Mr. Thompson

British Novel Overview

18th Century: The British novel came into its own during the 18th century. A popular style of novel was the picaresque novel, which satirically depicted the adventures of a roguish hero, usually of low social status. Fielding’s Tom Jones is a classic example.
Henry Fielding: Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews--Fielding was noted for his earthy, witty writing style.
Samuel Richardson: Clarissa, Pamela--Richardson was noted for his writing of epistolary novels, or novels which comprise a series of letters.
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders
Frances Burney: Evelina
Tobias Smollett: Roderick Random
Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy
FYI: 18th century style is marked by such literary traits as second-person address (e.g., O Dear Reader, you must know that…) and a distinct old-world “Britishness,” that is, at certain times they read like primitive, prototype novels rather than what we are used to.

19th Century: Victorian novels are long pieces of complicated literature that are recognizable by their twisty plots. Many were originally published as serials in literary magazines.
Jane Austen: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion--Jane Austen had a very dry, ironic sense of humor.
William Thackeray: Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon--Thackeray’s cynical tone shines through at times.
Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers, The Way We Live Now
Charles Dickens: David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities--Dickens’s writing style is very florid and has a touch of poetic humor. His character names are unique and certainly recognizable (Miss Havisham; Mr. Bounderby; Fagan; Ebenezer Scrooge)
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
George Eliot: Middlemarch, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss
Thomas Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far From the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure--Hardy’s novels are dark and brooding and his writing style is less “Victorian” than most others’. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t capable of difficult sentences, though.
FYI: Victorian novels (though Jane Austen doesn’t qualify as a Victorian writer) are marked by their extreme length, baroque plots, and meandering sentence structures.

20th Century(1900-1945)
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness; Lord Jim; The Nigger of the Narcissus; Nostromo; The Secret Agent--Conrad’s novels were often set at sea or some other form of water; he loved long narrative passages, and his language is very lush and sometimes abstract.
E.M. Forster: A Room With A View; Howards End; A Passage to India
Ford Madox Ford: The Good Soldier--good book, but won’t be on test I promise.
James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses; Finnegan’s Wake--Joyce has a stream-of-consciousness writing style. If you see the name Stephen Dedalus, it’s Joyce’s work.
D.H. Lawrence: The Rainbow; Women in Love; Sons & Lovers; Lady Chatterley’s Lover--Lawrence loved to write about love and marriage. If you see the name “Brangwen” in a passage, it is a Lawrence work: He used the Brangwen sisters in both The Rainbow and Women in Love.
Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; Orlando, The Waves--Woolf also writes in a stream-of-consciousness style, though hers seems somewhat less zany than Joyce’s.
George Orwell: Animal Farm; 1984
Aldous Huxley: A Brave New World
Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory; The Heart of the Matter; The End of the Affair; The Quiet American--Green, though a great writer, especially of espionage fiction, most likely won’t be on the test.
FYI: Literature written between 1900 and 1915 (approximately; there is some dispute about exact years) is known as “Edwardian” literature. Writers such as Conrad, Ford, and Forster qualify for this category. Their writing styles are much simpler than that of the Victorians in terms of syntax, though they are by no means “easy.”

20th Century(1945-present)
Iris Murdoch: Under the Net; The Bell; A Fairly Honourable Defeat--Murdoch sounds extremely British: proper, elegant prose; not complicated yet not relaxed. Actually very similar Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled in terms of style.
Salman Rushdie: Shame; The Satanic Verses
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
*In my opinion, these authors are not likely to be on the test.

FYI: There are some subtle ways to distinguish British writing from American writing. I have listed some below.
-The classic addition of “u” to certain words: “colour,” “favourite, “labour.”
-The dislike of the letter “z,” often replaced with “s”: “recognise,” “realise,” “synthesise.”
-Whereas Americans are more apt to use “toward,” the British often use “towards” instead, with an added “s.”
-The British frequently use a plural verb following collective nouns, whereas American writers would use a singular verb. So, in America we say “How is your family?” and in Britain they say “How are your family?”, treating the “family” as a whole that comprises single units, therefore requiring a plural verb.

Since I am inept when it comes to certain things, my study guides as of right now will be posted here on the "main" blog rather than in the Study Guides category.

American Novel Overview

Late 18th/early-to-mid 19th Centuries:

William Hill Brown-The Power of Sympathy (some consider this to be the first American novel, though this is disputed)
Charles Brockden Brown-
Susanna Rowson- Charlotte Temple
James Fenimore Cooper-The Last of the Mohicans; The Deerslayer; The Pioneers. Cooper wrote about the American frontier.
Nathaniel Hawthorne-The Scarlet Letter; The Blithedale Romance; The House of the Seven Gables.
Herman Melville-Moby Dick; Typee; Pierre; Omoo; Redburn; The Confidence Man. Melville, especially in Moby Dick, uses distinctive language, often antiquated, sometimes going so far as “thee” and “thou.” In other novels, such as Typee, his language and sentence structure is very academic-sounding. He was obsessed with the sea.

Mid-19th to early 20th Centuries:

Mark Twain-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (widely considered the “Great American Novel”); A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; The Prince and the Pauper. Twain is recognizable by his wit, which pervades his prose, and his satiric, fantastical plots (e.g., Connecticut Yankee).
William Dean Howells-A Modern Instance. Howells is considered a realist writer: Realism depicts “believable, everyday situations” in literature, without embellishment or sugar-coating. Realism paved the way for naturalism, which I’ll describe soon.
Henry James-The Portrait of a Lady; The Wings of the Dove; The Bostonians; What Maisie Knew; Washington Square; The Ambassadors. James’s writing style is very elegant and at times extremely difficult, especially in his later novels. His novels often explore the theme of being an expatriate, which James was, and so he is considered both an American as well as a British writer, despite his being born in the States.
Stephen Crane-The Red Badge of Courage; Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. Crane died very young but published a ton. He is considered a naturalist writer: naturalism, like realism, depicts everyday reality, but it does so somewhat more harshly than realism. The line between realism and naturalism is blurry; I couldn’t seem to get a straight answer on the difference no matter where I looked. Crane’s writing style is direct and unembellished, a precursor to Hemingway, who admired Crane.
Frank Norris-McTeague; The Pit. Norris was an important naturalist writer.

Early 20th Century:

Edith Wharton-Ethan Frome; The House of Mirth; The Custom of the Country; The Age of Innoncence. Edith Wharton explored the “novel of manners,” a style which depicts the constrains of class society, particular the upper class. Wharton loved to poke fun at the upper class.
Theodore Dreiser-Sister Carrie. Dreiser garnered controversy when this novel addressed such issues as sex and sin.
Sinclair Lewis-Main Street; Babbitt. Lewis is a forgotten writer; he poked fun at small town American, as Sherwood Anderson did in his short stories.
Ernest Hemingway-The Sun Also Rises; For Whom the Bell Tolls; A Farewell to Arms; The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway writes a lot about expatriates, and he does it in his terse, unembellished style.
Zora Neale Hurston-Their Eyes Were Watching God
F. Scott Fitzgerald-This Side of Paradise; The Beautiful and Damned; The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night. Fitzgerald, unlike Hemingway, had a poetic prose style.
John Steinbeck-The Grapes of Wrath; Of Mice and Men; Cannery Row. Steinbeck writes of Depression-era struggle, migrant workers, and the American dream/nightmare. He is considered by many to be a realist/naturalist.
William Faulkner-The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August. Faulkner had a “difficult” writing style, and he often changes point of view.

Mid-to-late 20th Century:

Ralph Ellison-Invisible Man
Vladimir Nabokov-Lolita
J.D. Salinger-The Catcher in the Rye
Jack Kerouac-On the Road
William Burroughs-Naked Lunch. Burroughs’s writing style is very disconnected, with tons of absurd, disturbing images. He is often vulgar. His novels explore the depth of humanity as well as drug abuse.
Truman Capote-Breakfast at Tiffany’s; In Cold Blood
Norman Mailer-The Naked and the Dead; The Executioner’s Song; An American Dream. Mailer is often cynical, sardonic, and bitingly witty.
Toni Morrison-The Bluest Eye; Beloved; Song of Solomon; Tar Baby

Aliens are invading the Earth. I stand with my family looking up at the night sky. We are on a farm. Lights swirl in the sky, presumably UFOs. We all say "Oh no. Oh no" as if we were expecting it to happen. I feel hopeless. We board a rescue shuttle and go into space while the aliens invade. We are up there for a very long time. My father and I fight; I tell him I can't stand to look at him. I don't see my family for what seems like an eternity. I am alone on the rescue shuttle. I am running out of food.

I am on board a strange cruise ship, in the dining room. The room is huge, with high ceilings, each of the four walls actually floor-to-ceiling aquariums with large sharks swimming around in them. Everyone in the room is scared. I am with my father and one of my brothers. I start to feel sick in the dream. We must escape. We roam the corridors of the ship, which now resembles my a high school (not mine) and a futuristic spaceship. Classes are being held on the ship. We must find certain people to escape. There are no doors to the room, only windows guarded by laser beams. We go outside to jump off the ship but the sea has turned to slush and shark-like monsters circle us. My brother suggests we use snowboards to jump off an glide to land. Everyone seems to think this is a good idea though it is clearly not; I am petrified but everyone else is fine. My brother jumps off the ship on a snowboard while I stay behind with my dad, who suggests that we wait and try to get more help. When night comes we are at a harbor. The sea is water again. My dad says we need to jump off the ship. As it is pulling away we run like mad to the railings and hurl ourselves off. We are underwater. My dad has hit his head on the dock and is unconscious underwater. I can't talk. I try to save him but can't. On land, it is dark and a slummy, scary city surrounds the harbor. Drug dealers huddle around barrels which are on fire. I try to eat but I keep throwing up.

I don't recall whether this occurred during the cruise ship escape or after. It all seems part of the same "dream landscape." Nevertheless, assume the following narrative occurred during the story of the cruise ship, since the same settings and characters apply:

I roam a snowy, hilly graveyard with my family and a bunch of tourists. We search for our own graves. When someone finds the tombstone with their name on it, they automatically are consumed and disappear. I don't want to find mine. My brother disappears and I miss him. It turns night and the snow disappears. The graveyard is near the harbor with the eerie ship and the slummy, scary city. I hide in a trench. Wolves are sent after me. I have a gun but I have trouble aiming. I run into the forest but no matter which direction I go I end up near the graves.

I am at some isolated, island health spa. It seems like paradise. The skies turn dark. It rains and there is immense wind. I see a girl whom I haven't seen in years, and suddenly I want her. We try to escape off the island together. Despite the danger, I feel safe with her, even happy. Somewhere along the line, however, she disappears. The island continues to be consumed with waves and stormy winds.

I am in some strange, baroque complex with many floors and levels. There are stores, homes, and restaraunts. I see members of my family every now and then (particularly my mother, my uncle); I also see a few friends. There is a pizzeria in the complex also. I go in and order food. There are dozens of disgruntled customers waiting on line for pizza. The one worker, an ancient old man, tries to accomodate them all but cant. He cant make the pizza fast enough. The oven is huge and vast; you can walk inside of it. I feel sick. I go outside and into a shoe store. I see my family again and I warn them not to go to the pizzeria. They don't listen. As soon as they approach the pizzeria door, men with guns burst out of it and shoot them. I run for cover and the streets are full of fire.

I am at some university, a big, gothic building with fences around it. Medieval-looking hallways. I don't know what I'm looking for. I see Bill Maher (the guy on TV who does "Real Time") walking on campus, talking to a student, acting very smugly as he usually does. Maher, on this campus, is a professor. I try to talk to him but he walks past and says nothing. The campus is then revealed to be an amalgam of an unknown building and my old elementary school. A huge mansion looms on a hill above. I am intrigued with the height of the ceilings. For no reason whatsoever, all of a sudden men are coming after me (as usual). I hide with some people in a safe house, and supposedly the Bill Maher character knows how to escape but he never comes.

This is a short poem by DH Lawrence which I think resonates so firmly the growing trend of modernist poetry. Lawrence wrote it, or at least published it, in 1929, a year before his death:

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

This short, unrhymed poem is Lawrence's way of conveying the pride of humanity, how a small bird defies death by remaining stoic, and yet we, as humans, drown ourselves in the poem's titular fault--self-pity. Lawrence's poetry is somewhat ignored nowadays; his novels are more widely read. He was, however, a gifted poet, and I recommend that everyone read his work. In the case of this poem, I believe the power of it comes from the amazingly modern feel to it: the enjambment, for instance, serves a revelatory purpose, the enjambed lines themselves constantly completing the emotion/observation that the preceding lines start. This poem is so different from anything published, say, 30 years prior to its own publication. In 1899, British poets such as Thomas Hardy still had a dinstinctly Victorian flavor to their work.

Writing about poetry can be either fulfilling or disastrous. It's very easy to fall into several horrific trends while writing about a particular poem:
1- Over-analysis, whereby you force absurd meaning and interpretation into every line, giving every comma some metaphoric purpose when its really just a way of separating clauses.
2- Term-collages, whereby you throw out every poetic term you know because either you don't know what to say or you wish to show how many poetry books you've read.
3- Vagueness, whereby you make unqualified remarks about what might be going on in the poem, but by virtue of its being a poem, the symbolism makes it so difficult to make any firm assertions.
Ideally, you need to find a good blend of interpretation, formal analysis, and shameless personal opinion, with a dash of elegance in your writing. This is extremely difficult. It's easy to sound like an idiot when writing about poetry. That's my take on it.

I'm ashamed that I couldn't identify _Pride and Prejudice_.

Other than this, I'll be fine.

Michael Myers, the crazed killer from the Halloween movies, makes yet another appearance in my dreams. This time, he's after me in a strange suburban house that I can't find my way out of. There is a huge whole in the center of the house and you can see from the basement up to the top floors. It's dark outside. The neighborhood resembles the one in which I grew up. The cops come but they can't find Michael. They assure me it's OK to go back inside the house. Of course, it isn't. Michael chases me again. I don't remember much else even though I know there was more.