James Baquet

    Mark sees his classmate Ming looking worried in the common room of their dorm.

    Mark: Hi, Ming. What’s wrong?

    Ming: Oh, my teacher asked us to choose our favorite American novel from high school and write about it. But I didn’t go to high school here! I don’t know what to do.

    Mark: Well, there’s no single list of novels read in all American schools. But certain ones come up over and over.

    Ming: Great! Can you help me?

    Mark: Sure! First, you can’t talk about American novels without mentioning Mark Twain. He wrote over 10 novels, but the one most often read in American high schools is “Huckleberry Finn.”

    Ming: That’s about a boy who goes traveling, right?

    Mark: That’s right. But it’s also a look at social values of the day, including slavery.

    Ming: Interesting.

    Mark: Another important novel from the 19th century is “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s about some people who judge others when they’re not perfect themselves.

    Ming: And isn’t there one about a big white whale?

    Mark: Right! Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” — though some people think the whale is a metaphor.

    Ming: Okay. What about 20th-century authors?

    Mark: Four older authors are John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway.

    Ming: Hey, I know about Hemingway! We read “The Old Man and the Sea” in high school.

    Mark: Great! You should write about that! A lot of Hemingway’s other stories take place in Europe. But Steinbeck’s stories are set in California. They include “Cannery Row,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” and “Of Mice and Men.” They’re mostly about the lower classes in the 20th century.

    Ming: Those sound interesting. And Fitzgerald: he wrote “The Great Gatsby,” about the upper classes, right?

    Mark: Yes. A lot of high-schoolers read that. Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” is also popular. It’s set in a fictional Southern county.

    Ming: Isn’t there a Southern book about a bird?

    Mark: A bird... Oh, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee? It’s not really about a bird. It’s about a girl whose father is a small-town lawyer.

    Ming: Oops. And I heard there’s a novel called “Catching Rye” or something?

    Mark: That would be “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger. It’s about a boy growing up.

    Ming: Aren’t all of these books kind of old?

    Mark: Yeah, they are. It usually takes a while before a book is widely accepted in high schools. Some slightly more contemporary authors include Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, and Ken Kesey.

    Ming: Okay, I think that’s enough to get me started. Thanks for your help, Mark.

    Mark: My pleasure!