School Days

[stoutfellow]

Back when I was in eleventh grade, I took a course titled "Advanced American Literature". I'm not sure why it was called "Advanced"; as far as I recall, it was the only course in USAn literature offered at old Crawford High. In retrospect, I don't think I got a great deal out of that course. I seem to remember that the instructor talked a great deal about symbolism, but I came away with the impression that symbolism was some kind of sekrit code that the author artificially superimposed on the story. It wasn't until a few years later, in college, that I got a glimmering of what literary symbolism really is.

In any event, I'm trying to recall what-all we read in that class. I know that we read The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. As it happens, I've just reread both of those, and, thinking back, I have to say that I doubt any seventeen-year-old - or, at any rate, I - could really comprehend either story. The Scarlet Letter is meatier, I think; though it is a moral tale, I don't judge it to be a moralizing one - Hawthorne presents the temptations that Hester and Rev. Dimmesdale faced toward the end fairly and realistically. The climax might be a little pat, but not excessively so.

The Great Gatsby... There's something about Fitzgerald that puts me off. The society he describes is brittle and shallow, and I have a hard time empathizing. Nonetheless, I do see (what I think I missed the first time, so many years ago) how pathetic a character Jay Gatsby actually is - how much of his appearance was façade, and how much of his life was built on an illusion.

I wish I could remember what other books we read in AdvAmLit. (DG, if you're reading this, you were in that class; do you remember anything else?)

Comments

[xinef.livejournal.com]

We read The Great Gatsby in HS. Forget which grade. Didn't like it. Son #1 is doing it this year in English, Grade 11. Will be interesting to see what he thinks. He likes TOMES. Read Les Mis (English translation), Brothers Karamazov, nearly finished War and Peace, etc.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I salute Son #1. I read Crime and Punishment on my own while in high school, but didn't get to Karamazov or W&P until some years later. Great, great books. Gatsby isn't in their league; I'm not sure it's in the same professional organization. (I haven't read Les Mis yet; I've had a three-volume French edition sitting on my shelves for almost twenty years, begging to be read. One of these days...)

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

I have a personal bias against insane characters, that made C&P unbearable. Loved Brothers K, though. Never like Gatsby when I read it in HS.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

The version of Les Miz that he read was an abridgement, but was still nearly 2" thick!! He's also read The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I think he read The Count of Monte Cristo.

He's also read Ender's Game, many of the Bujold Vorkosigan books (yay, another convert!!), several of the Foundation series and other SF.

Eclectic tastes. This is good.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

Hey, we read the Great Gatsby in Year 11 too!

Along with The Red Badge of Courage, On The Road, The Old Man And The Sea and some other books I do not remember. To be honest, English wasn't my best subject.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Huh. Well, you've read more English literature than I've read Swedish. (If you extend to all of Scandinavia, I've read Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter and Master of Hestviken, the Kalevala, and Burnt Njal's Saga. Not a very long list.)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I'd not consider Kalevala Scandinavian, but I guess that only shortens the list. ,-)

Admittedly my English teacher (who I also had in Swedish and Swedish Literature) was kind of extreme in the amount of Anglo-lit we had to read, but it mostly meant we didn't read them in translation in Swedish, as one did with say Russian and French literature.

Of course, English wasn't an electable. Swedish school systems and in particular the science-oriented line believe in lots of "must read" subjects - there was a considerable fear that natural scientists, doctors and engineers would end up professional "idiots" - and a low number of electable ones. I think just about 1/10 of the time was in some way open to choice, and usually only an either/or choice. (French, German or Spanish. Visual Art or Music. Philosophy or Psychology)

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I hesitated briefly before including Kalevala, but I decided to go with the broadest plausible definition.

I took four years of Spanish and three of French in high school, but didn't read much literature proper in either class. (Camus' The Stranger in French; nothing that I recall in Spanish.)

[pompe.livejournal.com]

It is too short a time, I think. We didn't read anything noteworthy in German as I remember, and I took that for five years.

But in Year 11, the Swedish student had (then) already had seven or eight years of English. Nowadays, ten.