What do grad students talk about in their downtime? Why, what books to kick out of the canon of English literature, of course!
I think between ten or so of us, we nominated the following for de-canonization:
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Romeo and Juliet (not all of Shakespeare, just R&J)
Thomas Hardy
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Charles Dickens (my contribution)
Virginia Woolf
Ernest Hemingway
Herman Melville (thanks to Lis over at
I would also add Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I’m sorry, but Holden Caulfield is the whiniest character I’ve ever read, and he needed to shut up and grow up. (Incidentally, I strongly disagree with Woolf’s nomination, and also Fitzgerald’s–I would, however, devalue The Great Gatsby in favor of Tender is the Night.)
What would you kick out of the canon?
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