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Blonde / Joyce Carol Oates / 2000

Above: the British paperback cover (If you want a copy of this version, search ISBN 9781841153728)

Quotes (As always, for educational/entertainment purposes only! Full disclaimer at rllibrary.tumblr.com )

"Look, sweetie. You're making too much of it. You've seen a boy's- a man's- thing, haven't you?"

Elsie was so crude and blunt, Norma Jeane laughed, startled.

She nodded, just barely.

"Well, you know- it gets bigger. You know that."

Again, just barely, Norma Jeane nodded.

"It has to do with them looking at you. It makes them want to- you know- 'make love.'"

(130)

Monroe was a natural even as a girl. She had brains but operated from instinct. I believe she could see herself through the camera eye. It was more powerfully, more totally sexual to her than any human connection...Her problem wasn't she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn't a blonde and she wasn't dumb.

(232)

And the director is thinking, This girl is the first actress of the twenty or more he's auditioned for the role (including the black-haired actress he's probably going to cast) who has caught on to the significance of the scene's opening, the first who seems to have given the role any intelligent thought and who has actually read the entire script (or so she claims) and formed some sort of judgment on it. The girl opens her eyes, sits up slowly and blinking, wide-eyed, and says in a whisper, "Oh, I- must have been asleep." Is she acting, or has she actually been asleep? Everyone's uncomfortable. There is something strange here.

(242)

She was fascinating to watch. Like a mental patient, maybe. Not acting. No technique. She'd put herself to sleep and out would come this other personality that was her yet also not-her.

People like that, you can see why they're drawn to acting. Because the actor, in her role, always knows who she is. All losses are restored.

(243)

Where at her audition Norma Jeane had spoken Angela's lines with seeming spontaneity, naively lying on the floor, now on her feet she was paralyzed with fear at the enormity of the risk before her. What if you fail. If you fail. You will fail. Then you must die. If fired from the film she would be obliged to destroy herself, yet she was deeply in love with Cass Chaplin and hoped one day to have his child- "How can I leave him?" And there was her obligation to Gladys in the hospital at Norwalk. "How can I leave her? Mother has no one but me."

(253)

"Norma, for Christ's sake. Your director will lead you step by step through your scenes, that's what movies are. Not real acting, like the theater; not where you're on your own. Why work so hard? Turn yourself inside out? You're sweating like a horse. Why does this matter so much?"

The question hovered between them. Why does it matter so much? So much!

Knowing it was absurd, what she could not explain to her lover- Because I don't want to die, I'm in terror of dying. I can't leave you. Because to fail in her acting career was to fail at the life she'd chosen to justify her wrongful birth. And even in her mildly deranged state she understood the illogic of such a statement.

(254)

You just can't take your eyes off her. Cass and me, we'd see Niagara a dozen times.... It's because Rose is us. In our souls. She's cruel in ways we are. She's without any morality, like an infant. She's always looking at herself in the mirror just like we'd look if we looked like her. She's stroking herself, she's in love with herself. Like all of us! But it's supposed to be bad...

(347)

It was like only the camera knew how to make love to her the way she needed, and we were voyeurs just hypnotized watching.

(347)

About midway in the movie, when Rose is mocking and laughing at her husband for not being able to get it up, Cassie says to me, "This isn't Norma. This is not our little Fishie." And the hell of it was, it wasn't. This Rose was a total stranger. This was nobody we'd laid eyes on before. Out here, people thought "Marilyn Monroe" was just playing herself. Every movie she made, no matter that it was different from the others, they'd find a way to dismiss it- "That broad can't act. She's just playing herself." But she was a born actress. She was a genius, if you believe in genius. Because Norma didn't have a clue who she was, and she had to fill this emptiness in her. Every time she went out, she had to invent her soul. Other people, we're just as empty; maybe in fact everybody's soul is empty, but Norma was the one to know it.

That was Norma Jeane Baker when we knew her. When we were "the Gemini." Before she betrayed us- or maybe we betrayed her. A long time ago, when we were young.

(347-8)

So strange! The audience adored Lorelei Lee. They liked Dorothy, too- Jane Russell was wonderfully warm, attractive, sympathetic, and funny- but clearly the audience preferred Lorelei Lee. Why? Such rapt, smiling faces. Marilyn Monroe was a winner, and everyone loves a winner.

Oh the irony was, surely these people all knew: Marilyn didn't exist.

I can't fail. If I fail I must die. This had been Marilyn's secret no one knew.

(429)

The fairy tale. The Blond Actress would herself come to believe in this fairy tale a man had written for her as a love offering. She would come to believe not just that luminous Roslyn could save the small herd of wild mustangs but that wild mustangs might be saved. These horses, only six remaining of how many hundreds and one of them a foal. A foal galloping anxiously beside its mother. Lassoed and roped by the desperate men, yet they might be saved from death. From the butcher's knife and being ground into dog food. Here is no romance of the West or even of manly ideals and courage but a melancholy "realism" to thrust into an American audience's faces! Roslyn alone would run into the desert in an action blocked out with care by the Blond Actress and her director that would allow her to express, at the top of her lungs, her fury at manly cruelty. (But I don't want close-ups. Not of me screaming.") She would scream at the men Liars! Killers! Why don't you kill yourselves! She would scream in the emptiness of the Nevada desert until her throat was raw. Until the interior of her sore-pocked mouth throbbed with pain. Until more capillaries burst in her straining eyes. Until her heart pounded close to bursting. I hate you! Why don't you die! She may have been screaming at those men of her life whose faces she retained or she may have been screaming at those men lacking faces, constituting the vast world beyond the perimeters of the crimson velvet backdrop and the blinding-bright photographer's lights. She may have been screaming at H who had eluded her charm. She may have been screaming into a mirror. She'd told Doc Fell she would not need any medication that morning (after even the stupor of the phenobarbital night) and aroused now to pity, horror, rage by the spectacle of the trapped horses she had not needed any drug. She believed she would never again need any drugs. What power! What joy! She would return to Hollywood alone, and she would buy a house, her first house, and she would live alone, and she would do only work she wanted to do; she would be the great actress she had a chance of becoming; she would no longer be trapped by men; she would no longer be cheated of her truest self. The Blond Actress was expressing anger, rage. At last. Except (all observers would claim) it wasn't the simulated expression of anger and rage but genuine passion ripping through the woman's body like an electric current.

#marilynmonroe #novels #literature #joycecaroloates #quotes #movies #blonde #books #fiction #historicalfiction

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Shelfie 2

I read a lot of classical books, like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though...I'd rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye. - Holden

The only thing old Phoebe liked was when Hamlet patted this dog on the head. She thought that was funny and nice, and it was. What I'll have to do is, I'll have to read that play. The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phony every minute. - Ibid.

#shelfie #penguin classics #quotes #books #jd salinger #thecatcherintherye #authors #american literature #victorian literature #japanese literature #greek tragedy #shakespeare #guitar #natsume soseki #old thomas hardy

Shelfie

#books #bookshelf #shelfie #hemingway #raymond carver #great gatsby #j. d. salinger #short stories #don delillo #david foster wallace #author #literature #penguin books

Probably just a coincidence

Lately, I have heard about these books a lot, and I just noticed a connection!

#streetsahead #books

Goals

A note on list:

Arranged in chronological order, from the ancient Greeks to 2018. They are basically grouped by nationality, era, and in some cases, theme or genre- the way they were grouped in the college courses that I had the pleasure to read some of them for. You can also find a scrambled version of the same list at goodreads.com/larmer, if you view the shelf called "english-majors-library" and set it to "infinite scroll" to view it all on one page.

A note on ISBN:

Below each title, I have included the ISBN (the number that begins with 978). Of course, that means that all you have to do is copy and paste that code into a search bar on whatever site you buy your books from (amazon.com, bookdepository.com, etc.), to find the edition that the list refers to.

Why did I do something as crazy as include the ISBN for each book? For one thing, some of these editions include introductions and essays that have helped me think about them more deeply, or think about them in new ways, which has allowed me to enjoy them more.

Perhaps more importantly, some of these ISBN's simply refer to the edition with the coolest cover. To me, there is something special about the look of a shelf where most of the books match, for example, a row of Penguin Classics. Or at least, when the spines of books by the same author match. When I was a kid, I read series. Now I feel that the best books ever written form their own series. It seems right that they should fit together physically, as well. The ISBN's are there just in case you feel the same way.

Ancient Greeks

Homer (Greek, c. 800 BCE)

- The Iliad (c. 760-10 BCE)

/ Fagles translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140445923

- The Odyssey (c. 750-00 BCE)

/ Fagles translation, Penguin Classics, 9780143039952

Hesiod (Greek, c. 700 BCE)

- Works and Days (c. 700 BCE)

/ Stallings translation, Penguin Classics, 9780141197524

Aeschylus (Greek, 525-426 BCE)

- Prometheus Bound and Other Plays

/ Vellacott translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140441123

Sophocles (Greek, c. 497-406 BCE)

- The Three Theban Plays:

Antigone (c. 441 BCE)

Oedipus the King [aka Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus Rex] (c. 429 BCE)

Oedipus at Colonus (406 BCE)

/ Fagles translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140444254

Plato (Greek, c. 428-348 BCE)

- The Republic (370 BCE)

/ Bloom translation, 9780465094080, or Rowe translation, Penguin Classics, 9780141442433

Aristotle (Greek, 384-322 BCE)

- Nicomachean Ethics (340 BCE)

/ Beresford translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140455472

- Poetics (335 BCE)

/ Heath translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140446364, or Hutton translation, Norton Critical Editions, 9780393938869

Ancient Romans

Horace (Roman, 65-8 BCE)

- The Epistles

Epistularum liber primus [First Book of Letters] (20 BCE)

Epistularum liber secundus [Second Book of Letters] (14 BCE)

(Contains Ars Poetica [The Art of Poetry])

/ Ferry translation, 9780374528522

Virgil (Roman, 70-19 BCE)

- The Aeneid (29-19 BCE)

/ Fagles translation, Penguin Classics, 9780143106296

Ovid (Roman, 43 BCE- 18 CE)

- Metamorphoses (8 CE)

/ Raeburn translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140447897

Ancient Eastern Classics

Lao Tzu (Laozi) (Chinese, born 6th to 5th century BCE, died 531 BCE)

- Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) (6th century BCE)

/ Lau translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140441314, or Mitchell translation, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 9780061142666

Anonymous (Indian)

- The Upanishads (800-400 BCE)

/ Mascaró translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140441635

Anonymous (Indian)

- Bhagavad Gita (part of the Mahabharata) (5th-2nd century BCE)

/ Mascaró translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140449181, or Mitchell translation, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 9780609810347

Buddhist Scriptures (3rd century BCE)

/ Lopez edit, Penguin Classics, 9780140447583

Roots of Yoga

/ Mallinson and Singleton translation, Penguin Classics, 9780241253045

Joseph Campbell, Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal / 9781608681099

World Literature: The Middle Ages

One Thousand and One Nights

(Arabic compilation of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales. Earliest known fragment dated to 9th century, first reference to title appears in 12th century)

- The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights

/ Burton translation, Modern Library Classics, 9780812972146

Snorri Sturluson (Icelandic, 1179-1241)

- The Prose Edda (1220)

/ Byock Translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140447552

Chrétien de Troyes (French, 1135?-1185?)

- Arthurian Romances

/ Kibler and Carroll translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140445213

Wolfram von Eschenbach (German, c. 1160/80 – c. 1220)

- Parzival

/ Hatto translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140443615

Major English Authors I: Medieval to Renaissance

[Note: I did not enjoy Beowulf or the Canterbury Tales, so I omitted them from this list]

Thomas Malory (English, c. 1415-1471)

- Le Morte d'Arthur (completed 1469-70, published 1485)

/ Norton Critical Edition, 9780393974645

Christopher Marlowe (English, 1564-93)

- Doctor Faustus (c. 1589, or c. 1593)

/ Norton Critical Edition, 9780393977547

The Bible: Authorized King James Version (1611)

/ Oxford World’s Classics, 9780199535941

See also:

- The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible, by Harold Bloom

John Milton (English, 1608-74)

- Paradise Lost (1667)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140424393

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (English, 1564-1616)

Comedy:

- A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-6)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396668

- The Merchant of Venice (1596-7)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396545

Tragedy:

- Romeo and Juliet (1595-6)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396477

- Julius Caesar (1599)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396538

- Hamlet (1600-1)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396507

- Othello (1604)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396514

- King Lear (1605)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396460

- Macbeth (1606)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396316

- Antony and Cleopatra (1606-7)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396293

Romance:

- The Tempest (1611)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141396309

See also:

- Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, by Harold Bloom

/ Fourth Estate, 9780007292844

World Literature: The "Aristocratic Age"

Dante (Italian, 1265-1321)

- The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (1308-20)

/ Kirkpatrick translation, Penguin Classics, 9780141197494

Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish, 1547-1616)

- Don Quixote (1605- Part 1, 1615- Part 2)

/ Grossman translation, Vintage Classics, 9780099469698

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German, 1749-1832)

- The Sufferings of Young Werther (1774)

/ Corngold translation, Norton Critical Editions, 9780393935561

- Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796)

/ ? [Notable for being the first Bildungsroman. Still waiting for a good translation.]

- Faust, Parts I (1808) and II (1832)

/ Arndt translation, Norton Critical Editions, 9780393972825

Major English Authors II: Neoclassical to Romantic

Paradise Lost (above) is probably the best and most influential work of the Neoclassical period, and Milton's Satan becomes both Blake's messiah and a foundation for the Byronic hero.

William Blake (English, 1757-1827)

- Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789-94)

/ Oxford Paperbacks, 9780192810892

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93)

/ Oxford Paperbacks, 9780192811677

George Gordon, Lord Byron (English, 1788-1824)

- Lord Byron: The Major Works

(See "Prometheus," Manfred, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Mazeppa, Don Juan)

/ Oxford World’s Classics, 9780199537334

See also:

- Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame by Benita Eisler

/ Vintage, 9780679740858

Percy Bysshe Shelley (English, 1792-1822)

- "Ozymandias" (1818)

- Prometheus Unbound (1820)

- Adonaïs (1821)

- A Defence of Poetry (1821)

See also: Keats, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Mary Shelley (English, 1797-1851)

- Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

/ Norton Critical Edition, 9780393927931

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (English, 1775-1817)

- Northanger Abbey (completed 1803, published 1818)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439792

- Pride and Prejudice (1813)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439518

- Emma (1815)

/ Penguin Classics, 978-0141439587

Novel: Victorian

Charles Dickens (English, 1812-1870)

- David Copperfield (1849-50)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140439441

Emily Brontë (English, 1818-48)

- Wuthering Heights (1847)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439556

George Eliot (English, 1819-80)

- The Mill on the Floss (1860)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439624

- Middlemarch (1871-72)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439549

- Daniel Deronda (1876)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140434279

Thomas Hardy (English, 1840-1928)

- The Return of the Native (1878)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140435184

- The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439785

- Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) / Penguin Classics, 9780141439594 *

Victorian Poetry

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (English, 1809-92)

- "The Lotos-Eaters" (1833)

- "Ulysses" (1833)

- "In Memoriam A.H.H." (1849)

Robert Browning (English, 1812-89)

- Selected Poems

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140437263

Thomas Hardy, Selected Poems

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140436990

W.B. Yeats (Irish, 1865-1939)

- "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" (1899)

See also (though mostly from the Modern era):

- The Collected Poems

/ Finneran edit, Scribner, 9780684807317

Late Victorian-Edwardian Era/ Gothic and Grotesque/ Horror, Gender, and Sexuality/ Freud and Fiction

E. T. A. Hoffmann (Prussian, 1776-1822)

- The Golden Pot and Other Tales

/ Robertson translation, Oxford World’s Classics, 9780199552474

"The Sandman" (1816)

See also:

Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny"

- The Uncanny

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437476

Edgar Allan Poe (American, 1809-1849)

- The Portable Edgar Allan Poe

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039914

“Berenice”

“Ligeia”

“The Fall of the House of Usher”

“The Oval Portrait”

“The Black Cat”

“The Imp of the Perverse”

“William Wilson”

See also:

- Jonathan Haidt, "The Divided Self" in The Happiness Hypothesis

Sheridan Le Fanu (Irish, 1814-73)

- In a Glass Darkly

/ Oxford World’s Classics, 9780199537983

"Green Tea"

"Carmilla"

Bram Stoker (Irish, 1847-1912)

- Dracula (1897)

/ Norton Critical Editions, 9780393970128

Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish, 1850-94)

- Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

/ Norton Critical Editions, 9780393974652

Oscar Wilde (Irish, 1854-1900)

- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

/ Norton Critical Editions, 9780393696875

Sigmund Freud (Austrian, 1856-1939)

- The Psychology of Love

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437469

"Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria (Dora)"

Three Essays on Sexual Theory

On the Sexual Theories of Children

"Contributions to the Psychology of Erotic Life"

‘A Child is being Beaten’

On Female Sexuality

[Note: I realize that Freud's theories are no longer considered accurate, but I enjoy his imagination. If you want to read about the psychology of love/sex from an evidence-based perspective, check out The Evolution of Desire, by David Buss]

- The Uncanny

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437476

Screen Memories

The Creative Writer and Daydreaming

Family Romances

Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood

The Uncanny

Arthur Machen (Welsh, 1863-1947)

- "The Great God Pan" (1894)

(“Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language.” - Stephen King)

/ Late Victorian Gothic Tales, Oxford World’s Classics, 9780199538874

- Vernon Lee, "Dionea," also in the above collection

Algernon Blackwood (English, 1869-1951)

- Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142180150

“The Insanity of Jones”

“The Glamour of the Snow”

“The Man Whom the Trees Loved”

“Ancient Sorceries”

Daphne du Maurier (English, 1907-89)

- Rebecca (1937)

/ Virago Modern Classics, 9781844080380

- The Birds and Other Stories (1952)

/ Virago Modern Classics, 9781844080878

"The Birds"

Robert Bloch (American, 1917-94)

- Psycho (1959)

See also: Alfred Hitchcock's adaptations of the above, and more:

- Rebecca (1940)

- Rope (1948)

- Rear Window (1954)

- Vertigo (1958)

- Psycho (1959)

- The Birds (1963)

- Marnie (1964)

See also:

- François Truffaut, Hitchcock

- Donald Spoto, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock

More films with similar themes:

- Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)

- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

- Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)

- The Twilight Zone (Original Series, 1959)

"Perchance to Dream" (Season 1, Episode 9)

"The Hitch-Hiker" (Season 1, Episode 16)

"Nightmare as a Child" (Season 1, Episode 29)

"A Stop at Willoughby" (Season 1, Episode 30)

"Long Distance Call" (Season 2, Episode 22)

"What's in the Box" (Season 5, Episode 24)

American Literature: 19th Century, Pre-Civil War

Washington Irving (American, 1783-1859)

- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143107538

James Fenimore Cooper (American, 1789-1851)

- The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140390247

Ralph Waldo Emerson (American, 1803-82)

- The Portable Emerson

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143107460

"The American Scholar" (1832)

"Self-Reliance" (1841)

"Compensation" (1841)

"The Over-Soul" (1841)

"Circles" (1841)

"The Poet" (1844)

"Experience" (1844)

Henry David Thoreau (American, 1817-62)

- The Portable Thoreau

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143106500

"Civil Disobedience" (1849)

Walden (1854)

Frederick Douglass (American, 1818-95)

- The Portable Frederick Douglass

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143106814

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)

Edgar Allan Poe (American, 1809-1849)

- The Portable Edgar Allan Poe

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039914

Nathaniel Hawthorne (American, 1804-1864)

- Selected Tales and Sketches (1830-1850)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140390575

Selections of the selections:

"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832)

"Young Goodman Brown" (1835)

"Wakefield" (1835)

"The Minister's Black Veil" (1836)

"Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844)

A selection that is not included in the above volume:

"Feathertop" (1852)

- The Scarlet Letter (1850)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143107668

- The Marble Faun (1860)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140390773

Herman Melville (American, 1819-91)

- Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437247

American Literature: 19th Century, Civil War and After

Walt Whitman (American, 1819-92)

- Leaves of Grass and Other Writings

/ Norton Critical Editions, 9780393974966

Emily Dickinson (American, 1830-96)

- The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

/ Little, Brown & Company, 9780316184137

Mark Twain (American, 1835-1910)

- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143107330

- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143107323

- Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140434170

Ambrose Bierce (American, 1842-circa 1914)

- Tales of Soldiers and Civilians: And Other Stories

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140437560

Henry James (American, mostly writing in Britain, 1843-1916)

See Novel: Modern British, below.

Kate Chopin (American, 1850-1904)

- The Awakening [1899] and Selected Stories

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437322

Novel: Modern British

Terry Eagleton, "What is a Novel?" in The English Novel: An Introduction

Peter Childs, “Words, Words, Words: Modern, Modernism, Modernity”

Thomas Hardy (English, 1840-1928)

- Jude the Obscure (1895)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140435382

Henry James (American, mostly writing in Britain, 1843-1916)

Novels:

- What Maisie Knew (1897)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441375

- The Ambassadors (1903)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441320

Novellas:

- Daisy Miller (1878)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441344

- The Turn of the Screw (1898)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141389752

See also:

James' short stories:

"The Jolly Corner" (also collected in the above volume)

"The Real Right Thing"

/ Collected in The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories: from Washington Irving to Lydia Davis, Edited by Kasia Boddy, Penguin Classics, 9780141194424

Joseph Conrad (Polish-British, 1857-1924)

- Heart of Darkness (1899)

/ Norton Critical Edition, 9780393264869

- Lord Jim (1900)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441610

- Nostromo (1904)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441634

E. M. Forster (English, 1879-1970)

- Howards End (1910)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141182131

- A Passage to India (1924)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441160

James Joyce (Irish, 1882-1941)

- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

/ In The Portable James Joyce, which also includes the short story collection, Dubliners (1914), 9780140150308

- Ulysses (1922)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141182803

- Finnegans Wake (1939)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141183114

See also:

- Re Joyce, by Anthony Burgess (author of A Clockwork Orange)

- James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Study, by Stuart Gilbert

- A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, by Joseph Campbell (author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Power of Myth, etc.)

- Joyce’s Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake, by John Bishop

D. H. Lawrence (English, 1885-1930)

- Sons and Lovers (1913)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441443

- Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141441498

Essays/Prefaces/Letters: Contexts for Course Novels

Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884)

http://virgil.org/dswo/courses/novel/james-fiction.pdf

Thomas Hardy, Preface to the First Edition [of Jude the Obscure] (1895)

Joseph Conrad, Preface to "The Nigger of the Narcissus” (1897)

Thomas Hardy, Postscript [to Preface] (1912)

Ford Madox Ford, “On Impressionism” (1913)

D.H. Lawrence, Letter to Edward Garnett (1912)

Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1919)

---, "Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Brown" (1923)

See also:

- Steven Pinker, "Toward a Consilient Study of Literature"

- John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, "Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics"

- Joseph Carroll, Literary Darwinism

/ Routledge, 9780415970143

- Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal

/ Mariner, 9780544002340

- Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism

/ Ockham's Razor, 9780983258407

Louise M. Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory has been most informative to my understanding of what reading consists of.

Louise M. Rosenblatt (American, 1904-2005)

- Literature as Exploration (1938)

/ [Out of print?]

- The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (1978, 1994)

/ Southern Illinois University Press, 9780809318056

This brief article by Saul Bellow has also been enlightening for me:

"The Search for Symbols, a Writer Warns, Misses All the Fun and Fact of the Story"

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/bellow-symbol.html

Harold Bloom, continued:

- The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994)

/ Little, Brown & Company, 9781573225144

- Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998)

/ Fourth Estate, 9780007292844

- Novelists and Novels: A Collection of Critical Essays (2007)

/ Chelsea House, 9780791097274

- The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible (2011)

/ Yale University Press, 9780300187946

- The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life (2011)

/ Yale University Press, 9780300181449

Composition

Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

/ Penguin, 9780143127796

Creative Writing

John Gardner, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers / Vintage, 9780679734031

Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces

/ Yogi Impressions, 9789382742616

Alice LaPlante, The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing

/ W. W. Norton and Company, 9780393337082

Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry

/ W. W. Norton and Company, 9780393316544

American Short Story, 20th Century

Sherwood Anderson (American, 1876-1941)

- Winesburg, Ohio (1919)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140186550

Ernest Hemingway (American, 1899-1961)

- The Short Stories: The First Forty-Nine Stories with a Brief Preface by the Author

/ Scribner, 9780684803340

John Cheever (American, 1912-82)

- Collected Stories

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099748304

Bernard Malamud (American, 1914-86)

- The Complete Stories (written 1940-84, collected 1997)

/ FSG Classics, 9780374525750

Saul Bellow (Canadian-American, 1915-2005)

- Collected Stories (2001)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143107255

Carson McCullers (American, 1917-67)

- The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951 novella along with previously published short stories)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141183695

J. D. Salinger (American, 1919-2010)

- Nine Stories (1953)

/ Little, Brown and Company, 9780316767729

- Franny and Zooey (1961)

/ Back Bay Books, 9780316769020

- Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)

/ Back Bay Books, 9780316766944

James Baldwin (American, 1924-87)

- “Sonny’s Blues” (1957)

Collected in several anthologies. I have not read them all, but I would probably recommend:

- American Short Story Masterpieces, edited by Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks

/ 9780440204237

Flannery O'Connor (American, 1925-64)

- The Complete Stories (1971)

/ FSG Classics, 9780374515362

Philip Roth (American, 1933-2018)

- Goodbye, Columbus (1959)

/ Vintage, 9780679748267

Joyce Carol Oates (American, 1938- )

- "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" (1966)

Collected in several anthologies. I have not read them all, but I would probably recommend:

- American Short Story Masterpieces, edited by Raymond Carver and Tom Jenks

/ 9780440204237

Raymond Carver (American, 1938-88)

- Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories (1988)

/ Harvill Press, 9781860460395

Tobias Wolff (American, 1945- )

- In the Garden of the North American Martyrs: Stories (1981)

/ Ecco, 9780062393845

Louise Erdrich (Native American, 1954- )

- Love Medicine (1984)

/ Harper Perennial, 9780061787423

Stephanie Vaughn (American, ?- )

- Sweet Talk: Stories (1990)

/ Other Press, 9781590515167

"Dog Heaven"

(Also collected in the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, edited by Tobias Wolff, 9780679745136]

American Novel, 20th Century to Present

F. Scott Fitzgerald (American, 1896-1940)

- The Great Gatsby (1925)

/ Scribner, 9780743273565

- Tender is the Night (1934)

/ Scribner, 9780684801544

William Faulkner (American, 1897-1962)

- The Sound and the Fury (1929)

/ Norton Critical Editions, 9780393912692

Nathanael West (American, 1903-40)

- Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

- The Day of the Locust (1939)

/ Both of these novels are collected in Vintage Classics, 9780099573166

Zora Neale Hurston (American, 1891-1960)

- Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

/ Virago, 9780860685241

Betty Smith (American, 1896-1972)

- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)

/ Harper Perennial, 9780060736262

John Steinbeck (American, 1902-68)

- Of Mice and Men (1937)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140186420

- The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039433

- East of Eden (1952)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140186390

Ralph Ellison (American, 1913-94)

- Invisible Man (1952)

/ Vintage, 9780679732761

Vladimir Nabokov (Russian-American, 1899-1977)

- Lolita (1955)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, The Annotated Lolita, 9780141185040

- Pale Fire (1962)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141185262

See also:

Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, by Brian Boyd

/ Princeton University Press, 9780691089577

Saul Bellow (Canadian-American, 1915-2005)

Novels (selected):

- The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039570

- Seize the Day (1956)

Penguin Classics, 9780142437612

- Henderson the Rain King (1959)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143105480

- Herzog (1964)

/ Penguin Classics Deluxe, 9780143107675

- Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437834

- Humboldt’s Gift (1975)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143105473

- Ravelstein (2000)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143107576

Non-fiction:

- It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future (1994)

/ Penguin Classics, 978-0143106685

"Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962)

The above article is available on the New York Times archive here:

"A Novelist-Critic Discusses the Role of Reality in the Creation of Fiction"

http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/bellow-reality.html

- There is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction, edited by Benjamin Taylor

/ Penguin, 978-0143108047

"Deep Readers of the World, Beware!"

The above article is available on the New York Times archive here:

"The Search for Symbols, a Writer Warns, Misses All the Fun and Fact of the Story"

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/reviews/bellow-symbol.html

See also:

- The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964, by Zachary Leader

/ Vintage, 9780307388933

- The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005, by Zachary Leader

/ Vintage, 9780099598152

Carson McCullers (American, 1917-67)

- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141185224

J. D. Salinger (American, 1919-2010)

- The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

/ Back Bay Books, 9780316769174

See also:

Salinger, by David Shields and Shane Salerno

/ Simon & Schuster, 9781471130380

Kurt Vonnegut (American, 1922-2007)

- Cat’s Cradle (1963)

/ Dial Press, 9780385333481

- Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

/ Dial Press, 9780385333849

William Gaddis (American, 1922-98)

- The Recognitions (1955)

/ [Out of print?]

- JR (1975)

/ [Out of print?]

See also:

- Nobody Grew but the Business: On the Life and Work of William Gaddis, by Joseph Tabbi

/ Northwestern University Press, 9780810131422

Joseph Heller (American, 1923-99)

- Catch-22 (1961)

/ 50th Anniversary Edition, Simon & Schuster, 9781451626650

Richard Yates (American, 1926-92)

- Revolutionary Road (1961)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099518624

Toni Morrison (American, 1931-2019)

- The Bluest Eye (1970)

/ Vintage International, 9780307278449

- Song of Solomon (1977)

/ Vintage International, 9781400033423

John Updike (American, 1932-2009)

- Rabbit, Run (1960)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141187839

- Rabbit Redux (1971)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141188546

- Rabbit is Rich (1981)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141188553

- Rabbit at Rest (1990)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141188447

Philip Roth (American, 1933-2018)

- Portnoy’s Complaint (1969)

/ Vintage International, 9780679756453

- The Human Stain (2000)

/ Vintage International, 9780375726347

Cormac McCarthy (American, 1933- )

- Blood Meridian (1985)

/ Vintage International, 9780679728757

- The Road (2006)

/ Vintage International, 9780307387899

Ken Kesey (American, 1935-2001)

- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141181226

- Sometimes a Great Notion (1964)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039860

Don DeLillo (American, 1936- )

- White Noise (1985)

/ Penguin, 9780140077025

- Libra (1988)

/ Penguin, 9780140156041

- Mao II (1992)

/ Penguin, 9780140152746

- Underworld (1998)

/ Scribner, 9780684848150

Thomas Pynchon (American, 1937- )

- V. (1963)

/ Harper Perennial, 9780060930219

- Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099511755

- Mason & Dixon (1997)

/ Picador, 9780312423209

See also:

- A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon’s Novel, 2nd Edition, by Steven Weisenburger

/ University of Georgia Press, 9780820328072

Note:

Pynchon dedicated G’s R to Richard Fariña - see below:

Richard Fariña (American, 1937-66)

- Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1966)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780140189308

John Kennedy Toole (American, 1937-69)

- A Confederacy of Dunces (completed 1964, published 1980)

/ Grove Press, 9780802130204

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo, 1948- )

- Ceremony (1977)

/ Penguin Classics Deluxe, 9780143104919

Louise Erdrich (Native American, 1954- )

- The Plague of Doves (2008)

/ Harper Perennial, 9780060515133

- The Round House (2012)

/ Harper Perennial, 9780062065254

David Foster Wallace (American, 1962-2008)

- Infinite Jest (1996)

/ Back Bay Books, 9780316066525

- The Pale King (unfinished, published 2011)

/ Back Bay Books, 9780316074223

See also:

- Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, by Greg Carlisle

/ SSMG Press, 978-0976146537

- Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, by D. T. Max

/ Penguin, 9780147509727

Peter Hedges (American, 1962- )

- What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1991)

/ Simon & Schuster, 9780671038540

Jennifer Egan (American, 1962- )

- A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)

/ Anchor Books, 9780307477477

- Manhattan Beach (2017)

/ Scribner, 9781476716749

American Poetry, 20th Century

Robert Frost (American, 1874-1963)

- The Collected Poems

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099583097

Robinson Jeffers (American, 1887-1962)

- The Selected Poetry

/ Stanford University Press, 9780804741088

John Berryman (American, 1914-72)

- The Dream Songs (1969)

/ FSG Classics, 9780374534554

- Collected Poems, 1937-1971

/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9780374522810

The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove

/ Penguin, 9780143121480

Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool," "The Bean Eaters"

Stephen Dobyns, "How to Like it"

Contemporary British Fiction

Graham Greene (English, 1904-91)

- Complete Short Stories

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039105

"The Destructors" (1954)

Samuel Beckett (Irish, 1906-89)

- More Pricks than Kicks (1934)

/ Grove Press, 9780802151377

"Dante and the Lobster"

- Three Novels

/ Grove Press, 9780802144478

1. Molloy (1951)

2. Malone Dies (1951)

3. The Unnameable (1953)

Malcolm Lowry (English, 1909-57)

- Under the Volcano (1947)

/ Harper Perennial, 9780061120152

Flann O'Brien (Brian O'Nolan) (Irish, 1911-66)

- The Third Policeman (completed in 1940, published in 1967)

/ Dalkey Archive Press, 9781564782144

Iris Murdoch (Anglo-Irish, 1919-99)

- Under the Net (1954)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099429074

- The Bell (1958)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141186696

- The Black Prince (1973)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142180112

- The Sea, The Sea (1978)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141186160

Alan Sillitoe (English, 1928-2010)

- The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959)

/ Vintage International, 9780307389640

"The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner"

Angela Carter (English, 1940-92)

- The Magic Toyshop (1967)

/ Virago, 9780860681908

- The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141192390

- Burning Your Boats: Collected Stories (1962-93)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099592914

“The Bloody Chamber”

“The Courtship of Mr Lyon”

“The Tiger’s Bride”

“The Erl-King”

“The Snow Child”

“The Lady of the House of Love”

“The Werewolf”

“The Company of Wolves”

“Wolf Alice”

"A Souvenir of Japan"

J. G. Ballard (English, 1930-2009)

- The Unlimited Dream Company (1979)

- Super-Cannes (2000)

Salman Rushdie (British Indian, 1947- )

- The Satanic Verses (1988)

Ian McEwan (English, 1948- )

- In Between the Sheets (Short story collection) (1978)

/ Vintage, 9780099754718

- Atonement (novel) (2001)

/ Vintage, 9780099429791

Iain Banks (Scottish, 1954-2013)

- The Wasp Factory (1984)

/ Prentice Hall, 9780684853154

Hanif Kureishi (British, 1954- )

- The Buddha of Suburbia (1990)

/ Penguin, 9780140131680

Kazuo Ishiguro (British, 1954- )

- An Artist of the Floating World (1986)

/ Faber & Faber, 9780571209132

- Never Let Me Go (2005)

/ Faber & Faber, 9780571272136

- The Buried Giant (2015)

/ Faber & Faber, 9780571315062

Jeanette Winterson (English, 1959- )

- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)

Films:

- Star Trek: The Original Series

"Arena" (Season 1, Episode 18)

"Turnabout Intruder" (Season 3, Episode 24)

Canadian Literature: 20th Century

Robertson Davies (Canadian, 1913-95)

- The Deptford Trilogy

1. Fifth Business (1970)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141186153

2. The Manticore (1972)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039136

3. World of Wonders (1975)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780143039143

Alice Munro (Canadian, 1931- )

- A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994

/ Vintage International, 9781101970362

- Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-2014

/ Vintage International, 9781101872352

Theater, 20th Century

Eugene O'Neill (American, 1888-1953)

- The Iceman Cometh (written 1939, first performed 1946)

/ Introduction by Harold Bloom, Yale University Press, 9780300117431

- Long Day’s Journey Into Night (written 1941, first performed 1956)

/ Introduction by Harold Bloom, Yale University Press, 9780300093056

Jean-Paul Sartre (French, 1905-80)

- No Exit and Three Other Plays (1944-48)

/ Gilbert translation, Vintage International, 9780679725169

No Exit

Samuel Beckett (Irish, 1906-89)

- Waiting for Godot (1959)

/ Grove Press, 9780802144423

- Happy Days (1961)

/ Grove Press, 9780802144409

Tennessee Williams (American, 1911-83)

- The Glass Menagerie (1944)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141190266

- A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141190273

- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141190280

Arthur Miller (American, 1915-2005)

- Death of a Salesman (1949)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141180977

- The Crucible (1953)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437339

Edward Albee (American, 1928-2016)

- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099285694

Sam Shepard (American, 1943- )

Sam Shepard: Seven Plays (Buried Child, Curse of the Starving Class, The

Tooth of Crime, La Turista, Tongues, Savage Love, True West) (1984)

/ Dial Press, 9780553346114

Shepard is also an actor- Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983 adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book of the same title), and Robert Rayburn aka “Papa Ray” in the 2015 Netflix series, Bloodline

Films:

- A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951)

- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)

- Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984) (Screenplay by Sam Shepard)

- Death of a Salesman (Volker Schlöndorff, 1985)

- The Crucible (Nicholas Hytner, 1996)

- Happy Days (Patricia Rozema, 2001)

Science Fiction/ Dystopian/ Philosophical

H. G. Wells (English, 1866-1946)

- The Time Machine (1895)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439976

Aldous Huxley (English, 1894-1963)

- Brave New World (1932)

/ Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 9780060776091

- Island (1962)

/ Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 9780061561795

George Orwell (English, 1903-50)

- Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780241416419

John Wyndham (English, 1903-69)

- The Chrysalids (1955)

/ Penguin Modern Classics, 9780141181479

Albert Camus (French, 1913-60)

- The Stranger (1942)

/ Ward translation, Vintage International, 9780679720201

Osamu Dazai (Japanese, 1909-48)

- No Longer Human (1948)

/ Keene translation, New Directions, 9780811204811

William Golding (English, 1911-93)

- Lord of the Flies (1954)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780399533372

Anthony Burgess (English, 1917-93)

- A Clockwork Orange (1962)

/ Norton Critical Edition, 9780393928099

Yukio Mishima (Japanese, 1925-1970)

- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (1963)

/ Nathan translation, Vintage Classics, 9780099284796

Frank Herbert (American, 1920-86)

- The Great Dune Trilogy

/ Orion Pub. Co., 9780575070707

- Dune (1965)

- Dune Messiah (1969)

- Children of Dune (1976)

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Russian, 1925-91 and 1933-2012, respectively)

- Roadside Picnic (1971)

/ Bormashenko translation, Chicago Review Press, 9781613743416

Robert M. Pirsig (American, 1928-2017)

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974)

/ 40th Anniversery Edition, Vintage, 9780099598169

Alan Moore (English, 1953- )

- Watchmen (1987)

/ DC, 9781401245252

More philosophical novels (Listed in other sections above):

- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142437247

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866)

/ Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, Vintage International, 9780679734505

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

/ Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, FSG, 9780374528379

- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877)

/ Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, Penguin Classics, 9780140449174

- George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-72)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780141439549

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

/ Norton Critical Editions, 9780393696875

- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924)

/ Woods translation, Vintage International, 9780679772873

- Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)

/ Molinaro translation, Picador, 9780312421670

- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (1943)

/ Winston and Winston translation, Vintage Classics, 9780099283621

- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (written 1928-40, published 1967)

/ Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, Penguin Classics Deluxe, 9780143108276

- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

/ Back Bay Books, 9780316769174

- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

/ Vintage, 978-0679732761

- Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)

/ Dial Press, 9780385333481

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

/ Dial Press, 9780385333849

- Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)

/ Penguin Classics Deluxe, 9780143107675

- Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince (1973)

/ Penguin Classics, 9780142180112

- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)

/ Vintage International, 9780679728757

- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996)

/ Back Bay Books, 9780316066525

Films:

- The Time Machine (George Pal, 1960)

- A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)

- Logan's Run (Michael Anderson, 1976)

- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)

- Stalker (Screenplay loosely adapted from Roadside Picnic by the authors, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)

- Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)

- The Matrix (Wachowskis, 1999)

- The Twilight Zone (Original Series, 1959)

"The Obsolete Man" (Season 2, Episode 29)

"It's a Good Life" (Season 3, Episode 8)

"Number Twelve Looks Just Like You" (Season 5, Episode 17)

Japanese Literature: 20th Century to Present

Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916)

- Botchan (1906)

/ Cohn translation, Penguin Classics, 9780141391885

- Sanshirō (1908)

/ Rubin translation with introduction by Haruki Murakami, Penguin Classics, 9780140455625

- Kokoro (1914)

/ McKinney translation, Penguin Classics, 9780143106036

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927)

- Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (1914-27)

/ Jay Rubin translation with introduction by Haruki Murakami, Penguin Classics, 9780140449709

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1886-1965)

- Seven Japanese Tales (1910-59)

/ Vintage International, 9780679761075

- Naomi (1924)

/ Vintage International, 9780375724749

- Quicksand (1928-30)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099485612

- Some Prefer Nettles (1929)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099283379

- The Makioka Sisters (1943-48)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780749397104

Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972)

- Snow Country (1935-37, 1947)

/ Vintage International, 9780679761044

- The Master of Go (1951)

/ Vintage, 9780679761068

- The Sound of the Mountain (1954)

/ Seidensticker translation, Vintage International, 9780679762645

- House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

/ Vintage International, 9780525434139

- Beauty and Sadness (1964)

/ Vintage, 9780679761051

- Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (1923-64)

/ FSG Classics, 9780374530495

Osamu Dazai (1909-48)

- No Longer Human (1948)

/ Keene translation, New Directions, 9780811204811

Yasushi Inoue (1907-91)

- Life of a Counterfeiter (1965)

/ Emmerich translation, Pushkin Press, 9781782270027

Kōbō Abe (1924-93)

- The Woman in the Dunes (1962)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780679733782

- The Face of Another (1964)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780375726538

- The Ruined Map (1967)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780375726521

- The Box Man (1973)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780375726514

Yukio Mishima (1925-70)

- Death in Midsummer: And Other Stories (1953)

/ New Directions, 9780811201179

- The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956)

/ Morris translation, Vintage Classics, 9780099285670

- After the Banquet (1960)

/ Keene translation, 9780099282785

- The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1963)

/ Nathan translation, Vintage Classics, 9780099284796

- The Sea of Fertility tetralogy (written 1965-70):

1. Spring Snow (1965)

/ Gallagher translation, Vintage International, 9780679722410

2. Runaway Horses (1969)

/ Gallagher translation, Vintage International, 9780679722403

3. The Temple of Dawn (1970)

/ Saunders and Segawa Seigle translation, Vintage International, 9780679722427

4. The Decay of the Angel (1971)

/ Seidensticker translation, Vintage International, 9780679722434

See also:

Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima, by Naoki Inose

/ Stone Bridge Press, 9781611720082

Kenzaburō Ōe (1935- )

- A Personal Matter (1965)

/ Nathan translation, Grove Press, 9780802150615

- The Silent Cry (1967)

/ Bester translation, Serpent's Tail Classics, 9781781255650

Haruki Murakami (1949- )

Novels:

- Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)

/ Birnbaum translation, Vintage, 9780099448785

- Norwegian Wood (1987)

/ Rubin translation, Vintage, 9780099448822

- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-5)

/ Rubin translation, Vintage International, 9780099448792

- Kafka on the Shore (2002)

/ Gabriel translation, Vintage International, 9780099458326

- After Dark (2004)

/ Rubin translation, Vintage, 9780099506249

- 1Q84 (2009-10)

/ Rubin and Gabriel translation, Vintage, 9780099578079

- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013)

/ Gabriel translation, Vintage, 9780099590378

Short story collections:

- The Elephant Vanishes (17 stories, 1980-91)

/ Vintage, 9780099448754

- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (24 stories, 1980-2005)

/ Vintage, Gabriel and Rubin translation, 9780099488668

- Birthday Stories (2002) (an anthology of stories featuring birthdays, by various authors including Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, and Murakami himself)

/ Vintage, 9780099481553

- Men Without Women (7 stories, 2013-14)

/ Gabriel and Goossen translation, Vintage, 9781101974520

See also:

Haruki Murakami: A Long, Long Interview, by Mieko Kawakami

/ [coming soon]

Ryū Murakami (1952- )

- Almost Transparent Blue (1976)

/ out of print?

- Coin Locker Babies (1980)

/ Pushkin Press, 9781908968470

- 69 (1987)

/ Pushkin Press, 9781908968463

- Audition (1997)

/ Bloomsbury, 9781408800720

Banana Yoshimoto (1964- )

- Kitchen (1988)

/ Backus translation, Faber & Faber, 9780571342723

- Goodbye Tsugumi (1989)

/ Emmerich translation, Faber & Faber, 9780571212842

- Asleep (1989)

/ Emmerich translation, Faber & Faber, 9780571205370

- Lizard (1993)

/ Sherif translation, Simon & Schuster, 9780671532765

- Amrita (1994)

/ Faber & Faber, 9780571193745

- Moshi-Moshi (2010)

/ Asa Yoneda translation, Counterpoint, 9781640090156

Hiromi Kawakami (1958- )

- Strange Weather in Tokyo (2001)

/ Powell translation, Counterpoint, 9781640090163

- The Ten Loves of Nishino (2003)

/ Powell translation, Granta, 9781846276972

Yōko Ogawa (1962- )

- The Diving Pool: Three Novellas (1990)

/ Vintage, 9780099521358

- Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales (1998)

/ Vintage, 9780099553939

- The Housekeeper and the Professor (2008)

/ Vintage, 9780099521341

Mieko Kawakami (1976- )

- Ms. Ice Sandwich (2018)

/ Pushkin Press, 9781782273301

Sayaka Murata (1979- )

- Convenience Store Woman (2018)

/ Granta, 9781846276842

Yukiko Motoya (1979- )

- The Lonesome Bodybuilder (2018)

/ Asa Yoneda translation, Soft Skull Press, 9781593766788

- The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (2018)

/ Edited by Jay Rubin, Penguin Classics, 9780241311905

Possible contexts for some of the works listed above:

Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki) (c. 973 or 978-1014 or 1031)

- The Tale of Genji (<1021)

/ Waley translation, Tuttle, 9784805310816

See also:

- The Tale of Genji: A Reader’s Guide, by William J. Puette

/ Tuttle, 9784805310847

Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645)

- The Book of Five Rings (1645)

/ Bennett translation, Tuttle, [paperback coming soon]

Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719)

- Hagakure (1716)

/ Bennett translation, Tuttle, 9784805311981

Nitobe Inazō (1862-1933)

- Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900)

/ Bennett translation, Tuttle, [paperback coming soon]

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904)

- Japanese Ghost Stories

/ Penguin Classics, 9780241381274

D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966)

- An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1934)

/ Grove Press, 9780802130556

Eugene Herrigel (1884-1955)

- Zen in the Art of Archery (1948)

/ Vintage, 9780375705090

Shunryū Suzuki (1904-71)

- Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (1970)

/ Shambhala, 9781590308493

Boye Lafayette De Mente

- Etiquette Guide to Japan: Know the Rules that Make the Difference!

/ Tuttle, 9784805313619

- Japan: A Guide to Traditions, Customs and Etiquette: Kata as the Key to Understanding the Japanese

/ Tuttle, 9784805314425

Roger J. Davies

- The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture

/ Tuttle, 9780804832953

- Japanese Culture: The Religious and Philosophical Foundations

/ Tuttle, 9784805311639

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macrolit

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

— Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

#quotes #books #haruki murakami #literature

macrolit

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”

— Clarice Lispector

rllibrary

From Hour of the Star.

#quotes #female author #literature #books

Japanese Literature, and More

Above: Yasunari Kawabata, 1946

Above: Yukio Mishima

Above: Mieko Kawakami, 2014

Japanese Literature, 20th Century to Present

* Below are just some books that I either have enjoyed or expect to enjoy (mostly the latter), all from Japanese authors or, in a few cases, scholars of Japan. Note: I have not listed every book by these authors, but only the ones that I want to read/reread the most. * Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) - Botchan (1906) / Cohn translation, Penguin Classics, 9780141391885 - Sanshirō (1908) / Rubin translation with introduction by Haruki Murakami, Penguin Classics, 9780140455625 - Kokoro (1914) / McKinney translation, Penguin Classics, 9780143106036 * Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) - Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (1914-27) / Jay Rubin translation with introduction by Haruki Murakami, Penguin Classics, 9780140449709 * Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1886-1965) - Seven Japanese Tales (1910-59)

/ Vintage International, 9780679761075 - Naomi (1924) / Vintage International, 9780375724749 - Quicksand (1928-30)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099485612 - Some Prefer Nettles (1929)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780099283379 - The Makioka Sisters (1943-48)

/ Vintage Classics, 9780749397104 * Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) - Snow Country (1935-37, 1947)

/ Vintage International, 9780679761044 - The Master of Go (1951)

/ Vintage, 9780679761068 - The Sound of the Mountain (1954)

/ Seidensticker translation, Vintage International, 9780679762645 - House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

/ Vintage International, 9780525434139

- Beauty and Sadness (1964)

/ Vintage, 9780679761051

- Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (1923-64)

/ FSG Classics, 9780374530495

* Osamu Dazai (1909-48) - No Longer Human (1948)

/ Keene translation, New Directions, 9780811204811 * Yasushi Inoue (1907-91) - Life of a Counterfeiter (1965)

/ Emmerich translation, Pushkin Press, 9781782270027 * Kōbō Abe (1924-93) - The Woman in the Dunes (1962)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780679733782 - The Face of Another (1964)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780375726538 - The Ruined Map (1967)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780375726521 - The Box Man (1973)

/ Saunders translation, Vintage International, 9780375726514 * Yukio Mishima (1925-70) - Death in Midsummer: And Other Stories (1953)

/ New Directions, 9780811201179 - The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956)

/ Morris translation, Vintage Classics, 9780099285670

- After the Banquet (1960)

/ Keene translation, 9780099282785 - The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1963)

/ Nathan translation, Vintage Classics, 9780099284796 - The Sea of Fertility tetralogy (written 1965-70): 1. Spring Snow (1965)

/ Gallagher translation, Vintage International, 9780679722410 2. Runaway Horses (1969)

/ Gallagher translation, Vintage International, 9780679722403 3. The Temple of Dawn (1970)

/ Saunders and Segawa Seigle translation, Vintage International, 9780679722427 4. The Decay of the Angel (1971)

/ Seidensticker translation, Vintage International, 9780679722434 See also: Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima, by Naoki Inose

/ Stone Bridge Press, 9781611720082 * Kenzaburō Ōe (1935- ) - A Personal Matter (1965)

/ Nathan translation, Grove Press, 9780802150615 - The Silent Cry (1967)

/ Bester translation, Serpent's Tail Classics, 9781781255650 * Haruki Murakami (1949- ) Novels: - Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)

/ Birnbaum translation, Vintage, 9780099448785 - Norwegian Wood (1987)

/ Rubin translation, Vintage, 9780099448822 - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-5)

/ Rubin translation, Vintage International, 9780679775430 - Kafka on the Shore (2002)

/ Gabriel translation, Vintage International, 9781400079278 - After Dark (2004)

/ Rubin translation, Vintage, 9780099520863 - 1Q84 (2009-10)

/ Rubin and Gabriel translation, Vintage, 9780099578079 - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Endless Pilgrimage (2013) / Gabriel translation, Vintage, 9780099590378 Short story collections: - The Elephant Vanishes (17 stories, 1980-91)

/ Vintage, 9780099448754 - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (24 stories, 1980-2005)

/ Vintage, Gabriel and Rubin translation, 9780099512820 - Birthday Stories (2002) (an anthology of stories featuring birthdays, by various authors including Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, and Murakami himself)

/ Vintage, 9780099481553 - Men Without Women (7 stories, 2013-14)

/ Gabriel and Goossen translation, Vintage, 9781101974520 See also:

Haruki Murakami: A Long, Long Interview, by Mieko Kawakami [coming soon]

* Ryū Murakami (1952- ) - Almost Transparent Blue (1976)

/ out of print?

- Coin Locker Babies (1980)

/ Pushkin Press, 9781908968470 - 69 (1987)

/ Pushkin Press, 9781908968463 - Audition (1997)

/ Bloomsbury, 9781408800720 * Banana Yoshimoto (1964- ) - Kitchen (1988)

/ Backus translation, Faber & Faber, 9780571342723 - Goodbye Tsugumi (1989)

/ Emmerich translation, Faber & Faber, 9780571212842 - Asleep (1989)

/ Emmerich translation, Faber & Faber, 9780571205370 - Lizard (1993)

/ Sherif translation, Simon & Schuster, 9780671532765 - Amrita (1994) / Faber & Faber, 9780571193745 - Moshi-Moshi (2010)

/ Asa Yoneda translation, Counterpoint, 9781640090156

* Hiromi Kawakami (1958- ) - Strange Weather in Tokyo (2001)

/ Powell translation, Counterpoint, 9781640090163 - The Ten Loves of Nishino (2003)

/ Powell translation, Granta, 9781846276972 * Yōko Ogawa (1962- ) - The Diving Pool: Three Novellas (1990)

/ Vintage, 9780099521358

- Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales (1998)

/ Vintage, 9780099553939

- The Housekeeper and the Professor (2008)

/ Vintage, 9780099521341 * Mieko Kawakami (1976- ) - Ms. Ice Sandwich (2018)

/ Pushkin Press, 9781782273301 * Sayaka Murata (1979- ) - Convenience Store Woman (2018)

/ Granta, 9781846276842 * Yukiko Motoya (1979- ) - The Lonesome Bodybuilder (2018)

/ Asa Yoneda translation, Soft Skull Press, 9781593766788

* - The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (2018) / Edited by Jay Rubin, Penguin Classics, 9780241311905 * * Possible contexts for some of the works listed above: * * Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki) (c. 973 or 978-1014 or 1031) - The Tale of Genji (<1021) / Waley translation, Tuttle, 9784805310816 See also: - The Tale of Genji: A Reader’s Guide, by William J. Puette

/ Tuttle, 9784805310847 * Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) - The Book of Five Rings (1645) / Bennett translation, Tuttle, [paperback coming soon] * Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719) - Hagakure (1716) / Bennett translation, Tuttle, 9784805311981

* Nitobe Inazō (1862-1933) - Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900) / Bennett translation, Tuttle, [paperback coming soon] * Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) - Japanese Ghost Stories

/ Penguin Classics, 9780241381274 * D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966) - An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (1934)

/ Grove Press, 9780802130556 * Eugene Herrigel (1884-1955) - Zen in the Art of Archery (1948) / Vintage, 9780375705090 * Shunryū Suzuki (1904-71) - Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (1970)

/ Shambhala, 9781590308493 * Boye Lafayette De Mente - Etiquette Guide to Japan: Know the Rules that Make the Difference!

/ Tuttle, 9784805313619 - Japan: A Guide to Traditions, Customs and Etiquette: Kata as the Key to Understanding the Japanese

/ Tuttle, 9784805314425 * Roger J. Davies - The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture

/ Tuttle, 9780804832953 - Japanese Culture: The Religious and Philosophical Foundations

/ Tuttle, 9784805311639

Have you read any of these titles? What did you think?

- RL

#japan #japanese literature #books #authors #japanese authors #novels #japanese novels #short stories #fiction #literature #history

I am on GoodReads

How to find me:

goodreads.com/larmer

View what I am reading/have read/want to read:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/101769640-mr-larmer

#goodreads #books #literature #poetry #library #classic #classics #authors #writing #novels

“People pay money to see others believe in themselves.”

- Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band

#quotes #rock #sonic youth #music

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Short Stories

Here are some of the stories that I have read lately:

- John Cheever - “The Country Husband”

- J. D. Salinger - “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”

- Joyce Carol Oates - “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

- Richard Wright - “The Man Who Was Almost a Man”

- Katherine Anne Porter - “Flowering Judas”

- Katherine Anne Porter - “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”

- Graham Greene - “The Destructors”

- Franz Kafka - “Give it Up!”

- Haruki Murakami - “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning”

- Stephanie Vaughn - “Dog Heaven”

- Amy Tan - “Rules of the Game”

- Louise Erdrich - “The Red Convertible”

- James Purdy - “Sermon”

- Jerome Bixby - “It’s a Good Life!”

- Charles Beaumont - “The Beautiful People”

- Zora Neale Hurston - “Now You Cookin’ with Gas”

- E. T. A. Hoffmann - “The Sandman” (Roberston Translation in The Golden Pot and Other Tales, Oxford World’s Classics)

- Ntozake Shange - “oh she gotta head fulla hair”

#fiction #short story #authors #favorite books #favorite authors #literature #contemporary fiction #american literature #british literature #short stories #short fiction #female authors #sci fi #death #love #lonelines #emptiness #human condition

youmightfindyourself

ON SEEING THE 100% PERFECT GIRL ONE BEAUTIFUL APRIL MORNING

by Haruki Murakami

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo’s fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a “girl,” properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there’s a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert. Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you’re drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I’ll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose. But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can’t recall the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It’s weird. “Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% girl,” I tell someone. “Yeah?” he says. “Good-looking?” “Not really.” “Your favorite type, then?” “I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember anything about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts.” “Strange.” “Yeah. Strange.” “So anyhow,” he says, already bored, “what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?” “Nah. Just passed her on the street.” She’s walking east to west, and I west to east. It’s a really nice April morning. Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and - what I’d really like to do - explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world. After talking, we’d have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed. Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart. Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen yards. How can I approach her? What should I say? “Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?” Ridiculous. I’d sound like an insurance salesman. “Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?” No, this is just as ridiculous. I’m not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who’s going to buy a line like that? Maybe the simple truth would do. “Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me.” No, she wouldn’t believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you’re not the 100% boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I’d probably go to pieces. I’d never recover from the shock. I’m thirty-two, and that’s what growing older is all about. We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can’t bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She’s written somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could contain every secret she’s ever had. I take a few more strides and turn: She’s lost in the crowd. Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical. Oh, well. It would have started “Once upon a time” and ended “A sad story, don’t you think?” Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened. One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street. “This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you’re the 100% perfect girl for me.” “And you,” she said to him, “are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I’d pictured you in every detail. It’s like a dream.” They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle. As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one’s dreams to come true so easily? And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, “Let’s test ourselves - just once. If we really are each other’s 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we’ll marry then and there. What do you think?” “Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what we should do.” And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west. The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other’s 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully. One winter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season’s terrible inluenza, and after drifting for weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence’s piggy bank. They were two bright, determined young people, however, and through their unremitting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another, who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love. Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty. One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very center of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew: She is the 100% perfect girl for me. He is the 100% perfect boy for me. But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fouteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever. A sad story, don’t you think? Yes, that’s it, that is what I should have said to her.

Novel of Ideas / Philosophical Fiction

Rebecca Goldstein (coincidentally, the wife of Steven Pinker, whose book The Blank Slate I mentioned in a recent post) writes philosophical novels and has two top 5 lists, both of which contain Middlemarch and The Black Prince:

List 1:

- Middlemarch by George Eliot

- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

- Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

- The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

- Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

List 2:

- Herzog by Saul Bellow

- Middlemarch by George Eliot

- The Holy Sinner by Thomas Mann

- The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

- Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman

See also:

- The 105 Best Philosophical Novels (Greg Hickey)

- Philosophical Fiction (Wikipedia)

- Philosophy and Literature (Wikipedia)

My favorite philosophical novels, so far:

- Infinite Jest

- The Catcher in the Rye

- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea

- The Picture of Dorian Gray

- Lord of the Flies

- Brave New World

- 1984

- A Clockwork Orange

- Dune

- Cat’s Cradle

- Slaughterhouse-Five

- Watchmen

Philosophical novels/authors that I want to read the most:

- Herzog

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

- The Stranger

- The Brothers Karamazov

- Crime and Punishment

- Anna Karenina

- Invisible Man

- Blood Meridian

- The Master and Margarita

- The Handmaid’s Tale

- Island

- Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

- Middlemarch

- Iris Murdoch

- Rebecca Goldstein

#novel of ideas #philosophical #philosophical fiction #fiction #literature #philosophy #authors

Literary Darwinism

Literary Darwinism is something that I came across in Steven Pinker’s book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Chapter 20: The Arts).

I look forward to reading the following books to learn more about it:

Books:

- Literary Darwinism by Joseph Carroll

- Evolution, Literature, and Film: A Reader by Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, and Jonathan Gottschall

- The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall

- Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice by Joseph Carroll

Articles:

- Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction, and the Arts by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides

- Toward a Consilient Study of Literature by Steven Pinker

#psychology #literary criticism #literary theory #literature #fiction #evolution

Postmodern? Literature?

I would simply suggest that you ask those who tell you about the wonders of "theory" and "philosophy" to justify their claims --- to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames.

- Noam Chomsky on Postmodernism

Relevant books that I want to read:

- Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen R. C. Hicks

- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

- The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

Postmodernism may not be a useful philosophy, but the fact remains that some of the best authors of the twentieth century are considered major figures in postmodern literature:

- Jorge Luis Borges

- William Gaddis

- J. P. Donleavy

- Bruce Jay Friedman

- Jerzy Kosinski

- John Barth

- Kurt Vonnegut

- Joseph Heller

- Thomas Pynchon

- J. G. Ballard

- Iris Murdoch

- Robert Coover

- Italo Calvino

- Tom Robbins

- Don DeLillo

- Salman Rushdie

- Haruki Murakami

- Toni Morrison

- Margaret Atwood

- David Foster Wallace

- Zadie Smith

- etc.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postmodern_novels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_comedy

#postmodernism #postmodern literature #literature #book #novels #authors

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Bildungsroman

* What is a Bildungsroman? * The Bildungsroman is one of the most powerful literary genres. A lot of the greatest novels ever written fall into this category. A Bildungsroman unfolds a type of coming-of age story. However, our protagonist is not merely growing up. We also see their identity emerge and cause conflicts with those around them. * Examples: * David Copperfield

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Sons and Lovers

Other Voices, Other Rooms

Invisible Man

The Adventures of Augie March

The Catcher in the Rye

Dune

Norwegian Wood To Kill a Mockingbird

The Outsiders

Their Eyes Were Watching God

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Magic Toyshop

Song of Solomon

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

The Round House

The Goldfinch

(1) * If you want to write a Bildungsroman, here are some key elements that authors tend to include: * - Sensitive young person - Emotionally disturbed- by the death of someone close, or another traumatic event - Goes on a journey to find answers through experience - Struggles against society - Society is morally corrupt - Our hero is different, but immature (2) * Conflict: * Can the protagonist learn how to function in society and still maintain some integrity and happiness? (This may require a sense of humor- see Huck & Holden) (Ibid.) * Structure: * - Set-up: We learn about our hero, what their childhood was like - Defining moments: Experiences that reveal character, loss of faith or spiritual crisis - Maturity: Our hero is at peace with himself and/or earns a sense of belonging in the world (3) * Maturity: * - Happens gradually - There are no shortcuts - Posing as an adult and drinking - Impulsive, rebellious behavior only reveals immaturity - Attempts at casual sex fail somehow - Our young hero loves or feels attracted to a much older/more experienced character - The much older/more experienced character does not take our young hero seriously (Ibid.) * Characters * - Wicked Authority Figure - Unrequited Love - Mentor- kind, caring, compassionate, perhaps our only real friend * Common Theme: * Deprivation - Spiritual - Financial - Sexual/Romantic * Plot Devices: * - “Sent off” to boarding school, distant relative, etc. - Alienation from one’s own mother/father/sisters/brothers - Harsh living conditions - Leaving home, journey to exotic place - Spiritual trials and tribulations (Ibid.) * Protagonist's Personality: * - Emotionally unstable- neurotic, excitable - Highly conscientious- anxious about doing right, immaturity gets in the way or hides the path - Open-minded and adventurous - Extroverted (usually very outgoing) - Disagreeable- not one to follow the crowd * Protagonist's Identity: * - Different- atypical, marginalized due to race, religion, sexual orientation, experiences that have changed how he sees the world, himself, and others - Defies expectations that come from: - Stereotypes - Social mores - Taboos - Pressure to conform * Protagonist's Status: - Orphan, misfit, runaway, starving artist (3) * Why do we love these stories? - Tension: we don’t know what the characters will do next- particularly in response to tricky issues that involve trying to face the world as they are (If they can do it, perhaps we can, too!). - Nostalgia: we are always looking back on our life and evaluating it, trying to rehearse an appealing narrative to explain it on a date/job interview in order to meet basic needs of survival. - Bloom's Taxonomy: - These stories tend to reach the highest levels: - Critical thinking: the story challenges us to think on a higher level, while entertaining us -- Society: how to deal with the “phonies?”-- Self: how to grow and be a better person? (The more difficult question, takes responsibility and intellectual courage) - Hierarchy of Needs: These stories also happen to reach the highest levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, self-actualization ("be yourself") and transcendence ("get over yourself"). Stories that are extremely inspiring, popular, and entertaining all at once are all about self-actualization and transcendence. * Sources: (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman (2) https://literarydevices.net/BILDUNGSROMAN/ (3) https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/bildungsroman

#bildungsroman #maslowshierarchyofneeds #bloomstaxonomy #thecatcherintherye #novels #authors #female authors #classics #fiction

Poetry. Personality. Movies About Writers. Movies About High School Students/Teachers.

Poetry:

The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry - Edited by Rita Dove

Writing Poetry:

The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry - Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux

Personality/Psychology:

Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior - Geoffrey Miller

Youtube presentation on the Big 5/Central Six discussed in Spent:

The Perfect Personality with Dr. Doug Lisle

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - Steven Pinker

Youtube presentation on the book:

Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate (TED Talk)

Movies about writers/poets:

Adaptation

Adult World

Almost Famous

As Good As It Gets

Capote

The Door in the Floor

The End of the Tour

Finding Forrester

The Kindergarten Teacher

Lonesome Jim

Misery

Paterson

The Shining

The Squid and the Whale

Whisper of the Heart

Wonder Boys

Movies about high school students/teachers/ Coming-of-age films:

20th Century Women

Adventures in Public School

Almost Famous

American Beauty

American Graffiti

The Breakfast Club

Class Rank

Dazed and Confused

Dead Poets Society

Donnie Darko

The Edge of Seventeen

An Education

The English Teacher

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Finding Forrester

Ghost World

Miss Stevens

Palo Alto

Rebel Without a Cause

Rushmore

Scent of a Woman

The Spectacular Now

The Squid and the Whale

Summer of ‘42

Superbad

Whisper of the Heart

#personality #big5 #poetry #books #movies #highschool #high school movies #writers #poets #psychology #human nature

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