Tag Archives: Classics

Required Reading: School Curriculum & The Classics

School is back in session, and with that comes projects and, thus, increased demand for the classics. You know them. To Kill a Mockingbird1984The Great GatsbyLord of the FliesBrave New WorldAnimal FarmShakespeare with HamletMacbeth, and R&J being ubiquitous. Etc. These have been staples in schools for decades*1. If you’re a data-driven person, this Ontario Book Publisher’s Association report will confirm many of the above titles.

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A Different Kind of Valentine

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Every year, Valentine’s Day rolls around with its parade of pink hearts, boxes of chocolate, and silly cards being passed between the hands of elementary school students. It’s a lovely holiday, no matter what the anti-Hallmark crowd would like you to believe (is it a nonsense corporate holiday that encourages materialism? Sure! Should we be expressing affection to loved ones year round, rather than hyper-expressing it on one day? Also sure! But is it really a bad thing to spend some extra time on that affection once a year? Eh, I don’t think so). But not all of us can over-indulge in the saccharine without feeling a little woozy. Some of us might have had our fill on sweets—and some of us don’t have much of a sweet tooth at all. By industry standards, a book can only qualify for the romance section with a fundamental requirement: a happily-ever-after. And there is certainly an explosive market for that! But what if you’re bored of happily-ever-afters? What if your taste runs a little…darker? 

If you feel like being put through the wringer emotionally, or you enjoy Suffering, you will probably have to get your thrills in the general fiction section. There is a wide, wide sea of love stories—or “love stories”—that don’t meet genre requirements for romance, but that doesn’t make them any less about love. It’s just that they might also be about toxic relationships. Or social class. Or obsession. Basically, the ugly underside of love; the ways it can go wrong. The romance genre might be the titan in the publishing industry, but sad, messy, and downright upsetting love stories are no slouch, either. We’ve already discussed the TikTok obsession with books like Song of Achilles; Colleen Hoover’s books are impossible to keep on the shelves; A Little Life is still sparking fierce debate on the literary value of endless trauma (author Hanya Yanagihara’s newest novel, To Paradise, is again causing a similar stir). People love to have feelings, even when they hurt! 

Below are some recommendations that would never make it into the romance section of your local bookstore. In them you will find people in love, but it’s love that fails in one way or another—and they’re people we might not necessarily be rooting for! Arranged in order of least to most toxic, I give you: a different kind of Valentine’s book list! 

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The Secret History of Bennington College

In May of 2019, journalist Lili Anolik published a doozy of an article in Esquire chronicling “The Secret Oral History of Bennington: The 1980’s Most Decadent College”. This past September, Anolik turned that juicy piece into a season-long podcast called Once Upon a Time…at Bennington College, utilizing her previous research to explore themes of talent, fame, privilege, and excess more deeply. The piece and the podcast concern Gen-X literary stars like Bret Easton Ellis, Donna Tartt, and Jonathan Lethem, the Bennington class of 1986 who would go on to shape the face of literature in the 1980s and 90s. To recap: Ellis scandalized with Less Than Zero and American Psychotwo works so vulgar and soulless (on purpose) that they sent older generations into a tizzy with concern for “the youth”. Tartt’s debut novel The Secret History was immediately dubbed a classic shortly after its release (and is a current TikTok sensation). Lethem gained fame with his National Book Award winning Motherless Brooklynwhich captivated Hollywood actor Edward Norton so thoroughly that he held the film rights for 20 years, finally releasing an adaptation in 2019.  

But more than that, the podcast is about the glittery mystique of literary circles that flourished in the pre-social media age. This was a time when culturally resonant authors were treated like celebrities, scoring invites to the MTV Video Music Awards, for some reason. Reminiscing about Ellis’s launch into stardom as an enfant terrible, Bennington alumni recall the author’s glitzy college graduation party, which was attended by Andy Warhol (Jean-Michel Basquiat would make appearances at later parties as well). While all this glamorous success took place in New York, Bennington College, a small liberal arts school in Vermont, is key to these authors’ works, and is memorialized by its most (in)famous students. In Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction, the school is dressed up as “Camden College”, home to a host of despicable, ultra 80s characters. The Bennington of Donna Tartt’s world (this time called Hampden College) is one of old world Romance (capital R), a Brideshead-esque place of philosophy, decaying decadence, and not-so-secret drinking problems (the two might occupy the same universe: Ellis’s work mentions a group of students who “dress like undertakers”; presumably the Classics group in Tartt’s novel). 

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