Lit Up Read online

  Bradbury, Ray

  Brave New World (Huxley)

  Brontë, Charlotte

  Jane Eyre

  Brooks, Walter R., Freddy the Pig series

  Brown, Cupcake, A Piece of Cake

  Camus, Albert, The Stranger

  Catcher in the Rye, The (Salinger)

  Cather, Willa

  “Paul’s Case”

  Song of a Lark

  Chandler, Raymond

  Chase, David

  Chopin, Kate, The Awakening

  Chua, Amy, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

  Clockwork Orange, A (movie)

  Coelho, Paulo

  The Alchemist

  Colbert, Stephen

  Collins, Suzanne, Hunger Games

  Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)

  Culture of Time and Space, The (Kern)

  Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The (Haddon)

  “Daddy” (Plath)

  Darkness at Noon (Koestler)

  David, Larry

  David and Goliath (Gladwell)

  Dawkins, Richard

  Death of a Salesman (Miller)

  De Beauvoir, Simone, “The Woman Destroyed”

  Des Pres, Terrence

  Destruction of the European Jews, The (Hilberg)

  de Tocqueville, Alexis

  Dewey, John

  Diary of a Young Girl (Frank)

  Dickens, Charles

  Dickinson, Emily

  Diderot, Denis, Rameau’s Nephew

  Divergent (Roth)

  Dixon, Franklin W., Hardy Boys series

  Dostoevsky, Fyodor

  Crime and Punishment

  Notes from Underground

  Douglass, Frederick

  Doyle, A. Conan

  Drowned and the Saved, The (Levi)

  Duck Soup (movie)

  East of Eden (Steinbeck)

  Eat, Pray, Love (Gilbert)

  Education and the Commercial Mindset (Abrams)

  Eggers, Dave

  Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt)

  Elements of Style, The (Strunk & White)

  Ellison, Ralph

  Invisible Man

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo

  Ephron, Nora

  “Existentialism Is a Humanism” (Sartre)

  Fast Food Nation (Schlosser)

  Faulkner, William

  As I Lay Dying

  “A Rose for Emily”

  The Sound and the Fury

  Ferrante, Elena

  Fitzgerald, F. Scott

  The Great Gatsby

  Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary

  Forster, E. M.

  Frank, Anne, Diary of a Young Girl

  Frankl, Viktor E.

  Man’s Search for Meaning

  Franklin, Benjamin

  Franklin, Ruth

  Franny and Zooey (Salinger)

  Frears, Steven

  Freddy the Pig series (Brooks)

  Freud, Sigmund

  Gardner, Howard

  Gates, Henry Louis

  Gilbert, Elizabeth, Eat, Pray, Love

  Gilman, Charlotte Perkins

  Ginsberg, Allen

  Girl, Interrupted (Kaysen)

  Girl You Left Behind, The (Moyes)

  Gladwell, Malcolm, David and Goliath

  Glass Bead Game, The (Hesse)

  Go Ask Alice (Anonymous)

  Go Set a Watchman (Lee)

  Great Books (Denby)

  Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald)

  Green, John

  Grisham, John

  Gulag Archipelago, The (Solzhenitsyn)

  Haddon, Mark, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

  Hamlet (Shakespeare)

  Handmaid’s Tale, The (Atwood)

  Hardy Boys books

  “Harrison Bergeron” (Vonnegut)

  Harry Potter series (Rowling)

  Hart, Betty

  Hawthorne, Nathaniel

  “The Minister’s Black Veil”

  “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”

  The Scarlet Letter

  “Young Goodman Brown”

  Hell, Richard

  Heller, Joseph

  Hemingway, Ernest

  “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”

  Herzog (Bellow)

  Hesse, Hermann

  The Glass Bead Game

  Siddhartha

  Hilberg, Raoul, The Destruction of the European Jews

  Hillenbrand, Laura, Unbroken

  Hirsch, E. D., Jr., The Knowledge Deficit

  Hobbit, The (Tolkien)

  Holidays on Ice (Sedaris)

  Homer

  The Odyssey

  Hosseini, Khaled

  The Kite Runner

  A Thousand Splendid Suns

  House of Mirth, The (Wharton)

  Huckleberry Finn (Twain)

  Hunger Games (Collins)

  Huxley, Aldous

  Brave New World

  If This Is a Man (Levi)

  I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Max)

  Inglorious Basterds (movie)

  Invisible Man (Ellison)

  James, Clive

  James, Henry

  Jane Eyre (Brontë)

  Jefferson, Thomas

  Jeter, Derek, The Life You Imagine

  Joyce, James

  Joy Luck Club, The (Tan)

  Junger, Sebastian, Perfect Storm

  Jungle, The (Sinclair)

  Kafka, Franz

  “Metamorphosis”

  The Trial

  Kaysen, Susanna, Girl, Interrupted

  Keats, John

  Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space

  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

  King, Stephen

  King Lear (Shakespeare)

  Kite Runner, The (Hosseini)

  Kittle, Penny

  Book Love

  Knowledge Deficit, The (Hirsch)

  Koestler, Arthur, Darkness at Noon

  “Lady Lazarus” (Plath)

  Lahane, Dennis, Mystic River

  Lahiri, Jumpa, The Namesake

  Lane, Anthony

  Lanzmann, Claude

  Lawrence, D. H.

  Studies in Classic American Literature

  LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole, Random Family

  Le Carré, John

  Lee, Harper

  Go Set a Watchman

  To Kill a Mockingbird

  LeGuin, Ursula

  “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas”

  Levi, Primo

  The Drowned and the Saved

  If This Is a Man

  Lippmann, Walter

  Lockhart, E., We Were Liars

  Lolita (Nabokov)

  Long Way Gone, A (Beah)

  Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)

  Macbeth (Shakespeare)

  Madame Bovary (Flaubert)

  Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankl)

  Maus (Spiegel)

  Max, Tucker, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

  McCarthy, Cormac, The Road

  McCullers, Carson

  McEwan, Ian

  Atonement

  Meaning of Everything, The (Winchester)

  Melville, Herman

  Moby Dick

  Menand, Louis

  “Metamorphosis” (Kafka)

  Meyer, Stephanie, Twilight series

  Miller, Arthur, Death of a Salesman

  “The Minister’s Black Veil” (Hawthorne)

  Moby Dick (Melville)

  Montaigne, Michel de

  Morissette, Alanis, “Ironic,”

  Morrison, Toni

  Moyes, Jo Jo, The Girl You Left Behind

  Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)

  Munro, Alice

  “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” (Hawthorne)

  Mystic River (Lahane)

  Nabokov, Vladimir

  Lolita

  Nafisi, Azar

  Reading Lolita in Tehran

  Namesake, The (Lahiri)


  Neruda, Pablo

  New Jim Crow, The (Alexander)

  Niebuhr, Reinhold

  Nietzsche, Friedrich

  Niffenegger, Audrey, The Time Traveler’s Wife

  Night (Wiesel)

  1984 (Orwell)

  “The Noble Eightfold Path”

  No Easy Day (Bissonnette and Mauer)

  No Exit (Sartre)

  Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky)

  Obama, Barack

  O’Connor, Flannery

  Odyssey, The (Homer)

  O’Hagan, Andrew

  “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” (LeGuin)

  “On the Teaching of Modern Literature” (Trilling)

  On Writing Well (Zinsser)

  Origins of Totalitarianism, The (Arendt)

  Orr, Bobby, Orr: My Story

  Orwell, George

  Animal Farm

  1984

  “Politics and the English Language”

  Paley, Grace

  Patchett, Ann

  “All Little Colored Children Should Play the Harmonica”

  Patterson, James

  “Paul’s Case” (Cather)

  Perfect Storm (Junger)

  Philomena (movie)

  Piece of Cake, A (Brown)

  Plath, Sylvia

  The Bell Jar

  “Daddy”

  “Lady Lazarus”

  Poe, Edgar Allan

  “Politics and the English Language” (Orwell)

  Porter, Katherine Anne

  Portnoy’s Complaint (Roth)

  Present Shock (Rushkoff)

  Pretty Little Liars

  Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

  Proust, Marcel

  Proust and the Squid (Wolf)

  Pudd’nhead Wilson (Twain)

  Rameau’s Nephew (Diderot)

  Random Family (LeBlanc)

  Ravitch, Diane

  Reading Lolita in Tehran (Nafisi)

  Reed, Lou

  Risley, Todd R.

  Road, The (McCarthy)

  Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)

  “A Rose for Emily” (Faulkner)

  Roth, Philip, Portnoy’s Complaint

  Roth, Veronica, Divergent

  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

  Rowling, J. K.

  Harry Potter series

  Rudnick, Paul

  Rushkoff, Douglas, Present Shock

  Salinger, J. D.

  The Catcher in the Rye

  Franny and Zooey

  Sartre, Jean-Paul

  “Existentialism Is a Humanism”

  No Exit

  Scarlet Letter, The (Hawthorne)

  Schindler’s List (movie)

  Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation

  Scorsese, Martin

  Sedaris, David

  Holidays on Ice

  Serenity Prayer

  Shakespeare, William

  Hamlet

  King Lear

  Macbeth

  Much Ado About Nothing

  Romeo and Juliet

  Sonnets

  The Tempest

  Shakespeare in Love (movie)

  Shoah (movie)

  “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (Hemingway)

  Siddhartha (Hesse)

  Sinclair, Upton, The Jungle

  Sirens of Titan, The (Vonnegut)

  Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)

  Smith, Zadie

  Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, The Gulag Archipelago

  Song of a Lark (Cather)

  Sonnets (Shakespeare)

  Sophocles, Antigone

  Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner)

  Spiegel, Art, Maus

  Spielberg, Steven

  Star Wars (movie)

  Steinbeck, John

  East of Eden

  Stevenson, Robert Louis, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  Stewart, Jon

  Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)

  Stranger, The (Camus)

  Strayed, Cheryl, Wild

  Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

  Studies in Classic American Literature (Lawrence)

  Tan, Amy

  The Joy Luck Club

  Taxi Driver (movie)

  Tempest, The (Shakespeare)

  Thoreau, Henry

  Thousand Splendid Suns, A (Hosseini)

  Time Traveler’s Wife, The (Niffenegger)

  To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

  Tolkien, J. R. R.

  The Hobbit

  Lord of the Rings

  Tolstoy, Leo

  Trial, The (Kafka)

  Trilling, Lionel

  “Hawthorne in Our Time”

  “On the Teaching of Modern Literature”

  Turkle, Sherry, Alone Together

  Twain, Mark

  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

  Huckleberry Finn

  Pudd’nhead Wilson

  Twilight series (Meyer)

  Tyler, Anne

  Tyrell (Booth)

  Unbroken (Hillenbrand)

  Vargas Llosa, Mario

  Vidal, Gore

  Vonnegut, Kurt

  “Harrison Bergeron”

  The Sirens of Titan

  Slaughterhouse-Five

  Waiting for Godot (Beckett)

  Wallace, David Foster

  “Authority and American Usage”

  Weiner, Matt

  We Were Liars (Lockhart)

  Wharton, Edith, The House of Mirth

  Whitman, Walt

  Wiesel, Elie

  Night

  Wild (Strayed)

  Winchester, Simon, The Meaning of Everything

  Wolcott, James

  Wolf, Maryanne

  Proust and the Squid

  “The Woman Destroyed” (De Beauvoir)

  Woolf, Virginia

  Yeats, William Butler

  “Young Goodman Brown” (Hawthorne)

  Zeitlin, Benh

  Zinsser, William K., On Writing Well

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DAVID DENBY is the author of Great Books, an acclaimed account of returning to college and reading the Western classics during the curriculum wars; American Sucker; Snark; and Do the Movies Have a Future? He is a staff writer and former film critic for The New Yorker, and his reviews and essays have appeared in The New Republic, The Atlantic, and New York magazine, among other places. He lives in New York City with his wife, writer Susan Rieger. You can sign up for email updates here.

  ALSO BY DAVID DENBY

  Great Books

  American Sucker

  Snark

  Do the Movies Have a Future?

  Thank you for buying this

  Henry Holt and Company ebook.

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  and info on new releases and other great reads,

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  For email updates on the author, click here.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE

  BEACON, SEPTEMBER: THE FIRST DAYS OF ENGLISH 10G

  CHAPTER TWO

  BEACON, OCTOBER: FAULKNER AND HAWTHORNE

  CHAPTER THREE

  BEACON, OCTOBER: SYLVIA PLATH AND CONFESSIONS

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BEACON, NOVEMBER: NUTS MATTER, AND BOLTS, TOO

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BEACON, NOVEMBER: HUXLEY

  CHAPTER SIX

  BEACON, DECEMBER AND JANUARY: ORWELL

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAMARONECK, ALL YEAR: PERSONAL CHOICE

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BEACON, JANUARY: SATIRE

  CHAPTER NINE

  BEACON, FEBRUARY: COELHO AND HESSE

  CHAPTER TEN

  BEACON, FEBRUARY: VONNEGUT

  CHAPTER ELEV
EN

  BEACON, MARCH: VIKTOR E. FRANKL

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HILLHOUSE: THE YEAR

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MAMARONECK, SPRING: TENTH-GRADE ENGLISH

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BEACON, APRIL AND MAY: DOSTOEVSKY

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BEACON, MAY AND JUNE: SARTRE AND BECKETT

  NOTE

  AFTERWORD

  Appendix 1: Reading Lists

  Appendix 2: Beacon Students’ College List

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Index of Authors and Works

  About the Author

  Also by David Denby

  Copyright

  LIT UP. Copyright © 2016 by David Denby. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.henryholt.com

  Cover design by Lucy Kim

  Cover photograph by George Baier IV

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Denby, David, 1943– author.

  Title: Lit up: one reporter, three schools, twenty-four books that can change lives / David Denby.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015029973 | 1SBN 9780805095852 (hardback) | ISBN 9780805095869 (electronic book)

  Subjects: LCSH: Literature—Study and teaching (Secondary)—United States. | Teenagers—Books and reading—United States. | High school students—Books and reading—United States. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / Books & Reading. | EDUCATION / Philosophy & Social Aspects.

  Classification: LCC PN70 .D46 2016 | DDC 807.1/273—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015029973

  e-ISBN 978-0-8050-95869

  First Edition: February 2016