ChristyBassman.com

Blog topic suggestions and requests noted. Results forthcoming in the immediate future.

But for now …

I purchased a five-volume Norton Anthology of American Literature, from Colonial to Modern times.

It's a beautiful thing to own. Works such as Huckleberry Finn, Leaves of Grass, and the Scarlet Letter are included in their entirety. Very few “excerpts”. No, this is a fat honking collection of everything. I love it.

Right up until Volume E.

WTF, Norton. No Maya Angelou? Really? If you didn't want to waste the space to include one of her autobiographies, couldn't you have at least spared her a few pages for her poetry?

No Joyce Carol Oates? We are dealing with modern literature in Volume E, people.

Only a chapter excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath to represent Steinbeck? Come on. If you can devote 150 pages to Ben Franklin (sorry Ben, but I'd rather drive #2 pencils into my eyes than read some of your trite attempts at wittiness) in earlier volumes, surely you could have thrown in Of Mice and Men or The Pearl in their entireties. I may be a little biased as a Steinbeck fan, but come on.

Only a short 3-10 page piece each from Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston. These are powerful novelists. The short pieces, while of merit, are more like a bone thrown out to ensure their names were represented even if their works were not.

Gone With The Wind, while laughable as a representative of history, should have at least been mentioned for its remarkable impact on American readers at the time, for being one of the early and notable examples of literature's transmogrification into the world of film, and for its controversy.

Enough bitching. Gotta write a paper now.