I am looking for some great novels, poems and essays that college freshmen would find inspiring and intriguing. And that they won’t have read in high school.
I am hoping to provide these students with a range of material, not just contemporary or ‘classic’, challenge their preconceptions without being so difficult they give up. I expect the students to be eager and of reasonable intelligence, but not necessarily super-self-motivated or widely read.
I have some ideas, but I’d love to hear what the collective wisdom of the dope has to say.
Also, if anyone has thoughts on the difficulty level, given these parameters, of the following:
‘The Second Coming’ (Yeats)
The stories of Saki
The Merchant of Venice (kids aren’t likely to have read this in high school, are they?)*
The Man who was Thursday (Chesterton)
Scoop (E. Waugh)
*I am also going to do some drama, but I’ve mostly got that part of the syllabus set.
OK, I looked and saw that you were in the UK. And your examples are all UK. And none of them are post-WWII. Does that mean you want to keep to those parameters or are looking for material from other times and places? (I also have no idea what might get taught in a British high school.)
The Magus is much better vs. FLW for the age group - it wrestles with personal hypocrisy and deciding what’s true (kinda like Stendhal), with a bit of fantastic mystery to it.
Disgrace is the best-crafted book I’ve read in 20 years - simple words building up a rich, multi-layered exploration of individual and South African identity.
If you haven’t read The Broom of the System, you really should. Freshman would love it.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. Simple and straightforward, but the great book of African literature.
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children. More complex but another story of people and a country coming of age.
Alan Sillitoe’s story, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.” More coming of age.
So is Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.
All are unusual approaches to the theme, but should be relatable without talking down to teens. I wonder a bit about *Scoop * and Chesterton for that reason. That whole world is so alien today that I don’t think they would have the background to fathom it. I did a lot of such reading as a freshman that went straight over my head and I hated it.
This book is the one single book out of all my forced reading that has stuck with me, haunted me, and educated me for the past 20 years since I read it. I’ve never read it again, but it feels like a part of me.
A fun read and the book isn’t taught in high schools. I read it first as college sophomore. I’m 20 years past college and I still have a copy in my bookshelves that I read from time to time.
Heh. Intentional, Exapno?
I read the Magus I think as a freshman or sophomore. It resonated at the time. Note that there is a revised edition as well, probably the “normal” one you’d find. Better than FLW, although I understand the movies were the opposite. Not as much in my worldview at the time. Read the Man Who Was Thursday a little later. The metaphysical ending was over my head. You can also play the first Deus Ex to get snippets of it. :dubious:
And if you ask me, if you didn’t in high school, read the Catcher in the Rye, so you can get advice on how not to behave if you’re feeling lost.
I guess it would depend on the school and its curriculum. The Merchant of Venice was taught in my high school, for example.
Others that might challenge a first-year college student?
My first thought is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which portrays a dystopian future. It is great that today’s young people can be anything they choose–but how would they like to have their futures, up to and including their intelligence, determined for them, before they are even born? And how would they react? Huxley gives us one example in John the Savage, but how would your students react if they were John?
My second thought would be Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Another dystopian future, but this time, we’re looking at what can happen if one ideology takes over. Given today’s issues (Obamacare, gun control, etc.), and the polarization of opinions on those issues, can the students see what could result if public discourse and dissent is not allowed, and that certain opinions and behaviours are made illegal?
By far the most readable of Fowles’s books, and I love them all, is his first The Collector. It isn’t well known, is relatively brief and, like his other better known works contains a fantastic storytelling device.
Catch-22. I don’t think it is read nearly as often in High School as, say, 1984 or Animal Farm, and it is great fun as well as thought-provoking.
For a choice which is less likely to have been read, The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino.
I like your pick of TMWWTh. I first read it in the library in college and couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud (at the part about the beard). A little embarrassing.
Okay, I know you said no translations – but what about Herman Hesse’s Magister Ludi? It made a hell of an impact on me when I was about that age. (And an equally profound impact on me when I read it again 15 years later, at the time that I left academia, but that’s a whole different story.)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. Stunningly modern for a book written in 1824. One of my favourites and I can’t recommend it enough.
Sill in print is Robert Coover’s Pricksongs & Descants. Fed it to them as a dessert at the end of the course and watch their little minds be blown at what the possibilities of fiction are. (And it’s great for the snotty, know-it-all wannabe writers, who’ll think they can do this and fail miserably until they get it out of their system. )
I really like this suggestion. I read BNW when I was a little younger and I didn’t get much out of it, but 18 seems like a good age to confront these questions, and others raised by the book.
Is Animal Farm too tied into historical context to have a similar effect? I am thinking about assigning an essay, at least, of Orwell’s.
‘Things Fall Apart’ is another great suggestion, with ‘The second Coming’ or not! (That poem seems to have inspired a lot of titles!)
Any poetical recs? I want to do poetry with a very light touch, short is good. But mindblowing is best.
Any short-stories that can have this kind of impact? I am more willing to find these in translation. Is Raymond Carver read at all? I love the idea of Coover, but I think that might be a bit advanced for this crowd…
I’m going to suggest a novella, “The Mountains of Mourning” by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s a science fiction mystery with a lot to say about justice and prejudice. I believe it’s available as an e-book.
Also, the novel Bellwether by Connie Willis. It’s about decisions. It’s also fun, and people might like a change of pace.
I like Saki’s stories too, especially “The Open Window.”
You said you’ve chosen the drama–may I ask which plays, other than The Merchant of Venice?
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