An audience poll in three parts!

[theweaselking]

1) In order to be considered educated in modern English literature (paper, so no movies or TV), one must (at a a bare minimum) be familiar with:

[Insert your answer here]


Me, I'm thinking:

Brave New World
1984
Animal Farm
Heart Of Darkness
Hamlet[1]
Romeo And Juliet[1]
The Bible[1][2]
A Tale Of Two Cities

Basically, a reference or allusion to the major points of any of those should be caught by anyone.

What else should be on that list?


2) I'm also thinking of an "honorable mentions" list, with stuff like The Lord Of The Rings, Treasure Island, The Lottery, Lord Of The Flies, I Am Legend, Ender's Game[3], Catcher In The Rye, Atlas Shrugged[3] - stuff where people CAN still be considered well-read without having read them, but they may be missing out. What should be on that?


3) It is not a coincidence that "grade school curriculum" heavily overlaps my essentials list, I think. Is this confirmation bias, or an indication that the Essential Reading list for schoolchildren actually starts with some really good choices?



[1]: gets "Modern English" cred by proxy and influence
[2]: No, seriously, INFLUENCE. But annotated, so people should know The Empty Tomb and The Brutal Torture Of Innocent Job By The Allegedly Benevolent Overlord[4], but who gives a shit about Zachariah? Point is, you need the highlights becuse they show up, a LOT, in other places.
[3]: Being able to recognise popular crap as CRAP, and dissect the failures of logic, worldbuilding, and persuasion is an important skill that more people should have.
[4]: The Book Of Job is a demonstration that not only CAN Satan win, but that he wins any time he feels like putting any effort in, because God is a gullible chump. But this is a diversion.

Comments

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

What about Dracula? It can be argued that that's the foundation for a vampire craze that is still ongoing. Everyone recognises the name Dracula, everyone knows the essentials of the story - even the essential legends of what a vampire is (culled from a gazillion versions in ancient mythology) were defined and popularised by Stoker

Of course, on that score we could probably say the same for Anne Rice

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Dracula is an excellent choice. Anne Rice, well, that would depend on the future, but barring a brief White Wolf-based break in the 90s her fiction has not been historically relevant so far.

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

Having recently re-read the original trilogy (Interview; Lestat; Queen of the Damned) after having read it bajillions of years ago as a teenager who hated everything, I was surprised by how very good it is. I don't have a lot of time for her later works-- like Stephen R. Donaldson (whose works I would not include) I suspect she had one good story in her. Fortunately she executed it well. I don't think I would call it classic literature, unless one is pursuing a degree in the nigh pathological rise in angsty fascination with impossibly beautiful bloodsucking immortals, but that's rather a niche category, I suspect.

[stormfeather.livejournal.com]

I think Anne Rice is a lot like Piers Anthony in some ways - their series tend to start out well, with somewhat interesting ideas and not horrible execution, but get more and more problematic as they go along.

That, or both of them are just getting to be WORSE writers with practice, instead of better, due to being in echo-chambers of fandom or something.