To Read

This fall I'll be teaching an Intro to Fiction course - not a creative writing class or a historical survey but a class devoted purely to the appreciation of good fiction. Holy crap, right? It's so broad and open, it's hard to figure where to even start. I have a good textbook with lots of cool short fiction, and I'm sure I'll supplement it with additional stories. (The book doesn't have "The Prophet's Hair" by Salman Rushdie, "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton, or "Thanksgiving" by Angela Hallstrom. All essential.) But the thing that's on my mind right now is the novel for the class. I'm going to give them a selection to choose from and then each student picks a novel, reads it, and does a big whoop-te-doo presentation at the end of the semester. My colleague who previously taught the class allowed them to write a straightforward literary analysis or to make a diorama of a scene from the book or to write up and explain the dream cast of a movie version or to stage a small stage version of a scene or whatever. It's really up to the preferences and talents of the individual student. That all sounds good to me. I'm all in favor of a good diorama in college. Really, aren't we suffering from a lack of good dioramas in the world?

I digress.

Anyway, the questions are, what novels do I give them to choose from, and how wide of a selection do I offer? The previous teacher said she wished she hadn't allowed the students so many different options because everyone was working on a separate book practically and there was no chance for things to coalesce between students or for her as a teacher. She was just managing twenty different projects without feeling like any of them had anything to do with the others. So that was her one word of advice in passing this on to me - fewer novels.

So if you had to choose four or five novels that represent the best in fiction, that are substantial enough to be worthy of a semester's worth of study, that won't be totally overwhelming in size or scope for community college sophomores, that you don't mind thinking or talking about for sixteen weeks - what would they be?

Right now, my list looks like this:

My Antonia by Willa Cather. (I've taught this perhaps too many times? Switch to something else by Cather? O Pioneers?)

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. (This is a lock. I'm definitely making this one of the choices. It's great - plus they're making a film version right now. Timely, you know?)

Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut. (I love Vonnegut but this is more obscure and less of a workhorse than Slaughterhouse Five.)

Straight Man by Richard Russo. (It may be a little too inside-baseball. A creative writing professor goes through a midlife crisis while teaching a small, rural college. Hmmmm. It is, however, the funniest novel I have ever read.)

My Name Is Asher Lev. (This one's a lock too. It's a great novel and having my students read about Jewish characters at all, much less Hasidim, will be like having them read about Martians.)

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. (A longtime favorite but perhaps too sentimental, too episodic, not substantial enough?)

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. (One of the truly great, epic American novels. It devastated me when I finished it. But it's a doorstop of a book and starts off slow. Might not be anyone's choice and might be some poor student's undoing.)

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. (Funny, big-hearted, and unexpected - but also huge and perhaps too much to ask of busy college students.)

I'm just not sure what will be best, you know? I want four, maybe five books and I want them all to be just the right thing - which, of course, never really happens. I'll offer them the literary selections of my deepest soul and they'll be like, "Dude, that book sucked canal water. Who would ever like a steaming pile like that?"

So do you have any suggestions? What's the novel from high school or college or whenever that changed your life? What is the book that made the world look different to you for a while? Do tell.