QotD: Modern Classic

What modern book do you think will be read in high school by the next generation of kids? 
Submitted by Tom.

This QotD has been under my skin for a few days now, because I keep thinking two things:  1)  Who says the next generation of kids will still read books or be capable of careful, difficult reading?  2)  The more interesting question is really what modern books should they be reading? 

Am I too grumpy?  I think I'm too grumpy. 

I am not one of these apocalyptic types who thinks that books and reading are bound to disappear from our lives.  There will always be bookhounds and bibliophiles around, I suspect, at least well into the foreseeable future, just like some people still enjoy their vinyl records.  Hell, I still have my old Duran Duran and Camper van Beethoven records on vinyl, and I like their scratchy analog-ness. 

But I can't help but think that serious literacy is on the decline (at least in America--I can in no way speak about literacy in other countries, not even Canada).  I don't mean that fewer people are able to read or capable of the kinds of thought that have to go into serious reading, although I think that both of those things are true, as well. 

Reading serious books, though, of the sort that I think one ought to read in school to learn something from requires sustained and focused mental activity.  It takes a kind of concentration and analytical thinking that no television show, video game, or web page is ever going to require. 

Listen--I've heard and read the arguments that shows like The Sopranos and whatnot and some role-playing games require focus and thought to keep storylines and characters straight.  That is likely true, although I would counter that it's not really different from keeping storylines and characters involved in neighborhood gossip straight, because it's more a feat of memory than sustained, focused concentration.  Video games and television and the Internet may be making people better at certain types of intelligence (in my admittedly pessimistic view, though, they are primarily making people smarter in ways that really only pertain to those same media), but that doesn't mean that people are getting all-around smarter or--to get back to the QotD--better at reading.

I taught college-level composition at a university for a while, and I hated it.  College freshman these days (I obviously can't speak about previous generations) are barely literate.  Their vocabularies are very limited, and they are way too lazy to look words up that they do not know--and when presented with an article from, say, The New Yorker, the vocabulary words they have never apparently seen before add up to 25% or more of the total word count.  They have no idea how to figure out what the thesis of an essay is--they have no idea what a thesis is or what the purpose of an essay is.  They are flummoxed by the rigors of complex sentences and baffled by the notion of lexical precision.  They complain loudly and make bitter scenes when they are told that it is not the fault of the author that they don't know what Plato thought or what 'inchoate' means, that finding these things out--that knowing things--is the responsibility of the reader.  They have no way to judge, when doing research, if a source is trustworthy or not, as they possess no critical thinking skills at all (and this skill, of judging the worth of a source, is particularly necessary when using the Internet--any gibbon can publish his opinion on the Internet, but that doesn't mean it's a useful or fact-based opinion and thus able to support your thesis when you're writing a research paper).

This makes assigning reading and writing homework a dicey business.  If it's difficult or serious, they just won't do it, and you will have a class full of students who cannot discuss the assigned reading because they have not read it.  If it's very difficult, though, then they are highly likely to take up the entire hour of your next scheduled class to list reasons why it's "unfair" to expect them to do college-level reading.

No, I'm not bitter--not at all.  Why do you ask?  This is why I fled to ESL teaching.  Foreign students were refreshingly prepared for adulthood and the rigors and unfairness of college life.  My ESL students only complained once, and that was when I had given them a New Yorker article to read, and then they were probably justified--it was a truly difficult article--and they all calmed down after I explained to them that I had not expected them to understand it fully on their own, that we were going to spend extensive class time breaking it down and figuring it out together.  Beautiful people, you Japanese and Malaysians and Finns and Russians.  How I adored you all.

So, what of that experience would make me suspect that the next generation of high school students will even be capable of reading books more difficult than Harry Potter.  I'm not knocking Harry Potter, because heaven knows I love them, too, but they aren't exactly on the same level of difficulty as a Don DeLillo novel or Cormac McCarthy.

I think I will save my defense of literacy and difficult reading for another time--it's a fraught question and persistently dogged by objections from people who think that reading books is just another among hobbies, when it isn't exactly.  Literacy is at the very core of what we usually think of as "being human" in a sense that differentiates us from other animals.  Reading is not just a hobby, although it is that, too; it's both root and sustenance for a complete way of thinking and being.  You think I jest?  I do not. 

Anyway.  Some modern/contemporary books I think high-school students should read, at least the ones who remain capable of doing so?

I guess I also have to assume that their parents and teachers would let them read these, as Americans are really fond of banning books.  It isn't just the Christians, either--Huck Finn, one of the greatest American books ever written, has been banned from time to time because of its use of the word 'nigger' for example.  Americans are very suspicious of books.  I suppose part of it is our Puritanical history--is that also why Americans tend to interpret books so literally, with no imagination?  Probably.  The Puritans had fabulous imaginations for ways to punish the nonbelievers, but not so much in other things.

Oh, right, a list.  Sure, here are some modern books I think are important enough that they should be read by future generations of American students:

White Noise by Don DeLillo.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (not contemporary, perhaps, but modern--and not difficult, perhaps, but very serious).

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

The Things they Carried by Tim O'Brien.

The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forche (warning:  this is poetry)

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

Hmm, well, OK.  I don't know that those are going to be considered appropriate for high-school kids although none of them really deals with any themes or events that are necessarily more shocking, difficult, or adult than those of Hamlet--incest! suicide! murder! indecision! --and Hamlet is often considered appropriate for high schoolers.  It should also be noted that I'm purposely skewing the list to reflect issues that I think are important for contemporary American high schoolers to consider.  Thus, this is heavy American writers (and also regrettably heavy on war novels, but war does seem to be a continual fact of American life). 

Alright, then.  Happy reading, kids.