Andrew L. wrote:If you were a college English instructor and could teach one 19th-cent novel and one 20th- or 21st-cent novel, what two novels would you inflict on your semi-literate kiddies?

Your recommendations are appreciated. A short explanation of each choice would be helpful. Also, pretend the original language of each novel must be English: No À la recherche du temps perdu! No Преступление и наказание! No 京華煙雲! English-language novels only. Obscure, popular, or non-canonical choices welcome.

Thanks!

No, thank you for hurting my brain. I can't decide.

burun wrote:
And the kids in my class will cockpunch your kids.

Best post ever. And I don't even know what a cockpunch is.

Christopher J. McGarvey wrote:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I was thinking about that, but I can't decide if I like this book or Twain's short stories better.

Of course, if Andrew asked for short stories, I would have said O. Henry.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, and George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London. Alternately, Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, and Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel would also be a good choice.

Christopher J. McGarvey wrote:The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Hotdamn! My all-time favorite novel (or top 5 at least). I even like the much-debated ending.

Check out the new printing with the George Saunders forward.

Riddley Walker and Oliver Twist.

I think they'd make great parallel reads. Apart from being brilliant novels about children, they cover a huge amount of religious, political, social and linguistic ground.

I'd go Moby Dick and Catch 22

(or Jude the Obscure and Finnegans Wake if you want to annoy the fuck out of them)

I would choose Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure and Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy.

Firstly, both novels reflect the grand traditions of the time: the novel of ideas as with Jude, the more (though, thank Christ, not overly) post-modern approach to text in TNYT. In fact, with these two novels you can go premodern-modern-postmodern, no problemo, which is what kids love. Give 'em something to oversimplify about and impress the parents with.

Secondly, these books both have considerable scope in terms of subject matter. Which means that at the end of the day you won't have to read the same goddamn paper, making the same goddamn point (there's going to be a paper, right?) twenty old times.

Thirdly, these books are in fact readable, which is always substantial where it regards your class actually reading them.

Lastly, they are both very great.

My picks.