Teaching Bad Books

Teaching Bad Books

Sophia A. McClennen

Pennsylvania State University

In almost every class, I teach a bad book, an awful, poorly written, sometimes sexist, racist, reactionary book.

I do this for a few reasons. First of all, I do it to see if my students notice. I taught a selection of stories by Isabel Allende in a course on Latin Ameri-can women writers while teaching in Peru. The day I walked in to teach the students were all mumbling under the breath, casting semi-hostile looks at me. They had hated it. Thought it was really bad. Thought she couldn’t write, thought her stories were sexist and
hated it too, we had a great time in class trashing it
critically and learning a lot in the process.
if the students will notice.



conversation with another. Basic, boring realist
aesthetics, you might say—and it is true that I read

novels, and a limited tolerance for avant-garde writ-

ers like Kathy Acker, Thomas Bernhard, or even
He turned the pages with exquisite care.


Faber’s pale hands caressed each volume.
it unfolds. Here’s a good example of bad writing,
from Geraldine Brooks’s much-praised People of
world of realistic fiction, bad writing fails to provide
an interesting angle, an arresting take, on the world
David Foster Wallace. And so, yes, within my chosen
“serious fiction” compulsively while having no taste
for fantasy, science fiction, mystery, or other “genre”