Silver Linings Playbook and Building My Own Syllabus

Last week I was putting together my syllabus for a year-long American literature course I'll be teaching to ninth and tenth graders at a homeschool co-op starting in the fall, my favorite genre. There are so many wonderful things I've considered including that I needed advice and perspective from others to help me make sure I wasn't overloading the class. So I tossed the question out on Facebook to find out people's favorite and least favorite books they read in high school. For my purposes this time I threw out everything that wasn't American lit and made my choices from the feedback I got.

Did you see Silver Linings Playbook a few months ago when it was out? I loved the complex characters, plot and the balance between funny and serious moments throughout the film. I thought Bradley Cooper as the main character Pat was wonderful. While I liked him just fine in The Hangover and Wedding Crashers, I loved seeing what else he could do.

I just read the book version by Matthew Quick earlier this week. There are some big differences between the book and the movie, but I liked each of them for different reasons. In both the book and the movie Pat is trying to win back his ex-wife by getting in shape and reading everything she has put on the syllabus for her high school English students. Though he doesn't love what she's selected, he plows through them, looking forward to the day when he'll be reunited with his ex-wife and they can discuss the novels.

Two-thirds of the books Pat reads are ones I've chosen for my syllabus: The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn. The two Pat read that I didn't pick are The Catcher in the Rye (which almost made it on to the syllabus. If I teach this class again I might teach this one.) and The Bell Jar. 

Here are the rest of the novels that made it in: My Antonia, Of Mice and Men and The Color Purple. We'll also read A Streetcar Named Desire and bits and pieces of Phyllis Wheatley, Anne Bradstreet, Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson, Sandburg and Dickinson. I'm looking forward to rereading all these classics myself to prepare.

Have I missed anything What other books do you consider to be important to American literature?

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

I enjoyed every moment of reading Therese Anne Fowler's latest novel, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. I had one course with her back in 2005 during our graduate studies at NC State University. Each week our class members read aloud from the larger project we were working on and gave feedback to our classmates. It was one of the best classes I've ever had because I developed a lot in a short time with my own writing, and fine-tuned my listening and editing skills. I tap into that all the time when I'm helping others through writing coaching services. (Elaine Orr, who has also just published a book, was our professor. I'll be reading her latest, A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa, soon.)

Therese's writing now is fiction and different from the creative nonfiction we were workshopping in that class. I thought what Therese was working on in that class was wonderful, and I'm hoping that one day she'll publish some her creative nonfiction work.

I'm a little obsessed with the Fitzgeralds right now since the latest movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby is about to be released, I've just listened to Tender is the Night in the car, read The Paris Wife (the Fitzgeralds appear in this book about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley by Paula McLain) and I'm thinking through the high school American literature course I'll be teaching in fall. The Great Gatsby is at the top of my list of novels my students will read.

Z is written from the perspective of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, Montgomery, Alabama, socialite and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Though Zelda was a talented dancer, artist and writer on her own, her talents were overshadowed by her husband's fame. The book chronicles the Fitzgeralds' courtship and marriage through both budgets and financial excess, home life and travel abroad, deep passion and disdain for each other, and the highest highs and lowest lows of their marriage. Their relationship started out beautifully: they were the perfect couple, well-known and deeply in love with each other. As the years progressed Zelda was pushed aside by Scott so he could focus on his writing career and his affairs with other women, some of which he barely attempted to conceal from Zelda.

Throughout the novel, Zelda struggles to support her husband, the breadwinner of their family, while raising their daughter Scottie and developing herself as an artist. Scott is often resistant to letting Zelda pursue anything that will get in the way of how he thinks Zelda should be spending her time.

This book is one of several that have come out in the past several years that give a voice to the wives of important men through historical fiction. Loving Frank (Nancy Horan) and The Paris Wife were two such books I very much enjoyed. Many of us know that the Fitzgeralds had a difficult marriage at times, and this books gives us a window into that relationship from the wife's perspective, something I'd love to see more of in fiction. I'm liking this trend.