I don't agree with civilian's post, but I think that he is onto something. Once you get past Noah Webster and Benjamin Spock, the shaping effect is hard for me

I don't agree with civilian's post, but I think that he is onto something. Once you get past Noah Webster and Benjamin Spock, the shaping effect is hard for me to see. The Education of Henry Adams includes some interesting chapters, though it is not nearly Adams's best work: yet what in America has it shaped other than the occasional class reading list? Similarly there are fine and complex works of literature that few have read. Take a poll at the bus stop or the coffee shop and see how many people can quote you five lines out of North of Boston, Spring and All or Howl. (I can do maybe one from Howl and almost certainly the number in it is wrong" "America, when will you become worthy of your two million Trotskyites?") Moby Disk is a fine novel, but how many have read it through; no doubt The Sound and the Fury is also, but it defeated me at an age when I read a lot of Faulkner, and I haven't been back.