I liked Dickens well enough. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read/seen from Shakespeare, although I haven’t been exposed to the majority of his work. I read King Lear last year on my own volition, mainly because so many modern works (especially film) reference Lear or the plots therein. I really enjoyed it. I also enjoyed Dostoevsky. My Senior AP term paper was on a comparison/contrast of the Christian themes between Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karmazov.
Never read any Faulkner.
I agree that Silas Marner was painfully boring. By far the worst thing I had to read in high school.
In college, the worst was The Awakening by Kate Chopin.
Can’t remember the author (traumatic amnesia), but the worst book I was ever forced to read in school was Tess of the D’Uber-vile-s (spelling intentional). Bad plot, bad characters, etc.
[Eve sobbing prettily into her lace handkerchief over the emptiness of the lives of those who do not love Messrs. Dickens and Hawthorne, and that nice Miss Bronte]
OK, YOU may not like the works of these authors, but that does not make them bad writers. I do not happen to find Charlie Chaplin funny—but enough other people do that I am willing to admit he’s just not my cup of tea.
But many, many people agree with me on two authors whose work I have never been able to struggle through: Messrs. Joyce and Dreiser. Someone above nicely settled Mr. Joyce’s hash, but let me quote Dorothy Parker on the other gentleman:
“Theodore Dreiser
Should ought to write nicer”
And,
“What writes worse than Theodore Dreiser?
TWO Theodore Dreisers!”
I hated Great Expectations when I read it in high school. Then I had to read it again for my Master’s degree. Truly a great book.
Of course, it’s hard to see that when you’re in high school (and it didn’t help that we were reading an abridged edition). But the point is that many of the great works of literature require more life experience than most people have in high school. I’d be willing to be that if you wait until you’re after 30 and reread any of the books you hated in high school, you’d be surprised at how much you missed in them.
Bravo. I’m a southerner, an English major, and I spent two years in an English lit Ph.D. program. I’ve made numerous runs at Faulkner, always without success (I did make it all the way through The Reivers, but that hardly counts and didn’t do much to change my opinion).
I don’t object to three-page sentences (as anyone who’s read my posts will affirm); I enjoy Joyce, Melville, Pynchon, Sterne, and many other authors commonly complained of as being too dense, too wordy, too arcane, etc. I love verbal gymnastics when they’re well done (Nabokov, for instance). But Faulkner might as well have written in Tagalog for me.
My vote is for Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter was just so boring. I love to read but that book was like wading through hip deep mud.
I liked Great Expectations and as an added bonus we got to take a couple of class periods of to watch the movie.
If you are not a high school student, and you are replying to this thread, than this doesn’t apply to you. I have absolutely no problem or opinion about well-read adults (or even semi-well-read) adults bitching about various authors, including Hawthorne, Steinbeck, or Falkner. Because I figure adults have a wide range of experience, and have learned enough to understand where various authors are or aren’t going.
However, when 10/11 and even 12 graders start bitching, it pisses me off. Many of them only read when they are assigned to do it. (NOT YOU! I’m talking the people I go to school with. I understand there are people in this board who have read more than I could possibly imagine, and started when you were quite young.) But, the people who read five books a year, and that’s the four books that are assigned plus a car magazine, who then start bitching about how stupid the books are, or how they don’t get it…I just want to SCREAM!
Fanny Burney. I was forced to read Evelina as part of a group project with two guys in my AP English class. I was the only person that read the damn book. I regret it to this day. I KNOW she influenced Jane Austen. I KNOW she’s a wonderful example of how 18th century women authors threw off convention to do their own thing. I DON’T CARE.
Another thing that pissed me off is that our AP teacher used both years of our English class to present us with her politics. Every book we read was by women she considered “pioneering feminist writers.” That’s all well and good, except now that I’m in college, I’m stuck because I haven’t read the “classics” that all of you have mentioned. I’m not interested in pursuing women’s studies, and so my high school background in 18th and 19th century feminism doesn’t help me at all.
How about Ethan “Squeaky” Fromme? Edith Wharton may be a great writer… but the way it was taught killed me.
One. Page. At. A. Time.
Oooh. Symbolism. Every word a precious drop of multiply nuanced Significance.
Given a choice, “I prefer not to.”
Though, many of the shorter pieces in the lovely omnibus works were hell in themselves alone. Pretentious works of feminism, dry and outdated. Maudlin war-stories.
The Lottery, by, if I recall correctly, Ray Bradbury, is a story that should never be taught in high school, however. It is well written… but the unusual situation depicted matches that reality far too well.
Save a few choices, though, these words do have literary merit. But the teaching of it could destroy Of Mice and Men. Books live. High school teaching drives stakes through their hearts.
But then again, you could say that about any subject with a sub-par teacher.
“Tell Grimlock about the Petro-Rabbits again, Kup.”
Ah, yes, Melville. Very nice reference in a literary thread. ::thumbs up::
Speaking of which, I’ve tried to read Moby Dick many, many times. I get about a third of the way into it, and it feels like I’m swimming through Smuckers. And I don’t believe in skipping ahead to get back to the story; I won’t feel like I’ve read it unless I’ve actually, y’know, read it. I’m not stupid, but my brain just doesn’t work this way, I guess.
I once had a high school teacher who taught Of Mice and Men by simply reading it aloud, one chapter at a time. Because it’s such a short book, this worked beautifully. No need to over-analyze it. Just listen.
Several students who would never have picked up a book on their own were visibly moved by the closing passages. I don’t know if any of them went on to become big readers afterwards, but the whole thing struck me as a pretty good way to turn kids on to reading.
Hemingway. Yikes! The guy types short, nondescriptive sentences and somehow earns the adoration of a million hyperactive English teachers. Oh I know, there’s supposed to be great symbolism in his work. Ha! How do I know he meant what you say he meant? He’s not saying ANYTHING! When you say little, people can interpret your brevity to mean any number of things - but couldn’t it also mean that you’re not meaning a damn thing? I was always amazed at how much importance English teachers and professors attached to his work. Couldn’t it be, O Wise Teachers, that he wasn’t a master, that he was simply not very good??
Oh, and Salinger. I never had to read him during high school or college, but I just finished Catcher in the Rye. Self-absorbed crap, if ya ask me.
I personally hated “The Rocking-Horse Winner”.
And “Ivanhoe” - still dreck after all these years.
And “Walden” - anything more than one semicolon in a sentence should be a criminal offense! Six is WAY too many.
I too had a ultra-feminist left-wing female English teacher in high school** (I am well beyond high school) who would also teach the feminist writers, but expect us to read the classics on our own, minimum one novel per week, paper due Monday with our own insights but no class discussions, in addition to her assignments. In addition, she would pull in women writers from her night class and we would critique their work.
I had this woman for 2 years in a row only because she taught the college-prep course through the local university and I could skip freshman English with 6 actual college credits under my belt.
She did a lot for my learning, but geezlouise, most of these writers I could not name now, not to mention no one from the writing class ever became famous (probably from a bunch of 11th graders ripping their work to shreds). Not to mention the fact that we never had in-depth discussions about most of the books (except “Of Mice & Men”, “A Seperate Peace”, and a very few others). But boy, could I carry on a one-sided discussion of Woolf’s “A Room Of One’s Own”. Oh, and Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” was her favorite - “It mirrored my first marriage” (and we found out later, most of her husbands left her).
[sub]And before you start flaming me, I too am somewhat feminist and somewhat left-wing, but not to the extent that Mrs. N** was. Example: we were to use only the feminine in speaking about the reader: “When the reader can comprehend blahblahblah, then she can…”, not ‘he or she’, just ‘she’. Points off if we used ‘he’.[/sub]
I went to a high school where lots of Steinbeck was taught - I think everything short of “Travels with Charley” was on the syllabus between 7th grade and graduation. Some of it wasn’t bad (East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, but I hated Grapes of Wrath), but over and over and over again…and I would have like to have been exposed to something else.
Can’t understand why anyone teaches “The Scarlett Letter” unless they want to convince their students classic literature is unreadable. Ditto for Tess of of the D’NearlyImpronoucible (Thomas Hardy, BTW) or Madame Bovery. Not to mention all of them are somewhat inappropriate for teenagers (maybe teachers thing their students will analyze these books in the process of looking for the non-existent sex). And I’m not a prude - in fact my biggest beef (other than their unreadablity) about all these books is the “sex gets you punished, but especially if you are a women” theme.
Stephen Crane wrote great poetry - especially for teen angst, a great poet to introduce teenagers to. But Red Badge of Courage is crap. And “The Rocking Horse Winner” is fantanstic as an oral interp piece when done well.