What constitutes a well read person? I know I am always agonizing over this question, and that there are as many answers to it as there are readers. And is there even a correct answer?
Today at work my superviser treated my department to pizza, which his wife kindly delivered to us. She happens to be a high school english teacher--a very knowledgeable one. She has her Ph.D. and is a Willa Cather scholar. She sat with us at lunch, and the conversation turned to her preparations for the coming school year. She is the head of the english department at her school and teaches several classes including honors/AP english. In the course of our discussion, she mentioned that one of her new hires was from New York and had a challenging course planned out. I believe she was teaching honors english--American literature. It must be the common thing to now give students a reading list ahead of time (I never had this when I was in school), and some of the works could be read in the summer. One parent actually called the school and complained to the principal that they could not believe that (and sorry I am paraphrasing here as I don't remember exactly how she described this) the students were being made to "work" during the summer. Summer is for resting and relaxing and not for reading. My jaw dropped, but then should I be surprised? I wonder if this is an example of a family that owns not a single book?! In the end I think the parent backed off when it was pointed out that the student was obviously doing well enough to be in honors english, and didn't the parent want them to be in honors english?
What actually spurred this question (that Iam once again posing), was something else that was said. She was talking about the school being very new and that there needed to be some streamlining of what was being taught. Teachers were teaching whatever they felt like, but it might be a disservice to the students who might transfer to other schools or go on to college without having had the basics. She is in the process of standardizing courses. While there would be a standard list of books that needed to be taught at certain levels, of course additional books could be introduced. She said it completely surprised her that students left school (high school) without ever having read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. She was shocked that they might not have read anything at all by him, and in some cases didn't even know who he was. Not daring to admit this in front of everyone--I only read my first Mark Twain novel last year (and that was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer!). Granted I knew very well who he was in high school, but that was not something that I ever chose to read.
So what did I read? I wish I could remember all my english courses, but I don't. What stands out? I remember Reflections on the Meaning of a Watermelon Pickle (an anthology of poetry and with a title like that how could you forget?), which I read in elementary school (what would now be called middle school). I remember F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which we absolutely dissected for its symbolism. I vaguely remember The Iliad and The Odyssey (or at least portions of them). Surely we read other major works of fiction, but they are lost to me now. I do remember pretty vividly my senior year, as I was in AP english (now I wonder how I ever got in there!) using The Norton Anthology of English Literature (3rd edition). We read the likes of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight all the way up to Joseph Conrad and William Butler Yeats--the traditional western canon--all dead, white males. Looking through the text I don't see a single woman author. Surely that can't be?! I have already asked my mom to look for my old textbooks and childhood books (if they still exist, as they may have long ago been given away), as I am very curious now. Sometimes I feel like for every new book that goes into my head, something else is lost. Do you remember this book (and the ruckus it created?), but I also own this book (because it is best to get both sides of the story). I guess trying to figure out what "well read" or "literate" constitutes could make you go in circles trying to come up with a definitive answer. One that I won't be solving over the weekend. In the meantime, I really do plan on reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (eventually), but for this weekend I just want to finish my Agatha Christie!