On the other hand, there's a whole lot of Dickens that I completely adore -- in particular the great monster 900-page late novels Dombey , Bleak House , and Our Mutual Friend. (The order switches, with BH usually in the lead until I pick up OMF again). All of those manage the whole scope from commentary to characters to just... damn.

Those are JZ's favorite Dickens' novels too.

The longer I teach, the more I drift back to the classics. It's funny, really. I love bringing contemporary fiction and poetry into my curriculum, but I feel a driving need to teach the classics. Then again, one of the things I'm most proud of is that my students consistently say I make "boring old stuff" interesting, and that makes me very happy. As much as I thought that my colleague who first decided to have the girls read the entire Odyssey was batshit crazy, the students tell us year after year that it gives them such a solid foundation in the rest of their literary studies. What determines a classic is very much debatable, but I think that how you teach a classic book will determine whether or not that book is relevant or useful to most students. Hence the fact that I had some really hideously bad high school English teachers who led me to believe I didn't like Shakespeare (!!!).

Then again, the three books I read in high school that I remember having the most profound effect on me were The Jungle, 1984, and The Grapes of Wrath, and my teacher at the time was...not good. So who know.

I think this post may be lacking a central point. Just go with it.

ETA: I also really loved The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea, but I had better teachers for those. TOMatS in particular. I think I would have hated it without proper guidance.

As much as I thought that my colleague who first decided to have the girls read the entire Odyssey was batshit crazy, the students tell us year after year that it gives them such a solid foundation in the rest of their literary studies.

I have very fond memories (fond, as in, if you went to my HS and you diss Mr S. I WILL CUT YOU) of my AP English teacher, who similarly had us do the whole Aeneid. (He was a Latinist. What can I say?) It was a slog at the time, but I ended up wishing we'd had enough time for both the Iliad and the Odyssey as well.

(Also, this thread has turned into a workout for my quick-edit-i skills. Yay!)

Then again, the three books I read in high school that I remember having the most profound effect on me were The Jungle, 1984, and The Grapes of Wrath, and my teacher at the time was...not good. So who knows.

I'm terrified of rats to this day.

I'm terrified of rats to this day.

Between The Jungle and 1984, how could you not be??

I hated it more because I had to read it over the summer break, I think, though I'm almost certain I missed the larger point of it. I did that kind of a lot with books I read for class, for a smart person. I don't know, although I really enjoy funny or cheerful books, I also like David Simon and Richard Price, neither of whom write uppers. I guess if I think the bleakness reflects something I understand, I appreciate it.(gallows humor helps, too.) Dickens mostly tries my patience, but I have to admit he wrote some memorable characters. I have to be in the right mood to go for all that 19th century pacing.

Though I dislike the idea that it's OK to be stuck in poverty because you'll get your reward in heaven and you'll be doubly blessed etc.

It's a cop-out, that's why. Both narratively AND in real life. Real-life people living in poverty don't dance for joy at the idea that one day they'll be in heaven, not when they haven't had a real meal for days.

Narratively, it's bullshit because it offers no resolution beyond a 7-year-old's "....and then they all woke up, and realized it was a dream!" Kid do that when they've written themselves into a corner; putative adult writers have no excuse for falling back on it.

I'm not going to suggest that people who hate Moby Dick suddenly start liking it especially if somebody ruined it for you by forcing it on you. But there is stuff to love in it. And, possibly a personal character flaw, but I love encyclopediac novelist, the ones who thrown in peripheral diversions. I love when Melville pauses in a whaling tale to tell you more than you need to know about whaling just for the sheer joy of the description. I love when Thomas Mann stops in the middle of his novel when his character checks into a hotel to spend a chapter telling you about the art of hotel keeping. But hell, I also like (not love) the endless travel descriptions in Tolkein. People find pleasures in strange places, Buffistas possibly in stranger places than average.

There have been some unfortunate choices for high school books. I don't understand why you would submit the age group most likely to commit suicide to Ethan Frome.

One of my favorite explanations of tragedy is in Roller Skates, one of my childhood favorites that is still wonderful. Lucinda's Uncle Earle has been reading Shakespeare to her, and says he thinks she's old enough for a tragedy. She asks what the difference is.

Uncle Earle explained briefly. A comedy was a happy affair wherein all ended well; a tragedy ended with catastrophe -- death. There were violent conflicts between people in tragedies; they made mistakes and you followed them through to their bitter endings. But ...in fine tragedies, such as the Greeks and William Shakespeare wrote, what happens must be inevitable -- unescapable. It must make you feel right about the ending. And great tragedies must have beauty in them; otherwise what's the use!...

Think of everything that happens in the play as adding up correctly to make the ending, just as if you were to take 5 and 2 and 6 and should add them up to make 13. Right! Well, that sum was inevitable."

So the problem with Romeo and Juliet is that 5 and 2 and 6 somehow wind up a few numbers short of the full sum? Good to know.

(Man, I hate that fucking play.)