More anthology anguish

My previous post has come back to haunt me. When I wrote "Such are the dreams of the everyday academic," I didn't expect to suffer lingering after-effects.

First, it left behind an annoying earworm--I can't get that stupid Glen Campbell song "Dreams of the Everyday Housewife" out of my head, even though it makes me want to kick whoever wrote the lyrics, which Google suggests was Chris Gantry. I've often warned my students against equating the narrator of a poem with its author so I don't want to attribute the sentiments in the song to either Glen Campbell or Chris Gantry, but any dude who refers to his beloved spouse as an "everyday housewife" while claiming to have access to her deepest inner feelings deserves a hearty kick in the shins. Unfortunately, those guys aren't available for kicking so I remain frustrated.

Second, my curiosity about the contents of the new edition of my usual American Lit Survey anthology got the better of me and I had to take a look. The good news is that yes, there are some interesting additions, although I still don't see any sign of Amit Majmudar. The bad news, though, is more mixed.

No more "Daisy Miller"! Instead, the only Henry James work included in this edition is "The Turn of the Screw." Now there's nothing wrong with "The Turn of the Screw" except that it doesn't do what I need it to do in that particular class. We start off the American Lit Survey by talking about how writers tried to reimagine what it meant to be an American in the aftermath of the Civil War, and "Daisy Miller" serves nicely as James shows all these expatriate Americans in Europe trying and failing to understand Daisy. As an added bonus, we examine how Daisy's jingoistic little brother illustrates some less admirable aspects of American character. Ideal! 

"The Turn of the Screw," on the other hand, is a thoroughly British story, and in fact it's often taught in British Lit classes. James is one of those authors who ends up on both American and Brit Lit syllabi, but that doesn't mean that students should read the same story in both classes. "The Turn of the Screw" simply can't do for my students what "Daisy Miller" does. And besides, I'll miss Daisy! She's a problematic character but useful in her own way.

The drama problem is of a different sort. My students tend to fear poetry and dislike the length of prose fiction readings, but they just don't seem to have much experience in reading dramatic works. They'll take a stab at Susan Glaspell's Trifles, which provides a good introduction to elements of modernism in one action-packed act. Anything longer or more demanding sends students straight to online summaries, while those who attempt to do the reading offer the same tired complaints year after year. Long Day's Journey into Night: too many long boring speeches. Glengarry Glen Ross: too much cursing. Topdog/Underdog: couldn't keep the characters straight. And so on.

The new anthology still offers Trifles and Long Day's Journey into Night, but instead of A Streetcar Named Desire, it includes Death of a Salesman. The last time I taught Death of a Salesman, I swore that I'd never do it again. In class discussions, the play serves primarily as a cliche-generating machine, and I've never seen a student paper on Death of a Salesman that didn't reek of online summaries. I also find it annoying that this anthology acts as if American drama ended around 1950. Surely some playwright has written something interesting since Death of a Salesman?

So now what do I do--find a different anthology or supplement this one? Fortunately, I don't have to decide for a couple of months, by which time I may have managed to remove that annoying earworm.