The Books You Read in High School

It’s important for the Hip English Major to have the appropriate literary background.

So what is the appropriate literary background?

Short Answer: It varies.

It varies because there are various forms of Hip English Majors, but the golden rule in this scenario – aside from the one covered in the post, “You Do Not Like Stephen King” – is that if you read it, or anybody read it in high school it is not good enough.

This is troublesome because the majority of aspiring Hip English Majors today haven’t really read anything outside of high school.  Maybe they knocked back one or two books for summer reading, but among the internet generation legitimate reading is in decline and everybody knows it.  Yet, it is still necessary for some perceived extracurricular literary base to exist.  What to do?

First, here is a representative list of books that aren’t quite up to snuff in the eyes of the Hip English Major:

• Catch-22
• Slaughterhouse 5
• Fahrenheit 451
• A Confederacy of Dunces
• On the Road
• Catcher in the Rye
• The Great Gatsby
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

You may be saying, “But I love all those books!” or, “Those are all incredible novels!”  Agreed, however as a Hip English Major you must rise above recognized greats because you are far too well read to settle on the common. (Note: This applies, for some reason, to American Literature more than any other.) Also, if you choose to champion the common it is entirely possible that you will encounter someone with a more interesting reading or more thorough understanding of the book.  This is only allowed to occur with Hip English Major twice in an academic year (professors included).

So you need to have your own niche, as well some common ground that establishes you, at least, as a future member of the literati.  (Note: As I said in a previous post, it is not actually necessary to have read these books, just to be able to talk as though you had.) I will post a couple lists which are representative of the sort of books you should unrelentingly praise and have some opinion on/interpretation of as well as some subsets applicable to the particular niche you want to carve out for yourself.

General books for Hip English Majors:

• Ulysses by Joyce (Because it’s big.  Only mention that you’ve read it casually, and out of earshot of your professors, who probably have at some point actually had to read this work.)
• something by Henry James (the name is what’s most important, but you should always have a title ready to spit out)
• Madame Bovary by Flaubert
• Rebecca by Du Maurier (you should say, “It was alright.”)
• Lolita and Pnin by Nabokov
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman by Fowles

Those are names and titles that are practically universally associated with high literature and that very few people actually bother to read (exception: Lolita is widely read because people are pervs).  That’s an important factor to remember: The fewer people who’ve read the book, the more you, as a Hip English Major, liked and will talk about the book.

Books for the Arty/Transgressive/Beatnik H.E.M:

• Naked Lunch by Burroughs
• everything by Palahniuk (Remember: you like Choke the book much more than Choke the movie, his first four novels are his best, and Fight Club has a drastically different ending and dynamic between Tyler and the narrator in the book than in the movie.  You may actually need to read this one to be convincing.)
• Less Than Zero by Ellis (Again, the movie is extremely different from the book. You might have to read it, or find a good summary.)
• A Ginsberg collection (If you are going straight Beatnik it would help to actually carry around Howl in your back pocket.  Also to randomly say things like, “Hum bom!”)
• Dharma Bums by Kerouac
• Flith by Irvine Welsh

Authors for the Genre Snob H.E.M. (All you’ll really need to do is shout out names of authors when someone says something negative about genre fiction.)

• Philip K. Dick
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Raymond Chandler
• Dashiell Hammett

Books for the aspiring writer H.E.M.  (You are far too busy creating fiction to read fiction(though you may never actually write, which will be covered in a later post). All your books are either How To’s or books that the How To’s tell you to read, which may be on the banned list, but you’ll have clemency from being judged by that list.)

• Stein on Writing by Stein
• The Art of Fiction by Gardner
• How Fiction Works by Wood
• Writing for Fun and Profit by Block
• The Trivium By Sister Joseph
• The Oxford English Grammar (yes, you read it front to back and you found it fascinating!)
• NOTE: You are so great with grammar that you found errors in the popular style guide Elements of Style by Strunk and White.  Read this article for your talking points.

By now you are starting to get the picture.  Keep in mind that these lists were just representative, and occasionally broke the rules.  For instance, for the aspiring Transgressive H.E.M. I’ve listed Palahniuk and Ellis, both commercially successful authors with at least two movie adaptations.  Technically, this isn’t obscure enough, but it can fly, especially if you actually read the books.  Otherwise you’ll need to do some research to find out which guys you can openly admire and talk about.  Being that I’m not a Hip English Major, I simply don’t have the appropriate background to provide you with better examples.

[Also note, all these lists are full of really good books.  Even if you aren't going to become a Hip English Major I suggest you hit up the library and read some of them (actually, only if you aren't going to be an H.E.M. should you do that. Hip English Majors don't really have time to read the books, just about them, which will be covered in a following post.)]

Finally, it’s important to act correctly regarding books that you don’t like as well as ones that you like or consider tolerable (the broadest category).  If someone mentions a book you don’t like (commercially successful, or widely read work of brilliance) you are to treat the person and book with utter contempt and disdain.  If a book you can tolerate is mentioned you may nod your head, mumble, say a brief and neutral comment about the clarity of writing or interesting technique in chapter 6, or simply smile knowingly with a slight hint of condescension sparkling in your eye.  If a book you like is mentioned and there is room to steal the show you should launch into a detailed analysis speaking in generalities, theories, and terms that nobody knows nor cares about but sound intelligent; this should last from 15 mins to 4 hours or as long as you can maintain the attention of at least two people.  Remember: digressions filled with condescending bashing of popular books is always a good way to reengage folks.  If there is not room to steal the floor you should pull one person aside, preferably an attractive person who will draw their own attention, and talk negatively about the person who brought the book up but refuse to engage in debate or discussion with them, pretending to take the higher road.

Want to add a book to a list or specify another subset of Douche Bag, I mean, Hip English Majors?  Feel free to do so in the comments section below.

 

You Do Not Like Stephen King

The first novel I ever read was Pet Semetary by Stephen King.  We lived in Germany back then, and on Saturdays we would head off to the base library.  It was fall. Leaves were blowing around and making music by scratching across pavement in a chaotic wind blown choreography that nature reserves for breezy days.  My mom said I could get a grown up book that day and there, in a dark metallic corner, on the bottom shelf was Pet Semetary.  It’s thick plastic dust cover had a crack on the bottom of the spine.

I would pick the book up and sit quietly for a few minutes to make mom believe I had actually looked around, then I would take it over to her and hold it out in both hands for her to see, and she would nod and check it out, and we would go home, and I would sit down in the hall next to the cat, and I would open the book and begin to read and I would never stop reading from that day on.  I owe my love of literature to Stephen King.

And I said as much one day. Fresh out of the Army, a 23 year old college Freshman, I said, because I was asked why I was an English Major, “I read Stephen King when I was little and fell in love with reading.”

“Stephen King?  That pulp producing hackneyed psychopath?” says the hip 18-year-old english major.

“Yes.”

This was my first lesson: English Majors do not like popular authors (with a few exceptions to be covered in later lessons).

The general rule of thumb is that if they make the best seller’s list and don’t have a Nobel Prize, you are not to like them.

I suppose we should establish some ground rules before continuing:

• You can like whatever you want, you just can’t admit to it.  The Hip English Major is merely a persona for most people.
• You don’t actually have to of read any books that you are supposed to like, but it’s generally best if you’ve at least read something about them.
• It is more important to vocalize your dislike of something than your like of something, especially if it is popular and not considered fashionable by other Hip English Majors.
• It is generally more acceptable to know about a book than to know a book.  (This is a lesson all on it’s own.  I’ll get to it eventually.)

Okay, as I was saying, the best seller’s list is bad.  You do not like Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Janet Evanovich, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyer (if you are a Literature Major and this woman doesn’t constitute a gateway author for you, then you really shouldn’t like her, she’s dreadful), etc.

There are several reasons a hip English Major might say they don’t like the above authors:

• “They have no literary merit.” (This is somewhat true, but Literary Merit is one of the key terms for all Hip English Majors to know, you can use it for everything.)
• “They are appealing to the lowest common denominator.” (Again, true. These authors are writing to entertain as many people as possible, but the Hip English Major does not like the idea of literature strictly as entertainment.  In fact, he hates it.  Ask any Rowling Fan turned Hip English Major what he most likes about the Potter series and he’s not going to tell you that they were super fun books, he’s going to tell you that all the layers of symbolism blew his mind.)
• “It’s just escape fiction,” or, “There’s no substance to it.” (This is basically a trace back to the literary merit comment above, but it’s important to note that Hip English Majors frequently use tautological arguments to make it seem like they have more to say than they really do.) [Like I did by including this third bullet.]

None of those reasons, however, are the real reason.  Quite simply, Hip English Majors consider it an insult for people to assume that a literature degree is just a degree for reading books, especially popular books.  The fear is that if everyone can read the latest Dan Brown thriller, and people assume that literature students have read the latest Dan Brown thriller as well, basically everyone has done what is needed to get a Literature Degree.  Now, no one wants their four year degree to be equated to an afternoon of reading at the beach, therefore Hip English Majors absolutely abhor the books that the majority of people love.

The simple truth is, however, that basically all a Literature Degree is is a degree for reading, albeit reading well.  And, yes, there will come a time of natural development in one’s personal reading where Stephen King and Janet Evanovich don’t make up a large part of their literary diet.  It’s a natural progression, just like we move from hot dogs to steak.  But attitude plays a determining factor in where one fits on this developmental scale.  A person who has just developed a larger appetite for hefty books (you know, the ones with all that literary merit) aren’t in the business of demeaning other books.  The Hip English Major, though, feels an insatiable need to bash to bits dozens of books a month he hasn’t even read lest it be assumed that he has, and furthermore that he enjoyed it.  The Hip English Major only wants to be associated with Tolstoy, or a name of equal grandeur, despite the fact he may have never read him.

So, the first lesson is: Hip English Majors Do Not Like Stephen King (Or Any Other Popular Authors).  Keep this in mind because it is most important during casual conversation, as it is among other Hip English Majors that you really earn the title.  The classroom, as most college students figure out during their first week, is the smallest portion of all things college related.

If you’d like to practice bashing some books, feel free to rip on any current best seller or super popular book you’ve read, or seen people reading , in the comments section.