Reading with Robin: Classic US Authors

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Hello, welcome to another class. I’m Robin, and today we are going to be talking about classic American authors. So those of you who want to improve your English by reading, this is a great way to do it. And actually, this topic was suggested by students in our speaking classes. So we do take, we do keep your comments in mind, if you have a suggestion for a class topic, we are happy to cover that if we haven’t before. So feel free, in the comments, you can write your suggestions or if you participate, like I said, in the ABA Live speaking classes, then you can suggest those topics to your teacher. And this is a great topic, because anything related to reading novels that you can read and discuss later with a group is a great way to practice your English. So I encourage you to do that if you don’t already. So today, as I said, we are focusing specifically on American, United States, authors, classic authors. Okay, so this is from let’s say, I’m going to focus on like the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. Okay, so we will leave contemporary or new authors for another class. So first, I’m going to give you some vocabulary to talk about this topic, and then I’m going to give you my recommendations of classic American authors. 

So a few things to mention. In the United States, we have something called or that we refer to as the Great American Novel. So what does this mean? What makes a great American novel? This is a canonical novel, I’ll explain, a canonical novel that is thought to embody the essence of America, generally written by an American and dealing with in some way, the question of America’s national character. Okay, so there’s a few words we want to point out here, canon or canonical is the adjective, canon is the writings or other works that are generally agreed to be good, important and worth studying. So that is something that people consider so good, that everyone or all Americans, for example, should study this, this particular writing. Okay, so another word to embody the essence of America. So that means that this author has written something that really represents the people as a whole or group of people at the time. So really, the way that people were, things that were happening, so that really represents this this time. All right. And a lot of these novels are considered a literary benchmark of United States literature in a given area, in a given era, excuse me. So a benchmark is a standard or point of reference against which things may be compared. Now, benchmark can be used for any kind of comparison, it doesn’t have to be literature. But in this case, with these novels, they’re used as a benchmark. So we think this novel is so good. When we compare other novels to it, we say “Is it better? Is it worse?” etc. Okay, so many of these books and these authors that I’m going to suggest to you today, to recommend, were, for me, at least, growing up in the United States required reading. So when you study literature, many of these books were required. For me, when I was in high school, for example, I had to read many of these books. So that probably happens to you and your culture. And an interesting exercise, I think, is to reread some of these books because the way I feel about certain things, now that I’m older, was not the same when I was 15, 16, 17. Okay, so an interesting exercise is to reread some of these books that maybe you didn’t particularly enjoy as a teenager and read them again and see if you like them now. 

Okay, so let’s start with my first recommendation of a classic American author. Okay, you may have heard of him, Mark Twain. Alright, Mark Twain is considered by some to be the father of American literature. Now, many people have been called that but he was actually a humorist, originally. So he wrote, kind of humorous or comical kind of literature and then he wrote these two novels called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now, both of these novels focus on kind of boyhood, boys who are growing up or something that we also refer to an English as coming of age. So a coming-of-age novel means that it starts when a child is younger and you kind of follow this child could be a boy or a girl, as they grow up. Okay, so kind of coming of age novels. These novels take place in the mid to late 1800s. Okay, so 19th century and they have become very popular literature. And in the United States, many, many schools have it as required reading. So these are some novels and they’re quite short. So. So you might want to start with these, Mark Twain. 

Okay, my next recommendation, turn the page, is Ernest Hemingway. So many of you may have read Ernest Hemingway in your own language. He was actually, many of these authors, I’m going to recommend to you are Nobel Prize winners of literature. So this is like the highest honor that you can receive in literature. So Ernest Hemingway is a Nobel Prize winner. And he focuses on a lot of writing about the war, World War One, the Spanish Civil War. So his literature is not so much a reflection of America as a whole. He kind of focuses on a specific community, which was American expats living in, in Europe. So many, many Americans actually lived in Paris, for example, in the 1920s, around then, and Ernest Hemingway was actually a journalist. He was a foreign correspondent, so he wrote, he lived in Paris, and he wrote for a newspaper, a publication in the United States. And so he wrote a lot about this expat community. And there were many famous now famous authors who were living there at the time, and, and trying to become writers. And they kind of became friends, this community of writers living in Paris at the time. Okay. So and then Ernest Hemingway, of course, actually joined, he enlisted, which means that if there is a war, you join the army and you participate, you fight in the war, in the Spanish Civil War. So he didn’t have to do that, because he’s American, it wasn’t his war, but he, he did. And he wrote about it, and one of his books called For Whom the Bell Tolls, okay, this is about the Spanish Civil War. Another book about war is Farewell to Arms. That’s another book by Ernest Hemingway. And one about the expat community is The Sun Also Rises. So this is about expats living in Paris and traveling. And then he has another book called The Old Man and the Sea. And this is about a Cuban fishermen and his fight to catch a Marlin, which is a kind of fish. So these are some classic novels by Ernest Hemingway. And they’re quite easy to read, the language is pretty easy. So I recommend you check those out. 

Okay, another author I want to recommend is John Steinbeck. So his novels take place in kind of the first half of the of the 19th of the 1900s. So the first half of the 20th century. And John Steinbeck, was from California. Okay, so that, that is a theme in some of his novels, California, but he also wrote about the dust bowl. Okay, so this is in the 1920s. It was very dusty. And some there are a lot of wind, a lot of dust in some parts of the United States. So it was very hard for farmers, for example, to grow crops because of the weather at the time. And he also writes a lot about the Great Depression, which was in the 1930s. So his novels kind of talk about these different topics. So we have The Grapes of Wrath. So this is the dust bowl, the Great Depression, migration, people moving because the place they live in is not livable anymore. Of Mice and Men. This also talks about farmers, but it also deals with topics like mental illness, which people didn’t talk about a lot at the time. So this is a really interesting book and another book by Steinbeck is East of Eden. So this is about two families in California and the kind of topic of good versus evil, so good people versus evil people or just the good or evil that you have inside of you. Okay, so he’s a really good author to follow another Nobel Prize winner.

And you might be thinking now what about women? Of course, so as I said I’m focusing on American novels and classic American so if we talk about contemporary you will find a lot more female authors and I want to recommend one, Toni Morrison. So she was a black American female author, also Nobel Prize winner and her books focused on topics like slavery, race, African Americans, social justice, racial justice. Okay so these are really important topics and her most popular books are Beloved and Song of Solomon. So Beloved takes place after the Civil War and it again has to do with slavery also mother-daughter relationships, family, pain, loss. This is a really beautiful novel and then Song of Solomon is kind of the life story, follows the life story of a man who’s kind of discovering who he is. Okay so Song of Solomon.

Alright so now that i’ve given you my recommendations, so again we have Mark Twain, Hemingway, Steinback and Toni Morrison. There are so many more, but these are some good novels and good authors to get you started reading classic American literature in English. So now i want to know who are some classic authors in your country? Okay. so do you have a great Italian novel or a great French novel? As I said, this great American novel. If you have some of these authors then tell me in the comments who are they and have you read any of these authors that I just mentioned? And, if you have, then what did you think about them? I would love to hear it, so please write your answers in the comments. Thank you for joining the class. I hope it was useful for you. You have some good recommendations and enjoy your reading. So i will see you back here next week. Take care, bye.