Hey lit I get to teach an american lit 1940 to present course as part of my student teaching thing next semester and as...

hey lit I get to teach an american lit 1940 to present course as part of my student teaching thing next semester and as such I get to put together the reading list. Keep in mind its for high schoolers
So far I have
Philip K. Dick - time out of joint
John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley
Flannery O'Connor - some short stories, namely A Good Man is hard to Find
Don Delillo - white noise
Norman Mailer - "The White Negro"
Tim O'Brien - The Things they Carried (thinking of switching this out for Dispatches or Bao Ninh)
Joan Didion - selections from "The White Album"
Toni Morrison - Sula
What are some things you would recommend? I need a lot of options so that I can organize and cut down to 6 or 7 units total

I was thinking of adding crying of lot 49. its probably the most accessible pynchon reading. maybe some william gibson too

I would agree to switch out O'Brien for Dispatches.
Also, it seems a little page-heavy for high schoolers. You could probably lose the PKD and add a Bradbury instead, but that's just my personal preference.

>crying of lot 49
>most accessible Pynchon
Wew. Absolutely fucking wew. Probably his fourth most.

op here desu I forget inherent vice and bleeding edge exist.
desu teaching inherent vice would be fun

Well I want to get like twenty options so I can cut it down to five or six books and some short stories and poetry that could be read in class

Here is a good one OP.

If I personally had to recommend 5-6 for high schoolers I would do:
>American Pastoral
>Rabbit, Run
>Catch-22
>Bright Lights, Big City
>Beloved
Nice way to see changes in both America and its fiction

>Travels with Charley

Great book, but if you want to with one of Steinbeck's lesser-read works I would suggest To a God Unknown. Much more worthwhile for studying in a high school setting in my opinion.

>Tim O'Brien - The Things they Carried
We read this in high school and it was well received so I think you should keep it.

Also you seem to have included a lot of lesser know texts and I don't think that is necessarily good. Was it because of length requirements or did you purposely select them for their obscurity? Like for Steinbeck you could choose East of Eden but you chose Travels With Charley.

seems pretty patrician for highschool

good luck man, but take out morrison and mailer, they are hacks

>Bao Ninh

That dude is Japanese and not American, why would you teach a translation in an American lit class

Vietnamese

all rook same

>getting high schoolers to read East of Eden
Look guys, a comedian. Tell another joke.

>posts pic from the movie inherent vice
>forgets that the book inherent vice exists

McCarthy's Suttree would go over well. Certainly a more modern Huckleberry Finn.

Why T.O.J.? I like that PKD but Ubik or A Scanner Darkly would be so much better imo.

It would irresponsible to not at least show them a DFW story. They will relate to him more than anyone else on the list. Forever overhead for example

Not trying to meme here, but honestly Infinite Jest will connect with high school students a ton. The entire extreme entertainment shit will connect with a lot of kids today, the high school tennis academy stuff, the edgy drug related stuff, you'll have a pretty highly engaged class. You'll probably get a handful of kids hooked on literature as a lifelong hobby tbqhfam

Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed is short and would serve nicely to accompany any Pynchon work you decide on. I would also recommend a Sam Shepard play, like Buried Child, as he has had a big influence on contemporary American theatre and film. I really enjoyed Neuromancer in high school and wish I had studied it in a class as I think some historical context would serve well with comprehending The Crying of Lot 49 or Inherent Vice.

English teacher here.

I would scrap White Noise, pick a different Steinbeck book (kids fucking LOVE Mice and Men) and I'd try to add in a few short stories. You have no chance at reading that many books, so if you're looking for breadth>depth short stories are your friend.

Maybe some DFW short stories/essays

Tai Pei by Tao Lin

You either spell it TAI PEI TAO LIN or you call it what's it actually called and spell it Taipei by Tao Lin.

Taipei is a city in Taiwan (not Tai Wan).

>american """"literature""""
>>> to present
>>>>>>>>list
I have long blamed America for killing God, but now I understand. This is what you burgers have to live with.

Do On the Road. They will love it

TCoL49 is probably the best introduction to postmodernism, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge are easier but they're goofy Pynchon. V. is probably more accessible and (imo) more enjoyable, but its longer and Pynchon can turn students away quite easily, the worst is when one half of the class engaged with it and the other half thought it was pretentious garbage as they hold each other back and limit discussion.

This, or just do some beat poetry like Howl