College Classics That Shouldn't Be

If you've ever felt guilty because you really couldn't understand all the hype about Wuthering Heights, this is the article for you.

Twenty Classroom Classics That Shouldn't Be is a humorous take on some of those novels that made you feel like...what? Am I just dense? Compiled by Onlinecollegecourses.com, this list, from Bronte to Absalom, Absalom by William Faulker (did anyone ever understand Faulkner?) to Ann Rand, which they stop just short of burning, will make you sigh with relief. Yes, you should've raised your hand and told the teacher you didn't understand a single word. Your classmates would've thanked you.

There are a couple I would remove from this list, but out of twenty, that's still a consensus. I wonder which two you would remove. Anyway, for now I thought we could all just enjoy a lighthearted round of sacred cow tipping with our first cup of coffee.

The Lifeblood of Fiction

Sitting at my laptop in the night with a glass of water at my elbow, there is movement in my peripheral vision. I glance at the source, alarmed, but the shimmering movement is only the play of moonlight on the water's surface. With each keystroke the water jiggles and though I know what it is, the ghostly shimmer fools me again and again, like the slap of the flag on my dad's flagpole in a brisk wind when I'm working in the garden. It has me looking over my shoulder, again and again. And I'm reminded of a passage from THE SOUND AND THE FURY.

If character is the life of fiction (as John Gardner says), description of time and place is the lifeblood that supports your characters along the way. Consider how William Faulkner describes water in a basin in the moonlight....

I could hear Shreve working the pump, then he came back with the basin and a round blob of twilight wobbling in it, with a yellow edge like a fading balloon, then my reflection. I dipped the rag, breaking the balloon.

Or this passage that blends the best description of twilight I've ever read with the memory of the brother who never grew up...

As I descended the light dwindled slowly, yet at the same time without altering its quality, as if I and not light were changing, decreasing, though even when the road ran into trees you could have read a newspaper. I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling like butterflies hovering a long way off. Benjamin the child of. How he used to sit before that mirror.

I just finished Ian McEwan's SOLAR, which set me to thinking about the importance of character development and how essential it is to make your readers care about your characters. Maybe this is an unfair comparison I'm about to make, but McEwan has been compared to literary giants, from Dickens to Faulkner, so my guess is that it isn't. The characters in SOLAR were as flat as failed bread and I had to force myself to keep going. Halfway through, I stopped waiting for it to get better and resigned myself to disappointment from an author who has never disappointed me before. So, even the experienced writer slips on occasion and falls into the trap of their own verbosity. Not only was the main character unlikable on a personal level, but as a scientist he seemed unmotivated, selfish, and greedy. And the only time McEwan comes close to a Faulkner description of time and place is when his Pulitzer Prize winning scientist steps out of his air conditioned car in the heat of the New Mexico desert and falls to his knees under the weight of it.

I think the main problem for me is that climate change is such a serious subject it doesn't lend itself well to the slapstick satiracal style McEwan uses to drive the novel forward. I found it hard to sympathize with this unlikable character who zips his penis in his snowsuit during a trip to the Arctic, this overweight academic who overeats before an important speech at a climate change conference and has to swallow his acid reflux as he tries to convince investors to take their money out of coal and oil and put it into solar. Who could take him seriously? This buffoon who has multiple failed marriages and countless affairs and who behaves badly at the turning point of the novel. And the multiple cast of supporting characters are equally unlikable and unmemorable. I didn't care about any of them. Characters are the life of fiction and these ones were dead in the water before the halfway point.

I think it unfortunate that one of the premier writers of our time missed an opportunity to bring solar power and all the possiblities encompassed within the miracle of photosynthesis into the mainstream conversation. Most readers won't put up with unlikable, boring characters, regardless of the subject. I would love to hear other opinions on this subject. And if any of you have read SOLAR, what'd you think?

If you can't give your readers a character to love, you'd better at least give them one to hate. Make your reader feeling something. Take Faulkner's Jason-one of the most despicable characters in the history of American literature-Jason Compson will stay with me long after I've forgotten McEwan's Michael Beard. Indifference to character is the death knell for a novel.

P.O.V. (the masterful experiment)

I woke in the middle of the night troubled by the weight of my unsent query letter. Is it specific? Is it succinct? I kicked my way out of bed and settled on the couch with The Sound and the Fury to take my mind off the unsent Memories of Snow. Thus it was that at two in the morning I was trying to get a handle on the confusing dialogue and brilliant but exasperating P.O.V. of the manchild, Benjy. Faulkner's narrative weaves back and forth between decades with no warning. It's no wonder I didn't understand it the first time I tried to read it. But I think I'm finally beginning to appreciate the greatness of this literary masterpiece, the risk of beginning a novel in the P.O.V. of an adult man who is mentally three years of age, and the sheer genius of pulling it off. I'm only now getting the symbolism of Benjy's castration and Caddy's soiled drawers (a symbol of her promiscuity), and the reason behind their brother, Quentin's, obsession with time and eventual suicide.

I was reminded of the recent news out of the state prison in Lucasville, Ohio about a prisoner on death row. His third execution date is set for today. He tried to commit suicide with a drug overdose before the last one, so they had to postpone it until he recovered. I wonder if he broke the hands off his watch and put them in his pocket like Quentin did? He was unconscious for some time and they nursed him back to health so he could be executed properly. He's recovered and they will execute him today by lethal injection. I expect it’s already been done.

One can only take so much Faulker at two in the morning, and I put the paperback, penciled up with dates in the margins to help me follow the shifts in time, aside (it is a tragic story, but at least it is fiction). I leafed through my Eliot Coleman gardening book, The Four Season Harvest. It, too, is wonderfully written with photos to complement the wealth of knowledge this gardener from Maine has accumulated over the years.

Earth is so kind - just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. -Douglas Jerold

I've been tickling the earth in the green house. I dug up a worm here amongst the argula ***envision picture*** and tucked him back under the soil. Please use your imagination as I live in internet no-man's land and couldn't download my pretty photo.

This morning I was gifted with another sign of spring. I heard them first and dashed to the window for a look. A flock of geese were flying overhead, heading north.

Godspeed.

The Banned and the Challenged

The list of banned and challenged books is like a Who's Who of the literary world. Not only should we writers strive to write something with the potential of making somebody uncomfortable, we should make a commitment to read at least five banned/challenged books a year. I have composed my list of personal must-reads and my top five are......

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY- Irving (cause I'm a sucker for Irving)
AS I LAY DYING- Faulkner (ditto Faulker)
THE SOUND AND THE FURY- Faulker (can't believe I haven't read this one)
THE GIVER - Lowry (cause I just realized it's buried in my bookcase)
FANNY HILL - Cleland (cause I'm a sucker for sex)


Down with fluff!! It isn't going to be enough to just be published....I want to be on the Banned Book list!