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!

Hmmm... I was a bad English major in college, but I found this list here, maybe it might spark some ideas, at least for the 19th-century novel (scroll down to 1800s):

http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/littime.html

Your question is a tough one! There are so many books to choose from.

19th-century: George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH. A panorama of more than a dozen styles of life in Victorian-era England, from urban to rural, from religious to scientific, etc. Eliot's intellect is perceptive to every little detail of what Henry James called "felt life". Extraordinary book, and a lot of fun to read.

20th-century: DH Lawrence's intense, lyrical masterpiece, THE RAINBOW. The best descriptions of male/female love I've ever read. See the unconscious impulses stifled by 19th-century stuffiness break out with a wild abandon. A good contrast to the moralistic Victorian milieu.

Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Why? 'Cos Wilde rules.

For the 20th, that's a tough one. Gimme a minute.

burun wrote:Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Why? 'Cos Wilde rules.

Wilde does rule majestically, but that book is a grotesque failure. Pick IMPORTANCE, instead.

NerblyBear wrote:

burun wrote:Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Why? 'Cos Wilde rules.

Wilde does rule majestically, but that book is a grotesque failure. Pick IMPORTANCE, instead.

You pick Importance for your class.

Kids in my class will read Dorian Gray.

Graham Swift's Waterland (1983).

Swift draws on this nineteenth-century and Christian notion that the world is on a trajectory towards some posthistorical utopia (the end of history), only to subvert it.
If history is not moving in one direction and is not the story of progress, what is the value in teaching it?
"All right, so (history) it's a struggle to preserve an artifice. It's all a struggle to make things not seem meaningless. All a fight against fear. . . I don't care what you call it--explaining, evading the facts, making up meanings, taking a larger view, putting things into perspective, dodging the here and now, education, history, fairy-tales--it helps to eliminate fear"

burun wrote:You pick Importance for your class.

Kids in my class will read Dorian Gray.

I'm going to tell the kids in my class to steal your kids' lunchboxes.

NerblyBear wrote:

burun wrote:You pick Importance for your class.

Kids in my class will read Dorian Gray.

I'm going to tell the kids in my class to steal your kids' lunchboxes.

And the kids in my class will cockpunch your kids.

How about Moby-Dick and Invisible Man?