American literature - recommendations needed!

[Mortis Anarchy]

Try Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. You will probably have to order it through a book store or online, because no one has ever heard of it...or at least not many.

Brown was a pioneer to American gothic literature. He influenced quite a few of the great American writers such as Poe, Hawthorne and Fuller. Its a bit dull in the beginning, but towards the middle and end, its pretty interesting. The story itself is great...I really enjoyed it.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is really good. One of my favorites...

I'd also have to say Ray Bradbury...genius. I read Fahrenheit 451 and it is one of the greatest books ever.

If you need help with Wieland let me know...we had to do a big essay type thing so if you need to do something like that, I can help you out. Hope this helps...oh, check out Vonnegut too.

[PeterL]

You might want to look at the Norton Anthology of American Literature. It probably has something by most of the American authors that one might encounter in studying literature.
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/naal7%5Fsplash/

[Marijn]

One of the greatest works in the English Literature (read: English as the language, not England: that's "British")"

Moby Dick by Herman Melville(1851)

It's more then the story of a man chasing a whale, as told by another, Ismael. Besides this outline, Melville describes precisely the ins and outs of the Nantucket Whaling. And some of its themes are breathtaking, if you take a look at the selfdestruction of not only Ahab, chasing a white(!) whale, but even of Ismael himself.

Nice idea: compare this story with another great tale:
The narrative of A. Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe(1838): Also a great journey by sea, to a continent almost unexplored at that time: Antarctica. And written down in almost the same period!

Good luck!

[stlukesguild]

You probably want Emerson, the great sage of American Literature. His essays are essential... and his poetry is not far behind. You should then get to Walt Whitman who certainly seems to be the first real giant of American poetry... perhaps the first American poet to impact poets in Europe (and elsewhere). Along with Whitman I would recommend Emily Dickinson. The image portrayed in many high-school classes of the sad, prim, Puritan locked away in her room and writing delicate poems which she tied with pink lace does nothing for the reality. Her poems are hard diamonds... like some of Milton's sonnets... and certainly precursors of the Modernism to come. Poe is probably a better author of short stories than of poetry. The great American novels of the 19th century would certainly include The Scarlet Letter/Hawthorne (although I prefer his short stories), Moby Dick/Melville (passages of visionary splendour contrasting with the slowly unfolding narrative), and Huckleberry Finn/Twain (perhaps the greatest tale of friendship since Cervante's Don and Sancho). Among the 20th century American poets the essential ones include T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, Anthony Hecht, Robert Frost, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Geoffrey Hill (British, living in the US), Charles Wright, and Anne Carson (Canadian). Among the essential novels I would include As I Lay Dying/Faulkner, Grapes of Wrath/Steinbeck, Look Homeward Angel/Thomas Wolfe, Miss Lonelyhearts/Nathaniel West, The Adventures of Augie March/Saul Bellow, Lolita/Nabakov, Myra Breckenridge/Gore Vidal, Zuckerman Bound/Philip Roth, Giles, Goat Boy/John Barth, Advertisements for Myself/Norman Mailer, V/Thomas Pynchon, Underworld/Don DeLillo and Blood Meridian/Cormac McCarthy (and the first and last of these suggestions, to my mind, are the greatest and truly representative of American literature/American Culture (although Lolita is certainly a brilliant view from an outsider). Among short stories, seek out those by Hemmingway, Sherwood Anderson, Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, and Donald Barthleme among others. Enjoy!

[Pensive]

I think Twain, Poe and Steinbeck are very good authors.

[stlukesguild]

Woolf and Fowles are both British. Haven't read The Magus but I did enjoy The Collector. I also loved Woolf's Orlando and her essays.

[MaryLupin]

I think the Norton Anthology is a great idea. If nothing else it will give you a broad overview of the periods associated with Am Lit. As you compile your reading list don't forget the non-Euro voices here in North America. I would include some Native American authors (Mourning Dove, N. Scott Momaday, Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Black Elk, Linda Hogan, Sherman Alexi, Lewis Owens, Gerald Vizenor) and at least a couple of Chicano/Chicana authors (Sandra Cisneros, Piri Thomas, Ana Castillo, Denise Chavez. Then there is the African-American (Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston) and Asian-American voice (Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Bharati Mukherjee). Each has a unique take on what it means to be here. Also don't forget the female voices--Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Meridel Le Sueur)

Of the Dead-White-Guys not mentioned above I would include Crane's Maggie and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie.

[stlukesguild]

...don't forget the non-Euro voices here in North America. I would include some Native American authors (Mourning Dove, N. Scott Momaday, Paula Gunn Allen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Black Elk, Linda Hogan, Sherman Alexi, Lewis Owens, Gerald Vizenor) and at least a couple of Chicano/Chicana authors (Sandra Cisneros, Piri Thomas, Ana Castillo, Denise Chavez. Then there is the African-American (Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston) and Asian-American voice (Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Bharati Mukherjee). Each has a unique take on what it means to be here. Also don't forget the female voices--Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Meridel Le Sueur)

Ah Political correctness in literature is still alive and well I know this may be opening a real can of worms... but with few exceptions does anyone really believe that any of these authors are on on the level the "Dead (or not so dead yet) White Guys"... and "Gals" (Dickinson, O'Conner, Carson)? As an artist and an art lover I have never had the least interest in concepts of egalitarianism in art. Quality is my only concern. I'm not going to invest my time reading a book or listening to a piece of music or studying a painting only because it was made by some "under-represented minority or cultural group. I have no need to assuage some guilt complex through art. There were far more painters and sculptors (and author and composers, for that matter) of real genius active in Italy during the Renaissance than is explained my their numbers alone. Indeed, how many 14th century Hungarians, Polish, Spanish, or even German artists can you name? Certainly there are cultural and economic reasons for this fact... but they aren't going to lead me to seek out obscure Russian and Portuguese painters in search of some sort of imaginary fairness. Again... I have never been interested in "using" art for political purposes. I read for enjoyment and turn to the works that I feel will offer the greatest enjoyment and I certainly do not rule out exploring art of other cultures. The majority of my library is non-Anglo (including Middle-Eastern, Asian, East European and Latin American). On the other hand, the idea of seeking out sub-categories of American writers seems absolutely absurd. Why not homosexual-Americans, cross-dressing Inuit-Irish Americans? autistic, vertically-challenged, French-Acadian Americans? There... I said it.

[applepie]

You may want to try some literature from the American Transcendentalism movement. Try Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. They were the three big names from that era. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/ Here is a link to a web page about the authors. There is a whole list of minor authors for the movement also. It also provides good information about what transcendentalism was.

[Mortis Anarchy]

Hmm...okay! How about some feminist American Literature?! Just teasing stlukesguild...Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is really quite good. And I really enjoyed Capote's In Cold Blood...

[MaryLupin]

Ah Political correctness in literature is still alive and well...Quality is my only concern...

Well...re the guilt thing...do you know the phrase "Thou dost protest too much"?

Anyway, I wasn't suggesting these names because of "political correctness". I was suggesting them because to understand the span of American literature one must understand all the supports that built the bridge. The literary concepts of rugged individualism, skepticism and meritocracy in American literature are far more meaningful when understood in the context of cross-cultural experience. I mean did you think that all white people did with Indians (as one example) is kill them? Did you think that white people were so dense that they learned nothing? Literature (in all its voices) traces what was learned, by whom and from whom. I mean Benjamin Franklin (you could argue quality here I think) wrote a letter to some colleagues about the trouble they were having coming up with a Constitution and in a fit of pique said something like If a bunch of "ignorant savages" (he was speaking of the Iroquois Confederation) can get it together surely we "civilized men" can write a Constitution! I suspect that understanding the importance and effect of Franklin's work (not to mention the Constitution) might be improved by understanding its sources. But of course you are free to remain pure and unsullied by actual history should you so choose.

[Nossa]

I'd go for John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Miller and Ray Bradbury (you might wanna try his short stories as well)

[aeroport]

*pops knuckles and takes a deep breath*

I agree with nearly all of the suggestions here, but stlukesguild and Mary Lupin are definitely addressing an important issue. The term "American Literature" is unfortunately (for one desiring to study fiction) not strictly confined to American literary art, but reaches over to things like slave narratives and the diaries of ministers and their wives and so forth. However, Anastasija, as you are asking for something to serve as some preparation for university literature studies, and if it is indeed American lit that you need to concern yourself with, that stuff will undoubtedly be there. I would like to comment on a few though: Mary Rowlandson is dull as hell, and viciously prejudiced, as many were (to exemplify, "...it was not difficult to be seen by those that knew the causeless enmity of these Barbarians against the English, and the malicious and revengeful spirit of these Heathen; so it soon proved dismal.") - I mean really, "causeless enmity"? After being needlessly attacked and so forth? Hers is a captivity narrative, but it somewhat undermines itself by telling the reader about being permitted to talk to her son while in captivity, and the general decency showed by the woman who had charge of her, etc. There are better ones, of course, but most of them I remember consisting basically of the following: "the savages attacked our village, which was God's judgment; they did, however, permit me to dress and my wife to collect the children, which was God's mercy; then they forced us to travel large uphill distances to wherever - Judgment; but they did carry the children when they were exhausted - Mercy; and so on.... Cabeza de Vaca is probably the way to go with the early explorers; he has a pretty fascinating experience with the natives, wherein he befriends some, and is almost killed by others. You may or may not have to mess with Columbus’s Journals. John Smith’s stuff is sort of an idealization of America, nothing special. John Winthrop was kind of important, insofar as it’s indicative of the sort of values the early Americans desired to uphold (check out “A Modell of Christian Charity” and maybe his journal), and Roger Williams is definitely worth taking a look at. You may have to deal with Cotton Mather (you have my sympathy if so) and almost certainly will encounter Jonathan Edwards (you would probably do well to at least look over his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon – standard fare). Mary Lupin mentioned Anne Bradstreet; she is indeed a pretty important figure – basically the first published poet in colonial America (and a woman, in addition). I seem to remember a lot of her early poems having to them the air of proving the poet to be the equal of a man (obscure allusions to “The Classics”, etc.), which obviously she does, but I remember liking her later stuff more. Anyway, an interesting lady, definitely worth the time. As far as this early stuff goes, probably the most interesting writer you’ll encounter is indeed Benjamin Franklin, who was of course quite a character. We had to do a large section of his Autobiography, along with some other short writings, and that was really a lot of fun. I don’t really remember Margaret Fuller much, but I do remember that I kind of liked it, not that that’s probably any help. Don’t be discouraged if it is indeed early American Lit that you’ll be studying, but American literature, as a rule, is really lame until you hit Emerson; then it suddenly develops into something pretty fantastic. I can’t say much about the African American writers ML mentions: the Interesting Narrative of Equiano's life I found to be anything but, and most of those others I don’t think we covered, except Frederick Douglass, whose Narrative of the Life of… I highly recommend, along with Harriett Ann Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. David Walker’s Appeal …to the Coloured Citizens of the World is one of the most important documents from the abolitionist movement (seems to be the first one with the nerve to accuse white America of its hypocrisy without sugaring the tone), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” is a really important piece that gets covered a lot. The more recent Native American authors ML mentions (Momaday, Silko, etc.), I find, tend to get covered more in composition classes than in literature, so you won’t be really unprepared if you just wait and see if they are assigned to you in class. I only had to read Amy Tan in sophomore composition, so you certainly won’t encounter her unless you take comp or a contemporary American lit class (she gave me a headache, but some people like her). Likewise with Zora Neale Hurston (and likewise), but she’s considered a bit more significant (perhaps simply because she’s dead, but who knows).

Anyway, once you’re at and past Emerson and Thoreau, as I was saying, stuff gets interesting! Washington Irving is lots of fun; he has some short stories you might want to look over (and a really amusing History of New York), as does Hawthorne ("Young Goodman Brown" is almost universally studied, so definitely take a look at that, and "The Birthmark" and "Rapaccini’s Daughter", both essentially about man trying to improve on nature, hold choice positions in the canon). Then Poe! He’s great fun, of course, and is certainly studied a lot. Also Melville’s “Bartleby” and, as ML mentioned, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
(By the way, this is all stuff I did in one course – Early American Literature – so I’m not just listing for the sake of listing.) Of course, just a little further down the road comes Henry James, whose Portrait of a Lady I highly recommend, and whose The American I kind of recommend. Obviously, you should not try to go read all of this stuff before class starts, but if you are going to be studying American Lit from the beginning, that is what you’ll be confronted with. And Dickenson and Whitman, totally. (Surely you remember the former; how could one forget the dashes!)
Incidentally, I totally agree with stlukesguild that the “Dead White Guys” have kind of flooded the quality artistic fiction market, at least in the old days, not that this doesn’t obviously have more to do with oppression and social pressure than merit, but there you have it. There is a reason a lot of these authors would only ever be read in an American Literature course, whereas the last half-dozen or so I mentioned have international importance. If the subjects of your studies begin only after 1800, you may count yourself fortunate!
If you really want to look at enjoyable stuff before class starts, Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville are the ones to seek, and I think there are online texts here from all of them (though maybe not Melville’s short stories…).
Hope that helps. Good luck, Anastasija!

[Captain Pike]

Stephen Crane is a great American author. He wrote stuff like The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie, Girl of the Streets. He died fairly young, but was a reporter most of his life. His fiction is really good. You can check them out right here on the litnet.

[MaryLupin]

*pops knuckles and takes a deep breath*

Woweee! Someone who knows Am Lit. Yahoo. Wanna talk? I love this stuff.

Hey and the Rowlandson thing...yes her tone (and her editor's tone) is exactly the point. What a trip it is studying captivity narratives to track the ways in which Native Americans and women were viewed and how the narratives came to be published in their current form. It says soooooo much about American cultural development. Did you know there were over 30 editions of Rowlandson's book? Captivity narratives were immensely popular and had a really important cultural function with respect to the invaders figuring out who they were in the face of what they were doing to take the land and hold onto their picture of themselves as civilized and godly folk. So interesting.

Have you read Mary Jemison's narrative?