‘Mr. McCourt, You In Trouble?’

By Frank McCourt

If a university professor discusses Vanity Fair or anything else his classes listen with notebooks open and pens poised. If they dislike the novel they won't dare complain for fear of lowered grades.

When I distributed Vanity Fair to my junior class at McKee Vocational and Technical High School there was moaning in the room. Why do we have to read this dumb book? I told them it was about two young women, Becky and Amelia, and their adventures with men, but my students said it was written in that old English and who can read that? Four girls read it and said it was beautiful and should be made into a movie. The boys pretended to yawn and told me English teachers were all the same. They just wanted to make you read that old stuff and how was that gonna help you if you was fixin' a car or a busted air conditioner, ah?

I could threaten them with failure. If they refused to read this book, they'd fail the course and they wouldn't graduate and everyone knew girls didn't want to go out with anyone who wasn't...