If you were teaching a 200-level course, "Major American Authors", which six works would you choose?

All six works in two weeks or two weeks per work?

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
On the Road by Jack Kerouac

I didn’t include poetry because that’s an entirely different ballgame, but I would talk about Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and ee cummings.

I ignored people like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harriet Beecher Stowe because they just annoy me, and I feel like the texts above are more relevant, easier to read, and far less pithy. I know I didn’t really encompass a huge portion of time, and I left out poets and short stories (for those, I’d make sure I touched on Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O’Connor, Mark Twain, whose short writing I love, but can’t stand his full length novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald again, and O. Henry). Honorable mentions go to Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

@TitsMcGhee

Man you convered it! I might only add “A Farewell to Arms” to that list.

And no joke, I might even make them read something by Hunter Thompson. Maybe “The Great Shark Hunt” or “Hells Angels”.

janbb – Sorry, each book would get approximately 2 weeks.

Thanks – that makes a difference. Now I’ll put my thinking cap on!

Here goes:

Mark Twain – Huckleberry Finn
Willa Cather – My Antonia
Kate Chopin – The Awakening
F.Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath
Toni Morrison – Beloved

Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

I’m only including novels, too. The poetry of Walt Whitman and the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe should be taught, too.

@janbb: I did not like The Awakening, but I can’t believe I forgot Song of Solomon, which I liked better than Beloved.

@tabbycat: UGH, I hated Their Eyes Were Watching God.

The Highway Man—Alfred Noyes
Sleepy Hollow—Washington Irving
Fall of the House of Usher—Edgar Allen Poe
A Good Man is Hard to Find—Flannery O’Conner
Me Talk Pretty One Day—David Sedaris
I’d let the students pick their own reading for the last two weeks

Twain
Faulkner
Tennessee Williams
Hemingway
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris