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I've been reading a lot of American lit recently just to broaden my background.
Most recently I finished The World According to Garp by John Irving, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, and Ironweed by William Kennedy. I am in the midst of The American by Henry James.
I am curious if anyone else has read these books and what they thought of them. I loved The World According to Garp. It was strange and the charcters were flawed, yet likable.
As I Lay Dying reminded me of reading Shakespeare back in H.S. I sometimes needed to read it out loud to understand the dialect. It was an odd trip and I was left feeling a little wha?, at the end.
Ironweed was great, I felt moved by it, and loved the dialogue and the ghosts from the past sequences. It was a great read. I could see it in my head as a really cool movie. I later talked to my dad, and he said there is a movie with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Has anyone seen it? Is it worth my time, or should I just be content that the book was so well written?
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Lately, I've been reading lots of Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis. Reading them is like stepping into a time capsule and stepping out 100 years ago. Women's lives were so different then, it makes me appreciate all the changes that we have achieved.
For my money, the best American author right now is Wallace Stegner. "Angle of Repose" is a masterpiece.
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I love both Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany by Irving. I was pretty bleh about As I Lay Dying. I don't think most HS kids can really appreciate more complex material like that. I wasn't interested then, and I'm not sure I'll ever be interested enough to pick it up again.
I'd stick with Irving though. At least those two books.
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I loved The World According to Garp, but I enjoyed A Widow for One Year more. I couldn't really say why, but it's just stuck in my head better.
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I've read three Faulkner novels, and would probably say I enjoyed As I Lay Dying the least. Sound and the Fury was my favorite, although it's pretty hard to orient yourself. In all three novels (the other was The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem]) I think Faulkner did a good job of capturing dialect and personality as he switched between narrators and stories. It isn
I second Tante's comment about Angle of Repose. I read it earlier this year and thought it was great, but some of that might be me celebrating my Westerness (as a transplant to the East).
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I tried to listen to Sound and the Fury on CD not long ago and couldn't get into it. It may have been the reader stressing the wrong parts, but it seemed like every three words there was a "he said" or "she said".
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I enjoyed reading Upton Sinclaire's "The Jungle" when I was in High School, now I am 24 and my friend talked about wanting to read it, I roccemnded he grab it from our Library and he has enjoyed it immensily. I hesitate to say why I recommend it because I do not want to tell people how to read the book. But it was clearly written (by the authors on admission) as a window to the American Immigrant of the early 1900's. Immigration is still a hot topic today, and I think The Jungle really helps people see both sides of the spectrum.
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Tante: Some time last year I read Dreiser's American Tragedy. That book was so intense, I couldn't put it down! I agree with your idea of it being like stepping into a time capsule. It really does make you appreciate how far women's rights have come since then.
The Jungle is a great book on so many levels. I love the immigration and the labor movement aspects of it. Of course, being a Chicagoan, any book set in Chicago is always fun to read because I recognize the different places and such. One great novel set in Chicago is Studs Lonigan by James T. Ferrell. It's really, really long, but it's such a great read. If you have patience, read it. It's definitely worth it.
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Tante, I liked Sister Carrie too! I meant to read more Dreiser and never did.
Faulkner I think is a genius, but it takes reading a few of his books, usually, to really start to get his storytelling style. Once you do, you see that it's absolutely perfect for the stories he tells. My favorites of his, for the record, are The Reivers, which is hilarious but also really deep and true, and The Unvanquished, and Intruder in the Dust. I think Intruder in the Dust was responsible for my mom becoming a civil rights supporter back in the 50s. Faulkner really sees people, particularly marginal people, and tells their stories so well. I was astonished that people from other parts of the world beside the American South could get into him, but I guess people are much the same everywhere, because I know of one Korean and one Australian who just love him, and they say he describes people they recognize.
Henry James is excellent, but I'm furious at him, so I don't read him anymore. Seriously. I like The Ambassadors best of all his books, but I just get so angry at him for not telling us what happened. Do not ever expect a book by Henry James to have an ending. He will get you to care about the people and the situation, then leave you extremely unsatisfied when the book stops. If he weren't already dead, I'd want to kill him for doing that to me so many times.
Thornton Wilder is one of my very favorite American authors. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is an excellent novel, but of course the play Our Town is his most famous work. I've read several of his novels, and pretty much all of them are worth reading.
For contemporary mainstream American fiction, my favorite of all is Mark Salzman. The Laughing Sutra is the one I recommend to everyone. It would make such a fantastic martial arts movie, I think. But everything by him is good. He writes about half memoirs and half novels. The latest memoir, "True Notebooks", about his stint teaching a writing class at the High Risk Juvenile Offender's Correctional Facility near Los Angeles, is one that made me laugh and cry in every chapter.
Oh, and no American Lit survey should leave off Steinbeck. He's just great. I guess everyone's read Of Mice and Men, but honestly there is no Steinbeck novel you can pick up that won't be totally engaging. I recommend him highly as well. My favorite is probably East of Eden.
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I love Faulkner, but I find that all of his novels tend to have the same themes so I try to space out my reading of them so I can enjoy the stories and language without feeling a strong sense of deja vu.
I begn Garp, but couldn't finish it. I also couldn't finish A Confederacy of Dunces so I suppose those quirky, slightly humorous novels aren't for me. Alas.
Tatiana, we have very similar taste in literature. I agree that East of Eden is his best--that's actually one of my favorite books.
I do have to also recommend the American Lost Generation, especally Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is definitely classic literature, but my favorite is This Side of Paradise. However, I have loved everything he's written.
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quote:Originally posted by Kristen: I love Faulkner, but I find that all of his novels tend to have the same themes so I try to space out my reading of them so I can enjoy the stories and language without feeling a strong sense of deja vu.
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Well I just finished The American by Henry James.
Tatiana, I can see why James annoys you. Even though The American ended without too many threads hanging, the ones that were dangling around seemed rather important. I probably won't read any more James, at least for a while.
Now I need to go back to the library and get a few more books. Posts: 511 | Registered: Mar 2006
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F. Scott Fitzgerald was a mediocre novelist, but his short stories are genius (and "The Great Gatsby" is almost a novella -- any time he tries to go longer than that, he fails).
My favorite Faulkner so far is Absalom! Absalom!
I like Henry James very much, but it's been awhile since I've had the patience to read him. The Golden Bowl is amazing. But you probably shouldn't read it, Tatiana (if you haven't already). :-)
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren is a great novel that in my experience not many readers of my generation have read.
Democracy by Henry Adams is interesting.
Two of my favorite novels are Gilead by M. Robinson (I can never spell her first name) and (and this is a cliche, but I don't care) Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.
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After having so many Steinbeck novels shoved down my throat in junior high and high school, my automatic reaction to him is "Ugh!" But despite that, I've always thought he had wonderful-sounding titles, dramatic and almost mesmerizing. Maybe now that I've had several years away from him, I should go back and see if I might like his books after all.
Actually, now that I think about it, "Ugh!" on a lesser degree tends to be my reaction for most American Literature (with a capital 'L'). Hmm. I must try to remedy that.
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Yes, Nell Gwyn, try and fix that. While many things I have read this past year in my quest for American Literature have not been that great. there have been some things that I never would have thought would have the impact that they did.
A couple of my absolute favorites from my self imposed odyssey: October Light by John Gardener, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, Chimera by John Barth, and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck.
Any of these are excellent reads, though Gravity's Rainbow takes a certain mindset to get into it completely. Posts: 511 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Nell: You had Steinbeck shoved down your throat? Lucky!
I am really not a fan of American literature, but I think a lot of that has to do with my love of classically written poetry and there are few American poets whom I adore. In terms of fiction, there are great authors, no doubt, but I find that a lot of the American literature canon tends to be heavily based on geography and 'americana' (for lack of a better word), which doesn't strongly interest me (eg. I can objectively state that John Dos Passos is a great author, but I personally find him tedious).
That being said, Luet I admire you for your quest. Last year, I had a similar goal to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winners in poetry, fiction, and drama since my birth year in order to get acquainted with modern American literature. It was an interesting experience, as there were more works which I didn't like than I did, but I promised myself I would make it at least fully 2/3 through each book. Good luck and please share more recommendations!
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I started something of the kind, though I'm ranging a bit broader. Just generally avoiding my normal novel selection and trying to see why some of these books had such staying power.
So far, that I've read (as part of this quest): House of the Spirits (Allende) The Castle, The Metamorphosis (Kafka) One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez) Dandelion Wine (Bradbury) The Jungle (Sinclair) Ulysses (Joyce) Great Expectations (Dickens) Moby Dick (Melville)
Conclusions: Allende rips off Garcia Marquez when she tries magic realism and doesn't handle it well, but uses realism pretty darn well. Dandelion Wine seemed pointless for about half the book, but now I think it's gotta be one of my favorites. The Jungle . . . at first it was interesting; then Sinclair gets very heavy-handed, emotional reasoning into play and makes it terribly dull, but the Socialist parts are a lot of fun. Ulysses was . . . wow. That's something so different with writing from anything I've ever seen. Dickens ought to have been shot before he touched a pen and paper, and Melville needed to put some of that stuff in the appendix like Tolkein did. Kafka is surpisingly Kafka-esque. Whodathunkit.
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Joldo, did you actually finish Ulysses? The first time I attempted it, I stopped after 5 pages. The second attempt ended at 285 pages. If I ever attempt it again, I'm starting where I left off.
That darn book drove me nuts (the small portion I read) because it was like living in some one else's head. It was not a good feeling. I don't know if I can finish it, but cheers to you if you did!
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It drove me crazy at first, but then my mind sort of squished into the proper shape and I had trouble reading other stuff afterwards. After that, it was absolutely fantastic. Makes me want to be a disciple of Joyce--not by copying his style but doing something with the mechanics of writing no one's really done before.
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Were those people, for all their supposedly elevated sensitivity and thoughts... were they premeditated adulterers who married for money or not? It offended me deeply that he tried to act like they were anything but just trashy people who acted horribly. I did not like that couple.
Same with the Dove people. How is that anything but just sad and ugly?
I personally don't see it, that it's such a tragedy to be born with higher tastes than income. Why couldn't those people just work or something? Why did they have to find rich people to use?
Of course, here I am taking everything all personally again, but seriously, Zalmoxis, do you like Henry James? If I dug him up and revivified him frankensteinishly, would you not join me in slowly strangling him to death for the way he treated those of us who read his books?
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I think it's supposed to be horrible. The style is part of the point -- that's how such people operate (both the rich and the climbers). It's their sick little games and it's what happens when Americans become infatuated with Europe (which is what happened to James himself so I don't know what to really say about that).
But it's been awhile since I have had the patience to read James, so I can't back my reading up with actual analysis.
And I haven't read Wings of the Dove. Or The Ambassadors. I think I've read all his other fiction.
After reading 8 Brust novels (with one Stanislaw Lem thrown in there somewhere) in a row, perhaps it's time to mix things up and tackle Wings of the Dove.
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Oh, I read P.G. Karamesines' novel The Pictograph Murders. What did you think of it? She writes really great stuff on AMV so I had quite high expectations.
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Am I the only high-school kid who likes Faulkner? I'm sorry, I just love the way he writes.
SC, the first section of The Sound and the Fury is written from the viewpoint of an idiot who has no sense of time or expression. He alternates unknowingly between memories of when he was 3, 13 and 33. It would take a spectacular vocalist to put that novel onto an audiotape properly. That's the kind of book you should read.
What are the specifications for something to be considered American Literature? Does it have to be or not be certain genres?
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Flaming Toad: I loved Faulkner in high school too.
I personally consider American literature to be anything written by an American and in English. I don't feel like the book needs to be published by an American though.
(Obviously what consitutes an American is a more tricky matter.)
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I've always loved Faulkner, after about the third book of his I read. Since like sixth grade. I didn't like that story The Bear, though, which is mostly what people got assigned to read, for some reason. That or A Rose for Emily, which is another one of his I'm not that fond of. Weird. I wonder why they don't pick his best stuff to assign.
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One of my all time favorite writers, though, is Eugene O'Neill. He is a playwright, but his plays, I find, read more like novels.
I also enjoy Walker percy immensely, as well as T. Coraghassen Boyle, though he is as dark as the night.
My college is currently going through a massive upheaval, as they decided to do away with the American Literature major, and combine it with English. Yowza, the arguments, via alumni magazine mail!
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Tatiana: I have no idea how they formulate the 'American short story' canon, but I definitely question the reasoning behind it. I can't tell you how many authors I am averse to after being forced to analyze some of their worst short fiction (I took 2 years to warm up to Hemingway after being assigned his Indian birth story at 15-years-old).
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Sabrina, yes! Another one of my favorites. OK, heck, pretty much everyone is my favorite, but Eudora Welty is a favorite of favorites.
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I'm taking an American Lit survey course this summer, and I wish I could get excited about it. Now, don't get me wrong - I love me some American poets, but the short stories, meh.
Give me British lit any day. I think it's because I like the old stuff. I loved my British lit I class which was Beowulf up to the Reformation.
The one author shoved down my throat in high school that I completely detested was Nathaniel Hawthorne. I was never so miserable in any English class as when I read The House of the Seven Gables in 11th grade :shudder:
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Newest acquistitions: The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer, Billy Budd by Herman Melville, The Milagro Beanfield Wars by John Nicols, Ship of Fools by Katherine Ann Porter, and The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx.
I'm starting with Mailer, I'll see where that leads. It looks like I've got some interesting weeks ahead.
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Well I just finished The American by Henry James. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Now, don't get me wrong - I love me some American poets, but the short stories, meh.
