2007 New Student Reading Project Book Announced
Cornell's incoming undergraduate class in fall 2007 will explore themes of identity, personal responsibility, human freedom and cultural and class differences in Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer's 2001 novel The Pickup. The 2007 selection for the annual New Student Reading Project was announced by Michele Moody-Adams, Cornell vice provost for undergraduate education.
2007: The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
In the Summer of 2007, Cornell’s incoming undergraduate class will read The Pickup, a novel published in 2001 by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. Much of Gordimer’s work has explored the political, psychological and moral complexities of South African racial apartheid. But the events of The Pickup are set in a post-Apartheid world in which the attraction between a wealthy South African woman and the illegal Muslim immigrant she meets when her car breaks down provides an opportunity for thinking about the sources of identity, the conditions for self-understanding and personal responsibility, and ultimately the possibilities for human freedom. The novel also invites us to reflect on the ethnic, cultural and class-related dimensions of “otherness,” while challenging our expectations about what it is to be a cultural “insider” or “outsider.” Along the way, we must reflect on the role of religion in human life, the importance of family, and the conflicts between responsibility and the satisfaction of human desire.
"The University’s main goals for the Reading Project includes stressing the intellectual benefits of reading, and reminding students of the personal relationships they can have with a good book," said Michele Moody-Adams, and "some of the most striking scenes in The Pickup ably depict the richness and importance of these benefits and relationships." Some of the time the main characters spend together is time spent reading together: “She brings along books as well as food to these hours when they double the disappearance of his identity, they disappear together, this time, in the veld.” The woman in the couple watches her partner “while he is unaware of her—its one of the tranquil pastimes of loving: he reads as if his life depends on what is there.” In her own reading, the woman sometimes comes upon “a sentence, a statement, that seems to have been written for her long before she came into existence and came to this space in the time of her life.” "If one aim is to remind our students of the extraordinary pleasures of reading during this time in which technological innovations threaten to overwhelm those pleasures, it is hard to find a better expression of those pleasures than what we will encounter in reading Gordimer’s book," said Moody-Adams.
The Pickup has been widely recognized as an accomplished work of contemporary fiction. It was recently selected as a featured book for discussion by the Great Books Foundation, was awarded the 2002 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was included on a shortlist for the 2001 Man Booker Prize.
Prior Year Selections
2006: The Great Gatbsy by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Spring 2007 events include performances of Inherit the Wind at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts and Zelda by Herself: The Art of Zelda Fitzgerald at the Carol Tatkon Center. For more information see News & Events.
The Great Gatsby "tells a good story about memorable -- if not always likeable -- characters, and it does so in evocative and beautiful prose that deftly brings the Jazz Age to life," said Michele Moody-Adams. Reading Fitzgerald's novel, she added, "also provides an opportunity to reflect on the complexity of many defining American ideals, on the ethical and social implications of unchecked materialism, and on the potentially corrosive effects of unregulated desire."
"We have taken all these strengths of the book into consideration in choosing The Great Gatsby as the freshman book for the Fall of 2006. We expect the book to be a worthy object of reflection and discussion for our incoming students and the campus at large, as well as for those members of the surrounding community who plan to join in the reading project once again."
2005: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Recognized now as a classic of world literature, Things Fall Apart was written in 1958 and depicts traditional village life in Nigeria during the imposition of British colonial rule in the late Nineteenth Century.
In 2005 nearly 5,000 students from 67 high schools in 18 New York counties and New York City read Things Fall Apart as part of a statewide pilot program coordinated through Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE).
2004: The Trial by Franz Kafka
The Trial is Kafka's prescient masterpiece that raises fundamental questions about the nature of justice and the role of the state. New students, alumni and the Ithaca community took part in this year's events including a debate hosted by the local bar association on The Trial.
2003: Antigone by Sophocles
Antigone is a timeless text. The Tompkins County Public Library and Cornell continued the tradition, the annual town-gown celebration of reading and of having conversations with each other about ideas that began with Frankenstein. In 2003, Tompkins County 10th-grade students were recipients of copies of Antigone and were treated to David Feldshuh's brilliant new translation and adaptation of Antigone performed at Cornell's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.
2002: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
In 2002 Cornell selected Frankenstein, a book that raised important questions on ethics, creativity and the nature of our humanity. Cornell gave over 1,500 free copies of Frankenstein to the Tompkins County Library, to county high schools, to senior citizens centers and to other civic organizations thus beginning the "tradition" of the "town-gown" read.
2001: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Cornell New Student Reading Project began in 2001 with Jared Diamond's Pulitzer-prize winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel. This provocative work explores the differences in rates of development among races, societies and world cultures as a function of geographical and environmental circumstances.