(dave e)

I'm down with most of the list (and these things are always - in the end - rather arbitrary... you just can't do *everything*), but I wonder about the choice of Kingsolver - why that novel over so many others? And what are most novels within the past 100 years (give or take a few), when the genre is so much older? Even your alternate list has mostly 20th century stuff on it (which, of course, I dig as much as you do).

I know ... gasp. But what about something by Dickens, or Wilde, or Hawthorne? For an early fictional work, you might also consider Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (which is very short and better than reading, say, Humphrey Clinker).

And while Morrison is taught a lot, it is a shame, because she is so great to talk about in relation to Faulkner.

Thus ends (for now) my un-asked-for advice.

the advice is very much asked for! thanks!

i had just decided to add oroonoko (vs. rasselas,) as a good introductory work. also playing with doing one of those "canon assignments" in which students pick one from a list of novels and write up a short response.

given the serious time limitations, adding dickens, wilde (although i confess i can't think of any wilde novels), or hawthorne means dropping something. maybe hawthorne for conrad? but that means i've lost a british (well, sort of) novel. for the record, this class regularly includes nothing before the late 19th c. that seems odd, but there it is...

when i put kingsolver next to all the novels i know since the mid-80s (i'll definitely include delillo), hers has the most to work with (place, subjectivity, pastiche, narrative play, political history, the family, gender, technology, postcolonialism). byatt, kingston, coupland, pynchon, garcia marquez, chabon, and rushdie all make work of those issues, and often more artfully, but kingsolver gets all of them.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mr. Wilde. How about Sula for Morrison instead of Bluest Eye? How about Animal Dreams or the Bean Trees instead of Poisonwood Bible?

thanks, jm...

i knew this post was risky, because i'd
eventually have to start confessing how many Important Novels i haven't read. shhh. don't tell anyone, but i've only read beloved, jazz, and song of solomon. don't know sula and the bluest eye. beloved is her best book, which is why oprah and a thousand billion people have already read it.

i don't know any kingsolver besides the poisonwood bible.

dorian gray... yes, that would work. hmmm... maybe...

dave--

in terms of books that we encountered as students, you might be interested to know that my intro to novel class at U-dub, taught by Vivian Pollak (now at the other Washington in St. Louis), had several of your choices on the syllabus, including frankenstein, as i lay dying, and their eyes were watching god. Of course, don’t ask VP about whether or not you should include James, b/c she’ll call you a fool if you don’t. we read daisy miller. and don’t ask MNS if you should listen to VP since they’ve never really been pals as far as i know. a C19 americanist, VP never really concerned herself much with dickens, fielding et al. but i will add that hawthorne was on our list. of course, i'm satisfied as long as The Double D is on your list, and would offer that you might just be a better teacher of those books you know best. it's like our pal DW always said. teach the ones you've always taught because the kids will get more from the class, but teach one you haven't taught, so you'll get more from the class.

humbly,

f. fontaine.

much obliged, all, for your good suggestions.

fritz, i guess vp will just have to think me a fool. it's portrait of a lady or nothin'... so it's gonna be nothin'. i love the dw method, which, not surprisingly, is sort of a guide, here. that may just ruin the kingsolver for me, but a risk i'll take.

i feel lucky to get to make these choices. and lucky to get good guidance from you all.

when you post such a query to such a buncha english nerds...it may never stop. anyway, you could get your brit-lesbian in one fell swoop by doing jeanette winterson. oranges is my favorite. dorian gray is just ok imo, bc it's a whole lot of lads tossing themselves on davenports and such. i like your list, btw.

A dull and ordinary list, a list for the hestitant, for those who have no real reason to read, a list guaranteed to bore those who already do read, and to lose those who do not. This is a list that will not help those who write. This is a list of unimportant but well-known books, none of them influential although some are reasonably historic.

Here's mine and you can critique it to your heart's content:

Fight Club: Chuck Palahniuk
Whores for Gloria: William T. Vollmann
Breakfast of Champions: Kurt Vonnegut
The Atrocity Exhibition: JG Ballard
Naked Lunch: William S. Burroughs
American Psycho: Brett Easton Ellis

hesitation is precisely what i am looking for. readers in search of fast glamour may very well find it in a sexier and more spectacular reading list, but those who have the good faith to think about what they're reading begin to get something from the process. the list i adopted, even in light of its shortcomings, is capable of fostering that process. if i miss the point, and the alleged hesitation is supposed to be mine, the stimulus for my meek syllabus, well, that's just a personal criticism. my hesitation works for me.

my hope is not to create a "reason to read" for those who lack it. i'd rather establish some *ways* to read. some *questions* about that reading. sorry, but i offer no books as salvation, no dead poets' society for the contemporary american schoolboy in need of better drugs and faster cars. and boredom, frankly, is the problem of the bored. this course is not supposed to "help those who write." besides, i imagine many of those who do will find their way to palahniuk in a fiction workshop, anyway.

as someone whose task is to introduce a large genre that's been around for a good long while, i'm doing a better job by presenting at least a few novels written before the mid-20th c. if the commentor honestly thinks that my list is made of unimportant books, there's little i can really say. and that's no shy rhetorical surrender... frankenstein, heart of darkness, as i lay dying, white noise, et al have, i'm pretty sure, been influential.

the proposed list would serve nicely in a course called "postmodern american fiction." i'd love to be involved in that class, some other semester. at the moment, the course i'm preparing is called "introduction to the novel."

now my heart is content.