Tuesday, May 07, 2013
Required Reading
In case you didn't know from the giant pictures of Tobey Maguire transforming bus stops everywhere into chambers of horrors, there's a new film adaptation of The Great Gatsby coming out. I don't have especially high hopes for it, given that it comes from the man who made an Australia movie that made audiences long for the subtleties of Crocodile Dundee, but that's actually not my point right now. The other night we saw a commercial for the movie and one of my friends confessed that she had never actually read it. And not because she faked it with the Sparknotes like I did for the second half of Great Expectations, but jut because it was never assigned to her. I, meanwhile, had to read it three times, once in high school and twice in college. Not that I minded; I would rather read it ten times than The Faerie Queen once. But anyway, this led to an interesting discussion of what was required reading and what wasn't at our various schools. Gatsby was pretty popular all over, though perhaps not as hot as The Scarlet Letter. There was a lot of Shakespeare, particularly Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. I was surprised that The Red Badge of Courage didn't do that well, though, and neither did your major Faulkner novels. ("A Rose For Emily" seems safe among short stories, though, along with "The Lottery" and "The Most Dangerous Game.") And a lot of people were forced to read The Lord of the Flies, which I was not, and to date have really only sort of perused. I feel like I kind of get the point on that one, I guess.
Anyway, one of my friends kept referencing "this one where this guy's on a jury, and he has a briefcase." She couldn't remember the name. I offered Twelve Angry Men, of course, but was declined. I tried To Kill a Mockingbird, because I knew there was at least a jury in that one, but that was rejected as well. I offered Inherit The Wind and, becoming a bit more desperate, a bunch of John Grisham titles. No dice. A lot of googling followed, but "book jury briefcase" surprisingly yielded few results. So as a desperation play, I started to just kind of describe the plot of Twelve Angry Men.
"Oh yeah," she said. "I think that's it. I guess I just didn't know what Twelve Angry Men was."
Anyway, the night ended with me pulling out my Norton Anthology, which in any sensible person's book is the very definition of a wild evening.
In case you didn't know from the giant pictures of Tobey Maguire transforming bus stops everywhere into chambers of horrors, there's a new film adaptation of The Great Gatsby coming out. I don't have especially high hopes for it, given that it comes from the man who made an Australia movie that made audiences long for the subtleties of Crocodile Dundee, but that's actually not my point right now. The other night we saw a commercial for the movie and one of my friends confessed that she had never actually read it. And not because she faked it with the Sparknotes like I did for the second half of Great Expectations, but jut because it was never assigned to her. I, meanwhile, had to read it three times, once in high school and twice in college. Not that I minded; I would rather read it ten times than The Faerie Queen once. But anyway, this led to an interesting discussion of what was required reading and what wasn't at our various schools. Gatsby was pretty popular all over, though perhaps not as hot as The Scarlet Letter. There was a lot of Shakespeare, particularly Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. I was surprised that The Red Badge of Courage didn't do that well, though, and neither did your major Faulkner novels. ("A Rose For Emily" seems safe among short stories, though, along with "The Lottery" and "The Most Dangerous Game.") And a lot of people were forced to read The Lord of the Flies, which I was not, and to date have really only sort of perused. I feel like I kind of get the point on that one, I guess.
Anyway, one of my friends kept referencing "this one where this guy's on a jury, and he has a briefcase." She couldn't remember the name. I offered Twelve Angry Men, of course, but was declined. I tried To Kill a Mockingbird, because I knew there was at least a jury in that one, but that was rejected as well. I offered Inherit The Wind and, becoming a bit more desperate, a bunch of John Grisham titles. No dice. A lot of googling followed, but "book jury briefcase" surprisingly yielded few results. So as a desperation play, I started to just kind of describe the plot of Twelve Angry Men.
"Oh yeah," she said. "I think that's it. I guess I just didn't know what Twelve Angry Men was."
Anyway, the night ended with me pulling out my Norton Anthology, which in any sensible person's book is the very definition of a wild evening.
