shakespeare's "new" classics: 12th Night, A Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. These are in some ways more enlightening and more thrilling than the institutional Shakespearean standards, because they are less explored, and more open to questioning. Was it Samuel Johnson who said: "what has been longest known, is best understood?" I agree with you on that score, and caution only that everything on that list is worthy of great consideration, and none should be ignored because of modern political or philisophical considerations.
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posted
I'm well aware that everything on the list is worthy of consideration. I can't stand some of these authors, but that's my personal stuff and has nothing to do with it. What bothers me is that so many other authors, many of them more important and at least some more talented, have been ignored. As I said, there are six (6) white male authors from the same time period on there, and only two (2) authors at all who aren't white and male. One (1) woman is on the syllabus. That means we are getting three times more of the white male perspective from the 40s (ish) than we are of the African-American perspective from 1850 to the present.
The writers on the syllabus have stories to offer, and that is true. They are all different stories, and in that sense the authors here are diverse and whatnot. But so many of these stories are the stories of men and of white people; and that's not all that America's about. There are gorgeously rich and fascinating stories to be had from other sides of American culture.
I don't know. It bothers me because I hate to see a class on American literature that largely forgets about the diversity that is one of my most favorite things about this country. I'm distressed to think that the other students in the class will think that this is all there is to American literature.
Example: I simply do not understand how Emily Dickinson can have been left off of the syllabus while William Carlos Williams is on it. That is bizarre. And I checked the syllabi for past years, and she has NEVER been on it, and WCW has every single year but one.
posted
See, you keep reiterating that the list lacks diversity, and I disagree.
EDIT: If anything, it's entirely likely that, in terms of the proportion of the literature of the period they produced, white males are underrepresented.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston...Thurston...something like that. I loved the book.
I'm very glad to read this. I have to read this book (within a few days or so ) for school and after I flipped through it and saw it was all in slang, it really didn't see like the kind of book I'd enjoy. I'm happy it has your recommendation. Now i have motivation to start reading it.
While we're at it, are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck good books also?
posted
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is very good. (But sad.) I hear good things about Of Mice and Men, but I haven't read it.
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posted
I think The Sun Also Rises is responsible for a lot of it, because, compared to his other books, it is a boring book full of unlikeable people.
A lot of people also don't like his exceptionally terse writing style, but that can't possibly be the case on an OSC forum! Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: See, you keep reiterating that the list lacks diversity, and I disagree.
EDIT: If anything, it's entirely likely that, in terms of the proportion of the literature of the period they produced, white males are underrepresented.
Yah, false diversity can be a bad thing too. Like I said, "What has been longest known is most considered, and therefore best understood." All of these authors have been influential from the start, and have remained widely read for the past two centuries.
The danger in including more female or African American writers is a very ironic one indeed: they were not as widely read at the time, and remained less influential. Also, African American and female authors, (especially those that did survive in the academic canon) write in very narrowly defined genres. You have the slave narratives, and either Mary Wortley Montague style letters, or Wallstonecraft's early feminist writings. A Mary Shelley is rare, whereas similarly influential novels and writings were being produced by the truckload by white men. They were influential, yes, partly because the authors were white men, but there is no changing that fact now. You will understand different things about the literary tradition reading a widely read book, as opposed to a less well known title.
In a literature class, the influential factor is important, because the class is meant to teach you what works had greatest effect in their time. It also teaches you what was being written overall in that time period, and obscure novels can be good for that, but IMO, you must remember that whatever injustices there are in the literary canon, they can't be entirely undone now. They shouldn't be undone at the expense of our understanding of literary history; that part of history which respects influence and politics, and not just a modern interest in diversity.
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posted
Would you honestly suggest that William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens was more influential than Emily Dickinson? Come on, now.
And I think it's equally important to give a sense of the stories NOT told by the white men, which is why I'm glad we're reading Toni Morrison and Richard Wright (though I'd so much rather Alice Walker and Langston Hughes). Besides which, a number of African-American and female writers are read quite widely today, and there's no reason for the syllabus to confine itself so sharply by time period (as it is).
posted
I think your time period argument is more compelling than the race or gender one in this case. If you're designing a survey course to cover 150 years of literature, having 6 out of 11 authors be of the same generation seems out of proportion.
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posted
I'd love to see a book by Vladimir Nabokov on the list - Pale Fire maybe, or Lolita. He seems to be glossed over in American Lit as not American enough, and, of course, not touched on by African-American or British courses. In fact, the only theme course that I think he could fit into (other than general American Lit) would be 20th Century Writers or perhaps works by immigrants.
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) for school and after I flipped through it and saw it was all in slang, it really didn't see like the kind of book I'd enjoy. I'm happy it has your recommendation. Now i have motivation to start reading it.
