*This course was created as an optional honors section (or extra credit section) for my American Literature and Pop Culture course, "Great Balls of Fire. While it is recommended that students be enrolled in that course concurrently, they are not required to be; however, students not enrolled will not receive a grade, but may receive a certificate of completion at the discretion of the instructor.

**This course has a unique meeting schedule, meeting once a month from September-May (January excluded), in the middle of the month. The first meeting shall take place during the second week of my full-year courses (the third week of September).  All other meetings will occur based on the second Monday of each month. Please pay close attention to the schedule to avoid confusion (weekly schedule posted below).

About this class:
Join us as we read, discuss, analyze, and write about some of the contenders for "The Greatest American Novel."



Excerpt by Emily Temple, from lithub.com:

A Brief Survey of the Great American Novel(s)
Do We Need The G.A.N.? Why Do We Keep Looking?
By Emily Temple
________________________________________
January 9, 2017

On this date in 1868, novelist John William DeForest coined the now inescapable term “the great American novel” in the title of an essay in The Nation. Now, don’t forget that in 1868, just a few years after the end of the Civil War, “America” was still an uncertain concept for many—though actually, in 2017 we might assert the same thing, which should give you a hint as to why the term “great American novel” is so problematic.
At the time of his writing, DeForest claimed that the Great American Novel, which he defined as “the picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence,” had not yet been achieved, though he thought he could spot it on the horizon—he noted that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “the nearest approach to the desired phenomenon.” (He also pooh-poohed both Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, which is why, though others have dubbed them GANs, they don’t appear below.)

In the nearly 150 years since the essay was written, the argument over the Great American Novel—what it is, what it should be, do we have one, do we need one, why so many white men—has gone on and on. As A.O. Scott memorably put it, “the Great American Novel, while also a hybrid (crossbred of romance and reportage, high philosophy and low gossip, wishful thinking and hard-nosed skepticism), may be more like the yeti or the Loch Ness monster—or Sasquatch, if we want to keep things homegrown. It is, in other words, a creature that quite a few people—not all of them certifiably crazy, some of them bearing impressive documentation—claim to have seen.” Indeed, many, many books have been sighted—er, called—the Great American Novel, or at least one of them, or at least a great American novel, which is a decidedly different thing. Which ones? Who said it? Does it matter? Is this map accurate? Read on.
NB* There is no way to actually catalogue every single book that has ever been called a Great American Novel anywhere. This list compiles [some] of the books often cited as such, accompanied by a quote from a reputable source.



From the teacher:

This course will meet 8 sessions per year, typically in the middle of the month.  Each month students will read one of the contenders for GAN, discuss the book and analyze it as a class, then complete a 400-500 word essay on each of the novels (the novels are listed and explained below).

Grading: HONORS vs Extra Credit

Parents and students will have the choice between receiving an honors certificate or extra credit in "Great Balls of Fire."  Traditionally, honors courses offer an elevated grade, for example turning a B from 3 points to 5 points for GPA purposes. Since districts may vary, parents can choose the Honors designation or students may receive the equivalent in extra credit for "Great Balls of Fire."

Grading is based on an accumulated point system (see grading for more information).

As an honors level course, expectations will be high.  Students are expected to keep their cameras open and actively participate in discussion.

5 novels will be read collectively as a class with the sixth novel to be selected by the student and approved by the teacher. In addition, we will also consider two of the contenders that we will read in "Great Balls of Fire."


The Contenders

Uncle Tom's Cabin (from whatnerd.com)
Authored by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in two volumes in 1852, an era rife with racism, poverty, and Christianity in the American South.
Slavery was still a normal thing, but Harriet Beecher Stowe laid the foundation for its end through this poignant anti-slavery book.
Despite being a sentimental novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin doesn't shy away from the hard truths of slavery. Each character is a branch from the tree of Uncle Tom himself, who's depicted as a steadfast and almost saintly aging slave in Kentucky.
The release of Uncle Tom's Cabin stirred up a firestorm of controversy, praise, fear, and horror, until it was eventually used in the abolitionist case and (apocryphally) sparked the American Civil War.


Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (from lithub.com)

There was no sense [upon its publication] that a great American novel had landed on the literary world of 1885. The critical climate could hardly anticipate T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway’s encomiums 50 years later. In the preface to an English edition, Eliot would speak of “a master piece. … Twain’s genius is completely realized,” and Ernest went further. In “Green Hills of Africa,” after disposing of Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau, and paying off Henry James and Stephen Crane with a friendly nod, he proceeded to declare, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. … It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” … What else is greatness but the indestructible wealth it leaves in the mind’s recollection after hope has soured and passions are spent? It is always the hope of democracy that our wealth will be there to spend again, and the ongoing treasure of Huckleberry Finn is that it frees us to think of democracy and its sublime, terrifying premise: let the passions and cupidities and dreams and kinks and ideals and greed and hopes and foul corruptions of all men and women have their day and the world will still be better off, for there is more good than bad in the sum of us and our workings. Mark Twain, whole embodiment of that democratic human, understood the premise in every turn of his pen, and how he tested it, how he twisted and tantalized and tested it until we are weak all over again with our love for the idea.
–Norman Mailer, The New York Times, 1984


Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (from lithub.com)

Among all Great American Novel candidates, perhaps Moby-Dick (1851) best meets Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee’s test. [“As long as the classic needs to be protected from attack, it can never prove itself classic.”] At least for now, the case for Moby-Dick seems to need least defense. … Moby-Dick‘s dissemination as text, and its fertility as object of imitation, as icon, as logo, as metaphor, have no more stopped at the nation’s borders than the Pequod did.
–Lawrence Buell, The Dream of the Great American Novel, 2014


Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (from lithub.com)

It is Invisible Man. No, it was not written by a Nobel Laureate or Pulitzer Prize winner, nor has it been around for centuries. It is a novel of substance, of layers and riffs. It might even be said to be the greatest American novel.
The greatness of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) comes from being many things to many readers. A racial epic. A bildungsroman in the form of a dramatic monologue. A rich psychological portrait of racial identity, racism, history, politics, manhood, and conflicted personal growth. An elusive story of and by an elusive, nameless narrator. A jazz-like play on literature, music, society, memory, and the self. A product of a voracious reader and writer. Somehow, it is all of these, perhaps one of the reasons it netted the National Book Award over The Old Man and the Sea and East of Eden.
–Joseph Fruscione, The Millions, 2013


Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (from lithub.com)

Some say the Great American Novel is Huckleberry Finn, some say it’s The Jungle, some say it’s The Great Gatsby. But my vote goes to the tale with the maximum lust, hypocrisy and obsession—the view of America that could only have come from an outsider—Nabokov’s Lolita. … What makes Lolita a work of greatness isn’t that its title has become ingrained in the vernacular, isn’t that was a generation ahead of America in fetishizing young girls. No, it is the writing, the way Nabokov bounces around in words like the English language is a toy trunk, the sly wit, the way it’s devastating and cynical and heartbreaking all at once. Poor old Dolly Haze might not have grown up very well, but Lolita forever remains a thing of timeless beauty.
–Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon, 1996



Also considered and read in "Great Balls of Fire"


F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (from lithub.com)

Gatsby’s magic emanates not only from its powerhouse poetic style—in which ordinary American language becomes unearthly—but from the authority with which it nails who we want to be as Americans. Not who we are; who we want to be. It’s that wanting that runs through every page of Gatsby, making it our Greatest American Novel. But it’s also our easiest Great American Novel to underrate: too short; too tempting to misread as just a love story gone wrong; too mired in the Roaring Twenties and all that jazz.
–Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures, 2014


The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (from thegreatestbooks.org)

The novel follows the story of a teenager named Holden Caulfield, who has just been expelled from his prep school. The narrative unfolds over the course of three days, during which Holden experiences various forms of alienation and his mental state continues to unravel. He criticizes the adult world as "phony" and struggles with his own transition into adulthood. The book is a profound exploration of teenage rebellion, alienation, and the loss of innocence.


SECTIONS WILL MEET ONCE A WEEK DURING THE WEEKS OF...

Mon, Sep 16:   Course Introduction
Mon, Oct 14:   Lesson 2: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Mon, Nov 11:   Lesson 3:  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mon, Dec 9:    Lesson 4: Moby Dick
Mon, Feb 10:   Lesson 5: Invisible Man
Mon, Mar 10:   Lesson 6: Lolita
Mon, Apr 14:    Lesson 7: Student Choice
Mon, May 12:   Lesson 8: Course wrap-up