American litterature : what should I read ?

[Manu Chao]

Even if I'm against a lot of American policies, I still can be open-minded, eh...

I enjoy reading, but I never really looked much into American litterature (good one), except that I know Hemingway was an American writer, I don't know much of it. What would you recommend to me ?

cheers

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=HJ Clandestino=

"Hell is other people" - Jean-Paul Sartre

"There's no shame in preferring happiness." - Albert Camus

"Let us be realists... let us insist on the impossible". - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

"Give in to temptation before it goes away" - ?picure

 

[misterboo]

The best American novel i have ever read is 'Underworld' by Don DeLillo. It's absolutely mammouth, 827 pages, and it's a people's history of the 20th Century told through the eyes of the people that epics usually leave out. It has extrodianry breadth and was praised by critics on its release. It came out at the end of the last century, when a lot of writers were taking their last chance to write the great American novel. It's my personal favourite, but really, like the 19th Century belonged to English writers, the 20th Century belonged to American writers, so there are a lot of great books that i could imagine being recommended in this thread from the past 100 years (On The Road, Grapes Of Wrath etc etc). Happy reading!

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Mock the silence while you can.

 

[Manu Chao]

Thank you very much. I'll take notice of that book next time I go to a library.

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=HJ Clandestino=

"Hell is other people" - Jean-Paul Sartre

"There's no shame in preferring happiness." - Albert Camus

"Let us be realists... let us insist on the impossible". - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

"Give in to temptation before it goes away" - ?picure

 

[The Wanderer]

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Alan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, T.S. Eliot

 

[martha]

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

My Antonia By Willa Cather

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Non-fiction:
John Wesley Powell's account of his trip down the Colorado River in 1869

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...a highway with no one on it, a treasure just to look upon it...

"The skeletal structure of your foot is not normal." -- my podiatrist 8-6-01

 

[Naya]

Salut Manu !

I recommend "I know this much is true" by Wally Lamb. It is an engrossing novel about mental disorder and the lives that it affects.

It's about 900 pages long but I wasn't able to put it down...It is so well written and there is such a variety of interesting and complex characters.

 

[Trash Can]

God.. I know this is NOT "classical literature", but I'm reading "Me Talk Pretty One Day", by David Sedaris right now, and it is HILARIOUS!

...just thought I'd share!

Otherwise... I have to go back to my high school days and say.... "To Kill A Mockingbird'?????... I don't knowwwwwwwww

 

[blueeyes]

Oh please, I'm begging you read "The Grapes of Wrath" by Steinbeck. He has a brilliant rhythm and some of the longer passages, (especially one of human nature) are just breathtaking. Steinbeck is also brilliant for demonstrating not only the effects of prejudice on an oppressed group, but HOW the prejudice itself is started in the minds of the oppressors. I read it and I've never felt more spoiled in my life. Great book, one of my favorites.
Bluey

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"Yeah, Bono's a nice bunch of guys" - The Edge.