It’s amazing how much of this rests on how good a teacher you have for any given subject, and basically, to what extent they manage not to ruin young people’s inherent curiosity and interest in different things, on the one hand, and to show how new things can be unexpectedly fun or interesting.

I went to high school when it was still normal to read mostly canonical stuff, but with some non-canonical outliers. But when I was at university, in the early 90s, there was a huge wave of attempts to problematize or expand the canon. It is amazing to think back on this and recall how controversial it was to ask to…

Or in current terms, Shakespeare was a zaddy to rival Chris Pine.

I’d watch that!

If you liked that, you might also like I feel like puking.

Possibly the same people who say “pita bread” or “tahini sauce.”

So one of my friends claims that Hemingway is great, but the Old Man and the Sea is just the one book you should never teach high schoolers.

I used to be ungrayed for a while, but then I guess I pissed off one of the writers or something, or I was part of the Grayt Graying, and was never reungrayed. Dunno. I will still speak truth to power when necessary or unnecessary.

In my high school, we read plenty of good stuff. That’s because we had great, well-paid teachers who loved literature and loved teaching it. Kind of amazing for a public school in a podunk little town.

I think we have intersecting but mostly different taste for the contemporary stuff :)

Right now I’m reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which I have embarrassingly never read before, and about two weeks ago I read Hilary Mantel’s A Change of Climate. While I love Mantel, this is not one of her best books.

Burn!

Take your goddamn star and get out of here.

Real talk. High school English left me with a burning hatred for American literature that I’m only now starting to get over, more than 20 years later.

I saw a few good plays, too!

So I have a question, especially for the other non-USA residents.

Justification: Queen.

Majorly. But maybe in a few minuets they’ll respond to your overtures.

Looks like it’s only the two of us holding down the forte, so it’s good we’re in harmony.

So only a partita of a year.