12th Grade AP Timberline High School Summer Reading Instructions
POSTCARDS FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM Project
Instructions:
This year’s summer reading project will be different from the “read two novels and blog about
them” that I’ve assigned in the past. This year, you will read two books from the list below and
create 3 digital or physical postcards for each. Yes- 6 TOTAL. Each postcard will include a cited
quote from the novel and an image (photo, drawing, collage) that answers the following
questions posed by the attached article by professor and writer Kevin Hayes, “Can the Great
American Novel Exist?”
 What is the American Dream? How is it defined by the author? Characters?
 How is this book a “national epic in prose?” How does it, “within the covers of a single
volume… encapsulate the nation?” How does it act as a voice of a generation, its hopes,
yearnings, struggles?
 How does this book encompass "all the phases of our national life… New Yorker and
Navajo, Virginia gentleman and Maine leper, Jew and Catholic, African-American and
Italian immigrant, Molly Maguire and millionaire?”
 How do the characters partake in the American idea that we can escape our pasts and
forge new, self-determined identities? Is this possible, or does the past have a way of
resurfacing?
 Hayes states that “a truly great novel requires daring. To write The Great American
Novel an author faces a double challenge. He or she must not only tell a story that
encapsulates the nation but also tell it in a new way, inventing a mode and method of
storytelling different from what other novelists have done before.” How is this novel
daring? What innovative ideas or modes of storytelling does the author promote or
use?
The Basics:
 As you read, mark passages that speak to the above questions. Narrow it down to the
best 3 per book.
 Turn each passage/quote into a postcard: either a DIGITAL postcard using
Instagram/Overgram, or an actual PHYSICAL postcard. The image on the postcard should
be thoughtfully paired with the quote: it should reveal the quote’s deeper
meaning/subtext, the emotional content of the quote, the imagery of the quote, the
action of the quote, etc… The quote itself should be prominently displayed and cited on
the front of the postcard. Instagram users: you can do this using Overgram or another
free app that allows you to place text on an image to post to Instagram.
 Include a brief explanation of how your postcard relates to one of the essential
questions. If you have a physical postcard, you can simply write your explanation on the
back. If you are using Instagram for this project, place your explanation as a comment
when you post.
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Mail your physical postcards to school by August 31st. You can put them all in one
envelope to save on mailing costs. The address is 6120 Mullen Rd. SE Lacey, WA 98503.
Post your digital postcards to Instagram as you complete them using the hashtag
#aplitsullivan. You may use other hashtags as well. You may use your own Instagram
account to do this: I will only look at the images with this hashtag- I will not look through
anyone’s personal photos, nor do I have any desire to do so. If you are concerned about
keeping your other photos private, you may set up a separate Instagram account for this
project. Please post your real first and last name in the caption to earn credit.
I encourage you to comment on other students’ work when you see something you like
or something thought-provoking.
Example: from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
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AND NOW (DRUMROLL PLEASE)…THE BOOKS!
(All book reviews are reprinted from amazon.com)
EVERYBODY READS THE GREAT GATSBY
In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary
and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned,
and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the
book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby
captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American
mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his
country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings.
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us
then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine
morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about
the American Dream.
It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair
meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby
an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal,
bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit
of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice
is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions
made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws
lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability
of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare,
elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best
kind of poem.
IN ADDITION TO THE GREAT GATSBY, READ ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by JUNOT DIAZ
It's been 11 years since Junot Díaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves
and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a
sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game
(except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a
Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses
through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining,
and achingly heartfelt novel I've read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens
of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic,
soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf--you won't be
disappointed.
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by TIM O’BRIEN
A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They
Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about
Vietnam. In this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives
from which he depicts it. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that
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many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened, but just because a thing never
happened doesn't make it any less true. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and
was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in
the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both
considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another
truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and
fiction, that makes his book unforgettable.
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947,
it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that
he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph
on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll, this
document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary
American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac's revolutionary aesthetic, the
identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of
creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and
visual arts in the post-World War II period.
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon
County, Iowa--to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves
Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's
generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the
often grim realities of life on a family farm--from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders. In this winner
of the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Smiley captures the essence of such a life with
stark, painful detail.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of
1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in
August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek
American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but
utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was
raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey
Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the
finest first novels of recent memory. Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative
spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small
town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors
to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing,
aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is
astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and
often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor…when you
get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of
pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret
knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it-putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical
novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons
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The Huffington Post
Can The Great American Novel Exist?
Kevin Hayes, Professor, Author
Posted: 03/15/2012 4:24 pm
To write The Great American Novel: such has been the goal of American authors for over a
century. In recent years, the phrase has been applied to no other novel more frequently than
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. To be sure, Franzen's is a fine novel. Speaking about the
book, Lisa Simpson said, "It makes me feel better about my own family." A story of social
realism about an upper middle class Midwestern family in tatters, The Corrections is ultimately
quite conservative in terms of both its literary approach and subject matter, however. Can the
phrase only be applied to realistic novels that attempt to capture the mainstream American
experience? Or can it be applied to other novels that are more diverse in terms of either subject
matter or literary approach?
Writing my new book, A Journey through American Literature, I asked myself similar questions.
To answer them, I did some research and discovered precisely when the phrase, "The Great
American Novel," was invented. As the copywriters at Sheldon and Company, a New York
publisher, sought ways to promote Rebecca Harding Davis's 'Waiting for the Verdict' in 1867,
they came up with "The Great American Novel." The first published advertisement for this
novel represents the phrase's earliest known usage. The book partly justifies the advertising
copy in terms of its broad geographic scope and its willingness to broach major issues facing the
United States after the Civil War. Waiting for the Verdict intertwines two love stories: one
about a Northern abolitionist of illegitimate birth, and an aristocratic Southerner and
slaveholder, the other about a small-minded preacher's daughter, and a biracial surgeon who
passes as white. In other words, the very first novel ever called The Great American Novel was a
story of cultural diversity.
Though Waiting for the Verdict, aesthetically speaking, was not the major novel it was
supposed to be, its advertising copy had a lasting impact on American literary culture. The
appeal of the copywriters' phrase is easy to understand. The desire for a literary work
commensurate with the greatness of the United States stretches back to late eighteenthcentury efforts to create a national epic poem. During the final third of the nineteenth century,
the novel was emerging as the foremost genre of American literature. The Great American
Novel, as it was starting to be defined, would be a national epic in prose. Within the covers of a
single volume, it would encapsulate the nation.
Years later, Davis herself indicated what The Great American Novel should involve. She
suggested that it should encompass "all the phases of our national life." It should include New
Yorker and Navajo, Virginia gentleman and Maine leper, Jew and Catholic, African-American
and Italian immigrant, Molly Maguire and millionaire. In short, Davis insisted that The Great
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American Novel must incorporate diversity. Despite her suggestions, she was not necessarily
upholding The Great American Novel as an ideal. She called it "that much longed-for
monstrosity."
Yet the phrase continued to be applied to mainstream works into the twentieth century. In her
1920 essay "The Great American Novel," Edith Wharton expressed frustration with the ongoing
popularity of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. Set in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, 'Main Street' is a
send-up of small town, Midwestern America. Despite Lewis's satirical edge, his portrayal
strongly influenced stereotypes about the United States around the world and, to Wharton's
chagrin, reinforced the notion that The Great American Novel should be set in small town
America, that it "must always be about Main Street, geographically, socially, and intellectually."
Instead, Wharton suggested that The Great American Novel need not be set in the center of the
United States. It could be set anywhere in the world or in the imagination. From Wharton's
perspective, the only requirement for The Great American Novel is that it be written by an
American.
To the suggestions of Rebecca Harding Davis and Edith Wharton, I would add one additional
requirement. The Great American Novel should not only be diverse in terms of its subject but
also in terms of its aesthetics. A truly great novel requires daring. To write The Great American
Novel an author faces a double challenge. He or she must not only tell a story that encapsulates
the nation but also tell it in a new way, inventing a mode and method of storytelling different
from what other novelists have done before. Novelists with the ambition, talent, and daring to
accept this challenge come along only once or twice a century.
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