He did start out as a journalist. He worked for The Kansas City Star, whose house manual insists reporters write in a very economical (downright terse) style. A lot of that carried over into his prose.
I guess all the old, white European male teachers were busy teaching English Lit. 
I’m sure she’s read him, she just said she hadn’t been assigned to read him.
IIRC Oscar Wilde once turned in a manuscript to his editor and said it would have been shorter if he had more time.
While being “terse” is not ideal any writer benefits when tightening up what they wrote.
To my mind the best example of this is the Gettysburg Address. Abraham Lincoln was a fantastic writer and he outdid himself on that one. Just amazing writing.
Most people are too lazy to do multiple re-writes (I count myself in that group). The very best writers do it though. On their own or, if they are lucky, with the help of a good editor.
Have you read Garry Wills’ book on The Gettysburg Address?
No. I have not heard of him.
I highly recommend it for its history and literary analysis.
I remember a presentation I had to make while in college. The first draft ran way over my allotted time. I ended up cutting at least a third of what I had written, and wound up with a much better text.
Brevity is good, but you don’t have to go that far.
At least Hemingway still has name recognition. Other than Fitzgerald, all his other contemporaries are lost. Tom Wolfe’s “Oh this, Oh that” rhapsodizing. John O’Hara, from the wrong side of the tracks Pennsylvania pressing his face against the glass of Manhattan’s candy store and recording the full inventory. Frank Norris and William Saroyan and the writers who were even further Left who’s careers and reputations didn’t survive the McCarthy era.
As a Midwestern kid, I read everything of Sinclair Lewis I could find. Same for Kurt Vonnegut, for the same Midwestern reason. I probably had a Southern coeval reading Faulkner for the same reason, poor guy.
Monoculturization and historical amnesia will bury American literature. Its not the authors’ fault.
That, I can understand. It gives some meaning and context for reading Sinclair Lewis – an author otherwise justly consigned to history 
. My dad’s college reader, from the 40’s, included Green Acres, and a selection from Lincoln Steffens, and a selection from Babbitt.
I’m glad I read Green Acres, and the selection from the Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens inspired me to buy the book, which became a favorite. Babbitt though … no better in bulk than in selection. I pitied the students who were required to read it.
Babbitt was one of the books I had to read in my sophomore year of high school (American Lit) in '82. As I recall, not a bad book, but dated, even then.
His ghost aimed for the English teachers and accidentally nabbed David Foster Wallace.
Speaking of interpreting works of literature I remember reading somewhere an anecdote of a student who got into an argument with his teacher they were reading Don Quixote in English and the teacher was making a great deal about the word usage in a passage and how Miguel Cervantes hid a double meaning into the passage. The student reminded the teacher Cervantes originally wrote the book in Spanish and there is no way he intended that passage to be understood in that way.
Which reminded me that a lot of foreign language works probably mean more in their native languages than their translations in English. And that the translators can influence how works of literature are interpreted beyond their original authors intent. So one should keep that in mind when reading anything that was not originally written in English.
My professor endorsed all of the omissions but one, which stayed in the text.
The first book I remember reading, really reading, to the point where the outside world entirely disappears, and even oneself disappears, was Ivanhoe.
I might have been eleven.
And we can debate whether or not Ivanhoe (or anything Scott wrote) was “great literature,” but the point is that children can experience literature on some level, perhaps a very different level than that on which adults experience it, but it’s nonetheless a real experience.
And perhaps, in some ways, a deeper experience.
Ivanhoe is probably the worst book that Scott ever wrote. It’s a bit of an anomaly among Scott’s novels
Almost all his books are about Scottish history, a subject Scott seriously knew about and deeply loved.
The book that made him a bestselling author and a household name was Waverley.
Scott’s ‘Waverley novels’ are real literature. He’s a powerful, profound and thoughtful writer. His books are memorable and thought-provoking, and he single-handedly changed the way that Scotland was perceived.
His novels have complex three-dimensional characters and interesting plots. He is one of the few novelists I have ever come across who is able to show sincere and upright people holding totally opposed opinions, where it’s not at all clear who is right, if anyone is.
He has a deep respect for ordinary, poor, working people and is at home with all classes of society. He loves and enjoys human nature across the whole wide and varied range of life. He also has a wonderful sense of humour and is a great storyteller.
However…
His books are not much read today because it’s necessary to know something about Scottish history to be able to follow them. They tend to be set in the middle of complex political, social, and religious conflicts, and Scott doesn’t explain anything.
Scott refers without any explanation at all to the Duke of Cumberland, Prince Frederick, the Covenanters, Jacobites, Whigs, non-Jurors, the Penal Laws, the Killing Times, Prince Charles Edward’s grandfather, etc. The reader is assumed to know what he’s talking about. He takes it for granted that the reader will know which political party the Duke of Argyll belonged to, and why it matters.
And all these things do matter, because if you don’t know about them you’re not going to be able to follow what’s happening, and the motivations and actions of the characters.
He will talk about someone called ‘Dundee’, and then a few pages later about ‘Claverhouse’, and then there’s also a ‘Colonel Graham’. You are expected to know that he is talking about the same person by three different titles. He mentions ‘the Chevalier St. George’ and and a few paragraphs later ‘the young Chevalier’. You are expected to know that he’s talking about two different people, and who they are.
When his novels were published people did know these things, and no explantion was necessary, but today almost nobody knows anything about 16th-18th century Scottish history.
All this makes it difficult for a modern reader to read his best novels without a good introduction giving the history of the period, and many footnotes.
Ah, sorry - I wasn’t actually responding to your post. Whack-a-Mole had made, then deleted a post, leaving Discourse’s automatic “(post deleted by author)” message. I was making a silly joke about taking Hemingwayesque terseness to its limit. No criticism of your post meant.
Thank you
Absolutely agreed. And I’ve read, and loved, all of the Waverly novels (by which I mean the Scottish historical novels – I’ve learned over the years that sometimes people call all of Scott’s novels the Waverly novels, because they were published as written by “the author of Waverly,” rather than as written by Walter Scott, but that’s a side issue).
And they’re very arguably better books. No question about it.
But I’ve had very few reading experiences as deep as my experience of reading Ivanhoe. It was just a moment – that moment of being just old enough to be able to read a book that wasn’t written for children, of being a bookish enough child that I actually would voluntarily read a book of that length, combined with Ivanhoe being perfectly written to capture the imagination of a young child (I think I was eleven).
So to say that " Ivanhoe is probably the worst book that Scott ever wrote" is, well, perhaps that’s true from the perspective of a literary critic.
From the point of view of a young reader, most definitely not true.
And who’s to say that perspective is less valid, or less important, than the perspective of the critic?
Gotcha, thanks!
I liked Ivanhoe a lot, but I didn’t remotely expect it to be historically accurate.
Plus it helped when I later read Simon Hawke’s The Ivanhoe Gambit (which is not a “great book” in any sense but manages to be reasonably engaging sci-fi).