When Vladimir Nabokov was up for a chair in literature at Harvard, the linguist Roman Jakobson protested: What s next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology? That anecdote, with which D. G. Myers begins "The Elephants Teach," perfectly frames the issues this book tackles.
Myers explores more than a century of debate over how writing should be taught and whether it can or should be taught in a classroom at all. Along the way, he incorporates insights from a host of poets and teachers, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, John Berryman, John Dewey,...

Harking from the golden age of fiction set in American suburbia--the school of John Updike and Cheever--this work from the great American humorist Peter De Vries looks with laughter upon its lawns, its cocktails, and its slightly unreal feeling of comfort. De Vries's classic situation comedy The Tunnel of Love follows the interactions of a socially insecure, pun-loving family man, an officious lady caseworker from an adoption agency, and a chauvinist pig--all suburban neighbors who know far too much about one another's private lives in this goofy and gently hilarious tale of marital...