Ready for some litter at your fun? What have you got to, lose, so why not? (Surprise bonus – the punctuation in sentence two is provided by an auto AI Get-in-the-way program, which may explain a lot.)  

Now to business. Approaching a half-century of published work, I pay some attention to written work. Understandably, I perked up when running across a college professor advocating books it held as worthy. OK, didn’t say whether world, English or American letters, but experts often miss such points. (My interest area is American Lit.) 

Professor named 10 books needing to be taught (presumably to U.S. students). Two were pre-Dickensian titles I’d heard of. The other eight seemed to represent different continents, not North American. 

Now, among the aims of teaching literature is provide examples of decent writing and establish some areas of common knowledge. (Else The Handmaid’s Tale is set astray.) The recommended list seemed, so it seemed, to put cultural diversity well ahead as its goal, possibly taxing the range of adolescent and college minds to cope with Bhutanese, Ziti and Peruvian characters and contexts. 

‘Nother words, I ‘spect the good prof was aimed at decolonizing literary instruction. But if this were put into practice becomes much more a practice of re rather than de colonizing. When accomplished, Hester Pryne becomes an essential unknown. 

End of the world? Certainly not, but better to know of her scarlet letter than be better versed in (especially for Minnesota) the role of coconut iconography in tales from Papeete. 

More importantly, if you’re going to be a relatively useless and self-important prof touting your (can’t be Blarney, but something else, maybe this) drivel you could at least offer one worthy American author to students in the U.S. One in 10 is better than zero, which neon signs the motive. 

Rightly ask who-what is the American work Harry would suggest? 

One I’ve recommended and gifted to others many a time, but like as not will be unknown. Seven Arrows by H. Storm. I think a native author using their own material in a careful and detailed way is at least as valid to students in the U.S. as familiarity with the Didgeridoo. 

The contents are more than I can explain in brief. Read it and you’ll see. Long out of print, it’s worth hunting up. Write me a castigating letter if you disagree. 

Alongside 7 I’d add In Our Time by Hemingway, of whom I’m not much a fan, except for this, which I consider a novel form of the novel. Being a non prof makes me less to be believed but maybe more to be trusted. You can decide. 

 The viscous attitudes of fate and coincidence presented another liter airy consideration when I read Charles Portis’ True Grit as equal to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, strong praise and a challenge I couldn’t resist. I knew of the movie (of which a newer version now exists) not the book. Found a copy and have to say doesn’t belong in any list I’d tout as Huck worth. It’s by no means bad. Far from. Easy enough to grasp the comparison as (is it OK to say) boy and girls forms facing the adult world. (America values young and fresh over old and experienced, doesn’t it?) 

Mattie and Huck are of similar age in a nineteenth century rural American context. But out on my nonprofessorial limb I don’t hesitate saying Huck succeeds where Mattie flops, which is in giving voice to character other than her own. Her voice is good, one of the more memorable, but it’s not the girl’s voice. It is a voice coming 25 years later when Mattie is 39. Her strong adult voice largely takes over in all the other characters sounding like her. 

 Jennings’ The Cowboys (also in movie form) is set in a similar time, but despite a crew of adolescents is told in an adult voice built around the story’s two grownups, Anderson and Nightlinger. The cow boys are differentiated in character, but their individual or collective voices don’t come into play nearly as much as does Mattie’s. 

Where story telling (narration) is involved Point of View and Voice are critical factors. Huckleberry’s young persona and voice shape the account, as does Mattie as an older person recounting her younger years. 

Those single and singular voices shape the narrative in a way I believe impossible were such to be tried telling a tale using Jennings’ cow boy voices. 

 Portis and Jennings are both good tellers. For the most part their detailing seems authentic, though for my money dubious when Portis explains Mattie’s “fall” into and rescue from the snake pit. I’d call dubious on Jennings’ cow boys doing in a band of adult rustlers, but we have Pol Pot to remind us how relentless and ruthless children can be. Let that be an un-cozy lesson. 

 I’m not a fan of Westerns. Hardly. But the genre is quite American with an origin (as I see it) in the East with Cooper’s War of 1812-era tales of the (then) frontier of the British, Mohawks, Mohichans and colonists, etc. 

For my money if you want to induce coma or be joyful an author is no longer with us, try Cooper. Few can drag a story to a dreadful death well as Cooper. 

Keep in mind my sour remarks aren’t on Cooper likely to find widespread agreement. Critics disagree same as I pause at Portis supporters touting his “comic tour deforce.” 

I give that a possible maybe based on comedy generally having many fewer shootings and killings as occur in his gritty tale. For me, comedy doesn’t ride in on a horse carrying four bodies (one being a boy near Mattie’s age) brought in for bounty and burial. Call that realistic or graphic, OK, but comic doesn’t suggest itself to me. 

 Like it or not, but Mr. Skywalker and others follow the pattern of frontier and Western fictional models. Fictional.