I'm now 149 pages into Catch-22 and I'm not sure I should finish it, since I have apparently gotten the full message. But I had a thought...there are a lot of masterpieces of American literature I've never gotten around to reading. And I got to thinking, maybe I should. Maybe I should find out why--or indeed, if--they're masterpieces. So I thought it might be an interesting project to get hold of a standard summer reading list, say, from a good high school English curriculum, and work my way through it.

There's only one problem. I'm not sure there's enough money in the world to induce me to read The Grapes of Wrath, the theme of which appears to be "life is wretched, and then you die." And let's not even talk about Moby Dick--all you never wanted to know about whaling, and didn't care enough to ask. I hab, you hab, rehab for Ahab!

What is it about classic American literature, that it's all so depressing? In my senior honors English class in high school, we were subjected to:

The Great Gatsby: Guy falls in love with another guy's wife. Everybody is shallow, life is pointless. Guy shot for revenge.

The Scarlet Letter: Woman is ostracized for having a child out of wedlock. Preacher is a hypocrite. Life is hard.

Ethan Frome: Guy decides to run off with wife's cousin. For the hell of it, they ride a sled down a hill, but crash into a tree. Love interest paralyzed. Everyone's lives ruined.

Ok, I enjoyed Animal Farm, I admit. And Mark Twain deserves an award for single-handedly lifting American literature out of the slough of despond. But aside from him, ye gods, the general, unmitigated bleakness...or maybe it's just high school curricula that are depressing, in an attempt to tame the natural ebullience of the American teenager. I mean, just think, we make high school freshmen read "Romeo and Juliet," and try to tell them it's a love story.