Books

Classics Don’t Always Make the ‘Classics’ List

Here are 20th-century novels that shy away from doom and gloom.
Classics Don’t Always Make the ‘Classics’ List
"Reading by the Sea," 1910, by Vittorio Matteo Corcos. Public Domain
Jeff Minick
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In my years of teaching Advanced Placement English Literature to seminars of homeschooling students, several times, students asked me, “Mr. Minick, why are so many of the novels we read so depressing?”

The novels in question were standard titles taken from the AP list and ones I happened to admire, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.”

Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.