Posted on 07/07/2025 7:33:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber
It’s good to see freepers who don’t read past headlines actually are familiar with books
All sound suggestions here
I think I’ve read or perused all these
Roth is to me overrated and kind of pop lit
Nat Turner was a psycho butcher elevated by guilty stupid white people to Christ Floyd status
I’ll pass but decent black achievers never get elevated as such sadly
Instead fakirs and liars get sainthood
I lived four years in Faulkner land and knew two of his nephews well
He’s hard reading but his work stays in your head
Which u prefer is just taste
Absalom is gritty
Hemingway deserves something
I also like the early historical romantic writers some mentioned here
Pop lit
I think Hemmingway was not mentioned in the article because most of his novels were set in Africa, Europe or the Caribbean. The article was about “Americana” novels which excludes many of the good suggestions about science fiction or foreign settings. It is interesting hearing about all of the suggestions anyway.
There are some people on this site who hate the South and the Confederacy so much that they also think that Nat Turner is a hero. The irony is that if these same people were Nat's neighbors in 1831, their hero and his followers would have chopped them to bits too.
I lived four years in Faulkner land and knew two of his nephews well
Did they share any interesting anecdotes about their uncle? He was famous for his sharp tongue, starting with when he quit his job as a local postmaster, saying “I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp", to the various people in Hollywood that he alienated because he resented doing hackwork for second-rate movies to pay the bills.
I found Faulkner tedious to read and gave up. But then I find many fiction writers tedious. I wouldn’t read a Henry James story if you put a gun to my head.
My taste in American fiction ran more like:
Ambrose Bierce
Flannery O’Connor
Edgar Allen Poe
Ray Bradbury
HP Lovecraft
Zane Grey
“It’s good to see freepers who don’t read past headlines actually are familiar with books”
That one amused me.
“Although an avid reader I too have attempted and failed Moby Dick three times. Sorry, it’s boring to me!!”
Short version: The whale wins.
“My favorite book of all time is Catch 22.”
That’s a great book. So is the 1970 movie. Sly, dark humor.
Heller had been a WW2 B-25 bombardier the same as Yossarian. Someone, maybe it was Heller’s son, figured out that all of his characters are based on his fellow aviators. There’s a good story about that somewhere online but I have no idea where I ran across it.
Never read GWTW either. Although if the movie is anything to go by, Scarlett O’Hara is one of the greatest female characters ever.
No Zane Grey? Jack London? Laura Ingalls? Thomas Pynchon? Hemingway? Ayn Rand? Dr. Seuss?
Yes Zane Grey
If ray davies of the kinks wrote novels about England instead of songs
You feel like you’re really there in the late 1800s west with Zane
Clumsy analogy I know but Davies puts u there in song that same way
Mostly the drinking and staying up late in Rowan oak Writing
A nice place
He was a known night writer
I’ve made out under the cedars that line the drive
It’s close to campus
and the 20 acre govt pot field
Rusty and I think Buddy
Great nephews
They drove Saabs which was cool in late 70s
I should have read more in article
NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. ….The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes—some of which have a large sale.
- Ambrose Bierce
(My compliments to your Am. fiction list)
Back in the ‘70s I bought a copy of “The Collected Writings Of Ambrose Bierce”.
Everything he ever wrote.
Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge is of course his masterpiece, but much of his Civil War writing is excellent; Chickamauga being another one. Bierce was in the war and his stories had a undertone of sadness about them.
That book had an introduction by Clifton Fadimon, who was himself an interesting character:
https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/sep99/40a.html
“Jack London, Thomas Pynchon”
Gravity’s Rainbow held my rapt attention the first time that I read it. I think it’s probably still an excellent book but when I’ve tried reading it again my attention wanders. I’m pretty sure it’s not the book’s fault.
I like Bierce a lot, especially the comic writing such as “Negligible Tales” and “The Parenticide Club”.
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