Tayari's Blog: My Plea to High School English Teachers

Some people make list of ten books that every highschooler should read. I've seen them and I have read most of the books on them. But I would like to make my list of three (really popular) short stories NO highschooler should be allowed (let alone required) to read.

1) "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson
2) "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemmingway
3) "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

Listen, I know these things are classics and I agree that they are really really good stories. But as a teacher of undergraduate creative writers, I beg you for a moratorium that will last from now until I A) retire or B) sell so many books that I won't have to teach any more.

Here's my gripe:
"The Lottery" is the story of the freaky little town that holds a human sacrifice each year to assure abundant crops. Teachers like to use it because a person has to read veeeery carefully to figure out what's going on. Most highschoolers are not up to the task, so the teacher gently guides the pupils through the maze of hints and clues. Your bright higschooler thinks "WOW! What a terrific story! I had NO idea what was going on! How NEAT!" Now, picture that student three years later writing a short story for an undergraduate fiction workshop. Imagine the professor, well-meaning, kind, yet utterly bewildered. She gently lets the student know that a reader may be (ahem) put off by a story that is so hard to follow. The student then gives a triumphant grin. "EXACTLY!"

My beef with "Hills Like White Elephants" is very similar, but worse. After reading this story, students seize upon the famous line of dialogue that goes something like this, "Would you please please please please please stop talking." They love that part. So they write some really spare, vague narrative, where characters talk about everything except what is really going on. Somewhere near the end, the heroine says, "Can you please please please please hold the pepperoni!" The teacher of writing says, "This is a bit unclear what this is meant to convey." The student snatches away his paper and sneers, "Obviously, you have never read Hemmingway."

"A Rose For Emily," is a different story. This is an example of the dreaded trick ending. The idea is that an elderly woman, who never recovered from being dumped by her fiancée many decades ago, has finally died. At the very end of the story, we find out what happened to the cad: she killed him and has slept with the corpse all these years. How do we know this? The final sentence describes the pillow beside the skeleton on which lies "a long strand of iron-gray hair." You can imagine the scary derivative fiction that such an ending inspires!

I know it's great fun to teach these stories if you are on the reading end of the process. But for those of us on the writing end, it's killing us.

Dear teachers, I beg you. I beseech you. Please please please please please stop let these stories go.