EPT
High school is where they teach you not to read. More precisely, high school is where they teach you reading is a bore reserved for pretentious intellectuals and people more concerned with looking smart than being wise. Instead, reading is treated as an edifying chore which must be made boring beyond recognition. Textual analysis and theme-spotting is all the rage, and the world after 1950 wandered into a black hole to disappear for all eternity. Any other choices are frivolous at best, because Shakespeare is a Great Canonical Writer and you must scoop up every word like manna from heaven. Even worse, they don’t bother to fill the curriculum with interesting books. How they determine their list is a mystery not even CERN can solve. Perhaps Orwell made a deal with Satan to extend his influence beyond the grave. “Politics and the English Language” is a classic essay, but there’s no way in hell 1984 deserves to be the de facto dystopian novel.
It sucks, I know. I wouldn’t have persevered without a great English teacher in sophomore year. So for all those teenagers tottering on the edge, don’t despair! Books can actually be funny, entertaining, and revealing without been written by idiots. All you have to do to learn where to look. If I were a high school teacher, I’d choose these works for my curriculum.
A Reader’s Manifesto – B.R. Myers
Myers sticks a pin in the bloated self-importance and inane judgment of “highbrow” lit culture, concisely pointing out why present-day works seem so lightweight and devoid of importance. The fact that our great “national literature” has only gone worse in these aspects is depressing, but there’s always time to change that around. The first step is showing teenagers how to recognize and call out bullshit writing.
On The Genealogy of Morals – Friedrich Nietzsche
Whenever philosophers tried to wax eloquent, it’s like trying to make stones cry. This is why so many college students love reading Nietzsche. Look past the juvenile attraction to his purported nihilism and you’ll see a very good prose writer. He’s funny, he plays with language like a toddler eating spaghetti, and he has plenty of astute observations about psychology and human interaction with the world. Did I mention he has a sense of humor? This work strikes a good balance between the serious attempts at analysis found in The Birth of Tragedy and the caustic quips from Twilight of the Idols.
Don Juan – Lord “Fuck You” Byron
Epic Rap Battles of History is a great Youtube series, largely because the creators sensibly give both sides good smack talk. By comparison, George Gordon Byron’s verbal war with the British intelligentsia was a letdown. For 8 years he engaged in a sparring match with Britain’s best and brightest poets, mostly a continental affair due to his self-exile. It wasn't even a contest: British’s best and brightest poets couldn't hold a candle to him. He was 20 times cleverer, 20 times more perceptive, and possessed too much rancor to ever give up fighting. If you like Italian poetic form, all manner of sexual encounters, and veiled insults to prudish moral hypocrisy, this is for you.
The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton
There are few religious writers I can stand, fewer that make me laugh, and a select minority that leave me with a feeling of sincere respect. Chesterton has always been one of the exceptions. His sharp wit is only matched by his tenacious perception of human nature, and being Anglican (later Roman-Catholic) only enhanced it. In the same vein I recommend C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, which puts most weepies to shame with its poignant honesty and reflection.
Also, his Father Brown short stories are great.
The Orchard Keeper – Cormac McCarthy
This is McCarthy’s first and best work. Usually writers are expected to get better and better from their introduction into the literary sphere, but it was largely downhill from here. This is the finest example of what people praise in McCarthy before he succumbed to the turgid, meandering prose that defined his later work.
The Dog of the South – Charles Portis
Without fail, the title reminds me of the famous Kahuna Burger scene in Pulp Fiction. There’s a slight difference though. In my fantasy I’m the one with the afro asking a terrified NYT critic “Does Charles Portis look like a bitch? Then why are you trying to fuck him like a bitch?” Sadly, Portis has been thoroughly abused and cast aside without a soul remembering his name. In short, this is one of the best novels of the century and it will likely die with him.
Death on the Installment Plan – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
You don't hear his name in American classrooms. Apparently the Continent only gaveth before World War I, and everything else past that was flotsam. Damn shame too. No one can pull off solipsistic black humor quite like Céline. His style was an unacknowledged precedent for a lot of post-WWII writing, especially for the likes of Houelleberq, Mailer, and Updike. To enjoy this book to the fullest, you’ll have to read Journey to the End of Night first. I promise it’s worth it though.
The Waiting Years – Fumiko Enchi
There’s no better way to delegitimize a work than to introduce it as “genre”. “Genre” work is not technically Literature in many circles. Instead, it’s the inferior counterpart to stuff you’re typically force-fed in classes. Why is this phenomenon the case? It would take an entire book to tease out the answer. Suffice to say that ghettoization of many genres is bullshit. The Waiting Years is definitely one of the seminal works of post-WWII Japanese fiction, and its translation ought to rank highly in the English canon as well. I’d also recommend Masks and Days of Hunger, as well as The Makioka Sisters by Junchiro Tanizaki.
Sredni Vashtar – Saki
Teachers who care about their students’ relationship with literature aren’t content with vivisecting stories alone. They ought to be equally investing in showing students how they actually work. “Sredni Vashtar” is nearly perfect in how it constructs plot foundations and maintains your interest until the final, bizarrely hilarious image. “Miriam” by Truman Capote is equally riveting, although people don’t really read horror stories these days. But Capote didn’t have a vicious polecat in his! +1 to Saki.
Pleasant Hell – John Dolan
America’s best underground cynic was never really unknown. If you’re familiar with online reporting you might recall him as a contributor to The eXile, where he mercilessly took a shiv to piss-poor bestsellers and various other subjects. However he was largely treated as a pariah within the Western writing community; living in Russia as an honest man tends to have that effect. Fortunately he was able to finish a book before falling into poverty. Pleasant Hell is an autobiography disguised as a bildungsroman, and it’s generous enough to take shots at everyone. Dolan doesn’t shirk from making fun of his own pathetic adolescence, and the result is genuinely hilarious and horrific at the same time.
