SENIORS Phase 5 Summer Reading---Unless it Moves the Human Heart

Roger Rosenblatt, author of Unless it Moves the Human Heart, challenges his students in his writing classes at Stony Brook University to write about "big" topics and universal themes in their prose and poetry so that their works can move the human heart. Because, after all, he says, great works do, and go beyond providing simple, ethereal passing spasms of pleasure.

He's not a snob in his selection of works that are capable of such prodigious work. There's Shakespeare and Joyce and Kafka and Donne and Nobokov, for sure, but there's Jay Gatsby and Harold and the Purple Crayon, too, and many other works of prose and poetry to which he alludes in his book.

Remember, in addition to reading Unless it Moves the Human Heart and In Cold Blood for your summer assignment, you must read one of these other novels, plays, essays, or short stories that "move" us.  

Hearing Rosenblatt read his passionate book's conclusion (click on this link) might move you, too.

For all of you "football" fans who find  your passion on the beautiful green pitch, watch this commercial for the Barclays Premier League. The old fan is not a paid actor, but  86 year-old Billy Ingham, a loyal fan of the Everton football club. The "advert" follows Billy on match day saying goodbye to a picture of his deceased wife before he heads off to see the other love of this life, his Everton Blues. Over a pretty cover of Phil Collins's "I Can't Stop Loving You," a distinguished British narrator tells us "to follow is to love," a universal theme that almost always moves the human heart.