While we're waiting for the political season to end (and for the Hot Stove League to commence), here's something non-political to chew on. Because this is not a Red America or a Blue America. Because we're all real Americans who value literature, some of us more than others. If we're going to heal this country, we really need to have an open and frank discussion about elitist literature. ANYWAY, the communist blogger over at Higher Ed Marketing (it just sounds elitist) has posted his Top 5 novels of all time. (It's no accident that one of the novels is by a Russian author.) The genesis of this post had to do with this list of the 75 novels that all real men should read. (Sarah Palin has read ALL of them.) We left a comment over at Higher Ed with our Top 5 novel picks, and we suggest you do the same.
But since you're already here, we'll go ahead and reveal our picks in a minute. You should know that we like to go back and read the first sentences of all of our favorite books. We just grab them off the shelf as we're walking by and read the first sentence real quick, and then we put the book back and go to the bathroom or grab a beer from the fridge or whatever. Anyway, we're including the first sentence (or two) for each of these.
1. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.
2. Suttre, Cormac McCarthy
Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and streaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.
4. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range...come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River...
5. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
Honorable Mention -- Confederacy of Dunces, Brothers Karamazov, Lonesome Dove, any Kurt Vonnegut novel, and Raymond Carver's short stories.
Looking forward to seeing your picks.
P.S. To be honest, sometimes the beginning of a great novel doesn't grab you for whatever reason. Sometimes you're not sure why you're investing time in the work at hand. Then something incredible grabs you by the booboo and you become fully engaged. In Suttre, it's when the kid gets caught fucking the watermelon in the watermelon patch. In Sometimes a Great Notion, it's when Leland puts his head in the oven and blows up the kitchen but fails to kill himself. In Blood Meridian, which is a bloody hard read, the pay off doesn't come until near the very end, in the bar...the scene with the dancing bear. It's hard to breathe while reading that book, but when somebody yells, He shot the fucking bear, the whole novel is redeemed.
P.P.S. Maybe we'll list our Top 5 non-fiction books next week.
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3 comments:
I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve only read about 6 of the 75 books on that list and hadn’t heard of about half of them. I have recently purchased Confederacy of Dunces but have not read it, but I will move it to the top of the “To Read” list with your HM endorsement. Side note, books are expensive I should get a library card.
My heavily clichéd list (in no particular order):
Farwell to Arms, Hemingway
Slaughterhouse-five, Vonnegut
Catcher in the Rye, Salinger (I thought it was gonna be about baseball)
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
The Stranger, Albert Camus (The French don’t totally suck, they gave us Voltaire too)
The worst book that I was required to read in college: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I wish I was kidding; I had to look up the name to remember the title.
Catcher in the Rye is definitely worthy. In college, I had to read The Stranger -- in French. How elitist is that? I had to take something like five years of French, and I never quite managed to speak it without an Ozarks accent. It was a disaster. But French class was always full of hot girls.
P.S. A book called The Catcher Was a Spy will appear on my non-fiction list. That book is about baseball, and I highly recommend it.
FYI, the pink elitist at higher ed marketing's picks were of his five faves from that Esquire list of 75 novels all men should read -- not necessarily of my five all-time favorites. Jeez, I feel my views have been more misrepresented than Bill Ayres'.
"Geronimo Rex," by Barry Hannah, didn't make the Esquire list but would probably be in my top five, perhaps edging out "Invisible Man" (which, by the way, has much in common with Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" and Camus' "The Stranger," but is best read in its native tongue of English).
Good picks on your list, although I haven't ready anything by Cormac McCarthy (but have two of his books, lent to me by some other literary elitist, languishing on my bookshelf).
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