The PIG Guide

I gobbled up this book, wrote all through it, and refer to it often. It's The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor, Ph.D, 2006.

This book changed my life (mostly because it introduced me to Flannery O'Connor). If you feel you missed out on a comprehensive classical literary education and need a place to start, this is the book for you. If only all students could be taught from it! Too bad today's PC professors are ignoring the classics!

Chapters include "must-not-miss" reading lists for each time period being discussed, beginning with Old English, which I am working my way through with great joy and satisfaction. (Yes, I've recently pigged out on tons of Shakespeare, Bunyan, and Milton.) But the very first thing I did after finishing this book was take the high-speed "Mini-Course in American Literature" on page 169 and enjoyed every minute. This is it:

Four tiny poems:
"The Soul Selects Her Own Society," Emily Dickinson
"A Noiseless Patient Spider," Walt Whitman
"Nothing Gold Can Stay," Robert Frost
"In a Station of the Metro," Ezra Pound

Stories:
"The Cask of Amontillado," Poe
"Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne
"Barn Burning," Faulkner
"Everything That Rises Must Converge," Flannery O'Connor

Novels:
Huckleberry Finn
The Great Gatsby

Enjoy this feast, great-book-lovers! I think I'll be a pig and have seconds!


*There are several books on a variety of topics in the P.I.G. series, all written by different authors. Of those I've read, I've liked all but the one on American History.