Americans call it "one of the greatest American novels of all time"

>Americans call it "one of the greatest American novels of all time"
>It's literally High School Lit tier

What did they mean by this?

they didn't have anything better in that page count range, give it a rest

It's quite well written, even if it is rather simplistic. The closing lines are really very good.

What is High School Lit in other countries?

Probably not things they would consider their greatest literary achievements as a country

Hemingway is too sexist to be taught in high school, Mark Twain used the word nigger, and Melville is too difficult.

Is his other stuff good too?

This, basically. I went to one of the best high schools in the U.S. (good enough that you probably actually have heard of it despite it being a high school) and took the highest level (AP) English classes available, but when we read Moby Dick, it was immediately obvious that there was very little understanding of the book beyond the mere plot (and even that was tenuous in most cases). Melville is certainly difficult, but I would not have imagined that it was beyond the ability of what are alleged to be our best students. To be fair, many of these students were mere resume builders, taking the AP English classes to look good, but I would have imagined that even a cursory read (and certainly a read-through of Sparknotes or similar) would have yielded more understanding in high school students.

I went to a high school in the middle of nowhere, and our AP covered Moby Dick by watching an HBO rendition of it. Though the teacher was cool and let me borrow a copy of Paradise Lost. He planned to teach it and bought new books, but the school told him he couldn't so they were just sitting there.

>good enough that you probably actually have heard of it despite it being a high school

I think the only high school that's that high profile is Sidwell Friends

Tender is the Night is great. This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned are good. The fragments of The Love of the Last Tycoon are good, and it probably would have been as good as Tender is the Night if completed.

It's alright

GG is clearly his best work

Hmm - I would say I can name about 10 high schools that are nationally known (including some private schools), but the point was that it is a very good high school that ranks nationally.

The school wouldn't let him teach Paradise Lost? What could possibly be the reason for that? That's a real shame - my memories of reading Milton for the first time (in AP English class) are literally almost as fond to me as, e.g., my first kiss and winning a state-level track race (and has proved more relevant to me than either).

>went to a nationally ranked high school (must be in either NYC, CA, MI)
>took "highest level" AP class
>won a state-level track race
>had his first kiss in high school

surely we can dox this dude

High school students are assigned this. Do you also question the quality of Hamlet because high schoolers read it for class?

You some sorta idiot er somethin'?

Try your best, but there's thousands of people who fit those conditions because I could have graduated in any of the last (probably) 20 years and your list of states is far too narrow, though I might live in one of them.

I'm not trying to brag - I will be the first to admit that I am, at best, like, a 55th percentile person overall and probably worse.

Hamlet is probably one of the easiest (read: less complex, less complete in its poetry) of all of Shakespeare's plays

Hell, it's the only one I'm aware of that has a cunt pun

He seemed really passive-aggressive whenever he talked about the school board or parents. I think the feeling was that the book was too hard, or too overt in its religious themes which might piss off some parents. It was a great read; I can still remember reading it on the quiet bus ride home, as the afternoon sunlight filtered through the trees on either side of the road.

While I don't agree with you at all, what you've said is beside the point. Anyway, I was also assigned King Lear in high school. Do you dismiss it outright as "High School Lit tier"?

Tender is the Night is better

Nothing that cannot be comprehended with a syllogism is taught in our high schools. The average English teacher probably can't understand literature without outside sources.

>dismiss

I'd never dismiss any of Shakespeare's plays (except for Titus) nor would I dismiss Gatsby, but let's not pretend they're anything more than they are.

>too over in it religious themes
Lol
Reminds me of the time my english teacher apologized to an asian student for making us read a book with biblical references

>except for Titus
top pleb

I bet you think tarantino is an okay director too, don't you?

>implying Titus is sincere

I hope this is bait.

If you unironically believe this, you're an illiterate fuckin nipwit

Fuck off wagie

I read this as an adult because I'm not American and only picked it up because my sister was asked to read it for a cosmetics course she was taking. They were reviewing the book to get an idea of the culture of the period makeup and hair they were covering that month.

I picked it up and read it in four hours while my sister was out one day, and found myself unimpressed. Some of the imagery was quite striking, but the rest was a tedious slog. The ending was predictable.

It was easy enough and short enough that most high school students should be able to get through it, and I suppose there was a message in there about lying and overindulgence, if you cared to look.

Maybe it is one of the greatest American novels of all time. I can't think of many great American novels off the top of my head, so it could theoretically be up there.

At whose command? Plebeyo pelayo

I'm British

Shakespeare (A shit load, at least once a year)
Willy Russel (Educating Rita, Blood Brothers or Our Day Out)
Frankenstein
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Animal Farm
An Inspector Calls
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Dickens (Great Expectations or A Christmas Carol)
Pigeon English

Of course no school will do all of them, and I think there are a few more.

So other than Shakespeare, not really canon stuff, but all pretty decent.

>Academics call him "The greatest Latin writer of all time"
>He's literally the first thing you read to learn Latin

What did they mean by this?

We studied Twilight, 1984 and Scream (the movie) in high school (New Zealand).

Shakespeare was taken out 2 years before I got up to the stage where they used to teach Shakespeare.

That's fucking disgusting.

Speak, Looking for Alaska, and The Hunger Games were covered texts in some of my high school english courses. Granted I never had AP-level work ethic back when I was in high school, I felt pretty intellectually violated being forced to read YA as "College Prep." curriculum. Can't imagine said curriculum has gotten any better since.

i keep hearing about this happening. i cant imagine reading that in a class though. maybe schools have just gotten incredibly desperate for students to read

In australia using literature has been replaced with movies.
The last book we used as a case study was animal farm in like 2010. That was a cluster fuck of a semester, nothing came from it.. The other students were too fixated on the animals being animals.

I gather that even the most basic of classic literature is actually too difficult for the average student to mentally grasp at this point. That, coupled with the fact that kids generally aren't taught or encouraged, either in school or at home, to read for fun, and thus the average reading level is years behind what it should be in a good portion of public schools.

Sad and pathetic really, but I can't feel sympathize for a system failing on its own accord.

This is the most British list of books that could every possibly be made.

>one of the greatest american novels
>High School Tier

jeez I wonder why...

I thought it was a distilled critique of the gilded age. Honestly this book is what got me into literary studies. I think it is brilliant in its simplicity and accessibility. Complex is not always better.

>Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

Pretty good desu senpai

I'm American. Went to public school.
Here's my list:

Of Mice and Men
Catcher in the Rye
Lord of the Flies
The Things They Carried
Huck-finn
The Crucible
Shakespeare
Whitman
-----
Shameful.

Scream was good, so that's OK then

>English speaking people call Shakespeare great
>It's literally High School lit tier

What did they mean by this?

Agreed, it's the culmination of his attempt at writing The Great Gatsby which is evident in all of his other work (including many of his short stories). I meant to make a chart for it, so one could chart Fitzgerald's development, but I must admit I planned one in my head and never made it.

We did a pretty in-depth analysis of every single poem from Pessoa's A Mensagem, which is considered his best work nationally, instead of The Book Of Disquiet.

We read The Lusiads, of course.

We did some classic plays (not nearly as complex as Shakespeare), mostly Gil Vicente.

Some schools read Os Maias by Eça De Queiros while others use another book i can't quite remember. It's a great Historical Romance that completely BTFOd popular portuguese literature at the time.

We read Saramago's O Memorial Do Convento which is painfully fucking dull.

Huh, my English class read GG in 8th grade. My high school books/Readings were
Lord of the Flies
Shakespeare's works(R&J, Hamlet, Midsummer, Othello,)
Scarlett Letter
Emerson(Self Reliance) and Thoreau(Civil Disobedience)
Hemmingway
The Road: McCarthy

I know i'm missing a few, but they were along those lines. We read a bunch of poets that I can't hardly remember if they were in College or HS, but I do remember John Donne in high school.

Some of his short fiction is better than Gatsby

It means it's so good that it's accessible at a young age yet can be long studied into the adept levels of writing and even still beyond that.

Hamlet, R&J, etc are high school lit

His best plays aren't going to be studied below a Uni level

Good lord, that's a funny thought, trying to imagine Primary children working their way through Winter Tale.

no offense but are you in a class of mentally handicapped people? that sounds hilarious

yeah, what the hell
>The other students were too fixated on the animals being animals
That's kindergarten level behaviour.

britbong:
'World Poetry' (mostly shite from Africa/India) - like a /pol/ nightmare come true
shakespeare obvs
'war poetry' - i only remember wilfred owen
willy russell - british schools love him, he's virtually shakespeare level ubiquitous
lots of 'extracts' from classics we had to analyse. we were never asked to read a long novel, I think they knew we were all too stupid and attention deficit to even bother trying

I went to a murrican public school. We did some Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, The Old Man and the Sea, The Things They Carried, Angela's Ashes, Ethan Frome, and some other shit I'm probably forgetting.

Oh, also A Tale of Two Cities, forgot that one.

Most of Shakespeare could be understood by high schoolers plot wise and understanding some of his metaphors/syllogisms/etc. but his shit is so much deeper than that. Took a class from one of the leading Shakespeare professors whatever you want to call him in the US and he walked us through a close reading where literally every line is crafted to reference some crazy obscure shit, fit the pentameter, and so much other stuff that went over my head.
It blows my mind that Romeo and Juliet was taught in 8th grade and all my English teachers only took it to be a great love story when it's incredible how much detail and planning went into it

Also American public schooler
But took both AP english and got a 4 and a 5 (5 in lit)

A dolls house
Heart of darkness
Lord of the flies (spent about two months on this)
On the road/the road/hitchhikers guide (for personal choice project)
King Lear
MLK speeches
Catch-22
House of mirth (quit after 50 pages)
Lots of other poems and short stories

Didn't really learn anything from most. We analyzed HoD and LotF so much that we could literally use one or the other for every single prompt possible out there. But I actually enjoyed HoD and feel like it's in a way higher tier than the others except maybe king lear

There are a few American books there too.

I work in a British school, some of that world poetry is pretty good. Watching John Agard perform his poems on youtube is always fun, gets the kids into it at any rate.

>he doesn't dismiss Gentlemen from Verona
Where you dropped on your head as a baby?

>Where

Do you have a problem with AAVE?

Yea

was it a private school in california?

I liked it. The storyline was not bad.
I'm self taugh in English, so really shit at it, and it was pretty easy to understand everything without having to read 2 times some sentences.
I had to reread the last chapters since the pool scene didn't make any sense in the first read tho

This is now a questioning your own kinks and attractions thread:

Why am I so drawn towards very light brown colred girls with glasses and small quirks? Like that one Venti girl on Twitch... What is it guys? I go bananas. Got all the numbers I could find on campus and only go to those

I always find it funny when i see people shitting on the American education system when it honestly seems like we have it much worse here in Aus and New Zealand. My high school was absolute trash and i still feel like i'm doing a lot of catching up at the ripe old age of 25.

For year 12 We watched Romeo & Juliet and read A Street Car Named Desire, Enduring Love and The Kite Runner.

Iliad
Odyssey
Hamlet
The Bible
Greek myths
Oedipus
Antigone
Don Quixote
Decameron
Robinson Crusoe
Tartuffe
Les Fleurs du mal
Rimbaud & Verlaine's works
Pere Goriot
Gogol's The Overcoat
Chekhov's The Man In a Case
Pushkin's works
and national lit