An Essential Top Ten

Okay fellow teachers, here is a great one, but it requires some time on your part.

List the Top Ten texts you would teach if you had "free reign" and why.

An essential part of this list is the Why. Explain/defend your choice. What is so important about the work that it makes the top ten of all time? Why is it so important for the students that you teach? Here we go:

My course revolves around Twentieth Century America from post WWI to post Vietnam—the heart of the American Century, if you will (and you will). There are lots of journeys here and lots dealing with the natural world in one way of another. Keep in mind that I will augment this with all sorts of cool, individual poems (Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Mary Oliver’s collection American Primitive for example), lyrics, essays, and films. Not all of my choices are novels. Most of these I don’t need “free reign” because they are accepted and taught in many curriculums.

The Nick Adams short stories by Ernest Hemingway. Important for many reasons: they show Hemingway at the peak of his writing prowess (the short story is his best medium), they reflect post-WWI realities, and they contain a very American protagonist and voice.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. The modern day Thoreau. As good as any literary fiction to teach literary features and techniques. A vital viewpoint for understanding one intersection of religion and environmentalism.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. A great counterpoint to Dillard, as Abbey is the libertarian, grouchy conservationist of the West who stridently argues for space, peace, and everyone leaving everything damn well alone!

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. One of the greatest, interwoven collection of short stories ever written. Kids love it. And for writers, they can really learn how to structure a short story.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey or On the Road by Jack Kerouac (I’ll decide when my imaginary class walks in the door). Cuckoo’s nest is the better literary work and encompasses more than the other, but boy does On the Road fit and it is so primal.

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. Really I’d like to try for Blood Meridian but it’s too long and too bloody for most. The Crossing evokes the American Southwest so well and is a great quest novel. Beautifully written.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. The woman can flat out write. Another quest novel but done at the Morrison level. Issues of race and identity, magical realism, outrageous characters and events, it’s all there.

The Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko. Crazzzzyyyyy. Apocalyptic and underground. Drives people to think there are entire worlds out there we just aren’t part of.

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Honestly I could do a whole year on the various genres of “Speculative” fiction but I’ll stick with one. A horror-contemporary fantasy quest across parallel Americas, students will devour this one.

Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks. In some ways the Bone is a modern Huck Finn. This hooks teenagers immediately whether they like him or not, and the adventures through the underbelly of America (and Jamaica) provide for ample discussion.