Marilynne Robinson, for me. I don't have the words to say how impressive I find her, but there is a fine article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...fiction-gilead
If I had to pick a single novel it would be Housekeeping.
Marilynne Robinson, for me. I don't have the words to say how impressive I find her, but there is a fine article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...fiction-gilead
If I had to pick a single novel it would be Housekeeping.
Umberto Eco- The Name of the Rose- 1980
John Kennedy Toole- A Confederacy of Dunces- 1980
Mario Vargas Llosa- The War at the End of the World- 1981
James Merrill - The Changing Light at Sandover- 1982
José Saramago- Baltasar and Blimunda- 1982
Raymond Carver- Cathedral- 1983
Norman Mailer- Ancient Evenings- 1983
Milan Kundera- The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1984
John Updike- The Witches of Eastwick- 1984
Gore Vidal- Lincoln- 1984
David Mamet- Glengarry Glen Ross- 1984
John Ashbery- A Wave- 1984
Don DeLillo- White Noise- 1985
Gabriel García Márquez – Love in the Time of Cholera- 1985
Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian- 1985
José Saramago – O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis- 1986
Homero Aridjis- Persephone- tr. 1986
Jaroslav Seifert- The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert- 1986
Haruki Murakami – Norwegian Wood- 1987
W.S. Merwin- Selected Poems- 1988
Richard Wilbur- New and Collected Poems- 1988
Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day- 1989
Gabriel Garcia Marquez- The General in His Labyrinth- 1989
Thomas Pynchon - Vineland- 1990
Mario Vargas Llosa- In Praise of the Stepmother- 1990
Derek Walcott- Omeros- 1990
Anthony Hecht- The Transparent Man- 1990
Cees Nooteboom – The Following Story- 1991
John Ashbery- Flow Chart- 1991
José Saramago- The Gospel According to Jesus Christ- 1991
John Ashbery- Hotel Lautréamont- 1992
Cormac McCarthy- All the Pretty Horses
Anthony Burgess - A Dead Man in Deptford- 1993
W.G. Sebald – The Emigrants- 1993
Geoffrey Hill- New and Collected Poems- 1994
Cormac McCarthy- The Crossing- 1994
Philip Roth - Sabbath's Theater- 1995
José Saramago- Blindness- 1995
Anne Carson- Plainwater- 1995
Yehuda Amichai- Selected Poetry- 1996
Don DeLillo - Underworld- 1997
Thomas Pynchon- Mason & Dixon
Anne Carson- Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse- 1998
Geoffrey Hill- The Triumph of Love- 1998
Anthony Hecht- Flight Among the Tombs- 1998
Cormac McCarthy- Cities of the Plain- 1998
Seamus Heaney- Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996- 1998
Homero Aridjis- Eyes to See Otherwise/Ojos de otro mirar- 1998
Geoffrey Hill- Speech! Speech!- 2000
Richard Wilbur- Mayflies: New Poems and Translations- 2000
Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections- 2001
Anthony Hecht- The Darkness and the Light- 2001
W. G. Sebald – Austerlitz- 2001
Czesław Miłosz- New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001- 2003
Richard Wilbur- Collected Poems- 2004
Homero Aridjis- Solar Poems- 2005
Cormac McCarthy- No Country for Old Men- 2005
John Ashbery- Where Shall I Wander- 2005
Czesław Miłosz- Last Poems- 2006
Yehuda Amichai- Open Closed Open- 2006
W.S. Merwin- The Book of Fables- 2007
W.S. Merwin- The Collected Poems- 2013
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
It's good to see Gore Vidal's Lincoln on the list. Vidal became so well known for his more controversial books (not to speak of his catty essays) that his historical novels were a little neglected. What worked for me in Lincoln was the improbable marriage of Vidal's urbane wit (often expressed through the character of William Henry Seward) and Lincoln's own folksy charm. It's remarkable that such a well known story could be made as fresh and even compulsively readable as Vidal managed, but he succeeded with his familiar flair. It's too bad Gore Vidal has gone off to whatever the snarky version of Valhalla may be. I miss him.Originally Posted by stlukesguild
In my view Lincoln deserves to be read for generations, but I doubt it will be. Despite its lively tone, there is a certain static quality to the novel. The action mostly involves back room conversations. While engaging to those who enjoy politics, I wonder how appealing a generation that grew up on first person shooter video games will find a novel like Lincoln. It's also a sizable book, which may limit its accessibility to a generation that has been actively encouraged to throw attention span to the wind. But perhaps their children will turn those things around.
Other worthwhile (and somewhat neglected) Gore Vidal historical novels include Julian and Creation. Burr is fun (in fact, wickedly fun), and 1876, its sequel, is okay. I never read Empire so I can't comment on it. I hope future generations read these novels--but will future generations read novels at all?
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 11-22-2014 at 12:20 PM.
Mark Twain's comment on "classics": "A classic is a something everybody wants to have read, and nobody wants to read."
Speaking of Twain, I recently read "The Good Lord Bird" by James McBride (the 2013 National Book award winner) and it reminded me a little of Huckleberry Finn from a black perspective. It's an historical novel about John Brown.
(I wrote "an historical" instead of "a historical" only because the thread is about "classics".)
I do admire a trio of American novelists with the same first name, Richard: Ford, Powers, and Russo. All three of them have a good strong "voice," and none shrinks from adding a little levity into the mix when appropriate. Contrast them with the critically lionized Ian McEwan and Donna Tartt who aren't exactly a barrel of laughs. Same with C. McCarthy.
There is no American writer who suffered more from depression than Mark Twain; yet you could argue he is our funniest as well as our greatest novelist. Hemingway said of Twain: "All American literature begins with Huckleberry Finn."
If you only show the dark and unrelieved bitter side of life, you are omitting half of what makes us human; indeed, what makes the unbearable aspects slightly less hopeless. A tiny crack in the wall letting in a tiny ray of the light of humor is one of the reasons we consider otherwise nihilistic authors like Samuel Beckett to be great.
Last edited by AuntShecky; 11-22-2014 at 10:06 PM.
For me, Russo shows more than a little levity. His best work is utterly side splitting without losing any of its power or seriousness. The first lines of the quasi-autobiographical The Risk Pool shows an example of this trick (but there are many more):
My father, unlike so many of the men he served with, knew just what he wanted to do when the war was over. He wanted to drink and whore and play the horses.
Nobody's Fool, just as fine a novel, is even funnier (in fact, it's much funnier), and Straight Man, though not as thematically significant, in nevertheless the funniest of them all--for me, one of the funniest books ever written.
As far as Donna Tartt goes, I reread The Secret History this year (I hadn't read it since it came out) and got all the black comedy I had missed as a kid. The epilogue, which I remember finding long and anticlimactic the first time, was particularly hilarious. There was also a relatively minor character named Judy Poovy--a promiscuous airhead--who I found unnecessary and irritating on the first reading (the type was an all too fresh memory from college at the time). It turns out Judy Poovy is a riot--although strictly as a lampoon. That's why she is always turning up necessarily: she's comic relief. Judy Poovy is now my favorite character from The Secret History. And her section in the epilogue is the funniest part of the book.
But I agree about Cormac McCarthy: he has little in the way of humor. It doesn't really affect his books for me. I just change gears. But in principle the best writers--Shakespeare, Fielding, Dickens--do both.
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 11-23-2014 at 12:32 AM.
Unfortunately or fortunately, (opinions differ) American writers can't stop themselves from participating in two home-grown literary traditions: the voyage of the damned (after Melville) and the journey of youth (after Twain). Blood Meridian is probably the definitive 20th century version of the voyage of the damned, with Charles Johnson's The Middle Passage laying claim to the "black perspective" (to use your expression). Philipp Meyer recently gave the voyage of the damned another spin with The Son (a book I should have included in my original list). And The Pequod sails on.
Everyone wants a piece of the Twain action, too. But it's striking to me that The Good Lord Bird, like the Melville successors I mentioned, is set in the 19th century. It makes me wonder if a degree of nostalgia has settled on these literary traditions--or if not nostalgia, then at a least safe distancing of the reader from the book's real issues by using a remote setting in time. But neither Moby Dick nor Huckleberry Finn were historical novels as published. Why should their successors be of any less immediate relevance to their readers? Are the voyage of the damned and the journey of youth becoming mere tourist excursions?
All of which reminds me of a strange novel I read recently called Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks (better known for Continental Drift and The Sweet Hereafter). Lost Memory of Skin is a Bildungsroman about a nameless 22-year-old sex offender who, when even younger, was arrested after turning up at the house of an underaged girl who may never have existed. Although the story is sometimes shocking, there is nothing lurid about it. The boy, when we first meet him, is mostly confused about the course his life has taken: neglected to the point of abandonment by his parents; addicted to hardcore internet pornography since childhood; still a virgin. He is living with an ankle bracelet now, trying to survive in a shantytown of other sex offenders located beneath a Florida overpass--one of the only places the conditions of his parole will permit him to live.
As the boy makes the torturous journey of owning his troubled life (befriended by a sociology professor with issues of his own along the way), he disappears for a time into the rivers of the Florida swamps. At some point during that part of the book, I seemed to notice Banks, who claims Twain as his greatest influence, winking at the reader. "Oh my God!," I said to myself when I finally got it. "He's Huckleberry Finn!"
The analogy may be offensive to those who love Twain's book (and in fact, it is not a very comfortable one), but it suggests a more versatile use of the literary tradition than less immediate period pieces, however well framed, are able to provide. After all, Tom and Huck's world was hardly a safe one. Has the journey of youth improved so much over the years? And shouldn't novels tell the truth about it in any case?
Added: It occurred to me after writing this that some of Philipp Meyer's The Son takes place in the 20th and even 21st century. But the part that follows the Melville/McCarthy tradition is set in the 19th. The rest, oddly enough, follows Edna Ferber's Giant.
Last edited by Pompey Bum; 11-23-2014 at 10:10 PM.
1 woman
Aunt Shecky, you must read Helen DeWitt. Either The Last Samurai or Lightning Rods (TLS is my favourite). She is humorous and very clever.
Want to know what I think about books? Check out https://biisbooks.wordpress.com/
I agree ladderandbucket. Housekeeping is an excellent novel. Am waiting (impatiently) for Lila from my local library.
Last edited by TheFifthElement; 11-23-2014 at 10:39 AM.
Want to know what I think about books? Check out https://biisbooks.wordpress.com/
1 woman
I read for pleasure, not out of some misguided sense of duty to rectify socio-economic/racial/gender/nationalistic biases.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Good post, Pompey. "Huckleberry Finn", though, is SOMETHING of a historical novel -- at least, it is not set in what was then the present. It was published in 1884 -- and depicts a time before the Civil War. It is probably set in the era of Clemens' childhood, in the 1840s -- 40 years prior to the novel's publication. "War and Peace: was published only 50 years after the era it depicts.
"The Good Lord Bird" is a historical novel in that it features real-life people: John Brown, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman and others. "Finn" does not.
It was only a few years ago that I realised I mainly read male authors, and when I think about it I mainly listen to male bands. This was a surprise to me, but then in bookshops you often only need to look at the book cover to guess the target audience and the sex of the author - not so much I crime but in general fiction.1 woman
My wife and I read different things and I wonder how widespread that is.
Few people think that by reading the proper novels they can "rectify socio-economic/racial/gender/nationalistic biases." How would that work? In addition, most novel-readers "read for pleasure" (unless they are high-school students, reading to pass their English Lit. classes). Nonetheless, it's at least mildly interesting that your list contains works by only one woman. Why do you think that is? Random chance? An artistic taste and sensibility that finds more in common with that of other men than with that of women? Men are simply better novelists, poets, and playwrights than women?1 woman
I read for pleasure, not out of some misguided sense of duty to rectify socio-economic/racial/gender/nationalistic biases.
I glanced at the Booker Awards list and the National Book Awards list: both lists have 11 female winners in the past 30 years (I think -- some authors go by initials, and others by ambiguous first names like "Shirley" or "Hillary", and I don't know the gender of all of them). Since 1984, 7 women have been Nobel Laureates in literature (there are fewer than 30 winners, because some years no award is given). So, by comparison, stlukes' list is male dominated. 35% of the winners on these lists are women; 2% on stlukes' list.
p.s. Paulclem gives one possible explanation, which was cross-posted with the above.
Last edited by Ecurb; 11-23-2014 at 03:53 PM.
You spoke too hastily. My comment was not a criticism of perceived gender biases in your list - in fact I believe you chose that list objectively and fairly. I was merely lamenting the fact that it is rather difficult to think of well known and respected modern female authors.1 woman
I read for pleasure, not out of some misguided sense of duty to rectify socio-economic/racial/gender/nationalistic biases.
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