/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15472366]

I want to read more American novels. Being British/European I've pretty much stuck to what I know and haven't read that many yanky novels. I've read blood meridian and American Pyscho and a few others that I can't remember off the top of my head.

I was thinking of maybe starting with one of these books. Or is there another book entirely you would recommend?

[Anonymous No.15472432]

>>15472366
of those I've only read Grapes of Wrath, definitely read it, iss very very good. Reading Moby Dick soon so hopefully that's good. Also definitely read Adventures of Augie March it's another one of the Great American novels, at least by Wikipedias metric, and it's one of the best things I've ever read

[Anonymous No.15472452]

I'd read lot 49 before GR

[Anonymous No.15472456]

>>15472366
Nice start welcome lad. American lit can be quite good. I would supplement with Emerson and Thoreau.

[Anonymous No.15472496]

>>15472366
If you want something that's "genuinely American" I'd check out western and southern gothic classics.
Blood Meridian is a good start but McCarthy's Border Trilogy is also excellent. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty isn't as "deep" but paints a great picture of the Old West- it's a very fun novel to read.
William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor are essentials for southern gothic, which is a whole different beast (the south isn't as romantic as the west). I love them but it may be because I grew up in the south so it hits something intuitive.

If you want Pynchon, GR is a masterpiece but takes place entirely in Europe, and everyone but the protag is European. Mason & Dixon is of equal quality and is a fictionalized version of American frontier tales. If you want American I'd start there (but absolutely read GR eventually)

[Anonymous No.15472524]

Moby Dick for sure.

>>15472432
>Augie March
Also a good call.

If you're into short stories Raymond Carver is a must.

[Anonymous No.15473022]

>>15472496
What about no country for old men? I've read the road also by the way, which I think I preferred to blood meridian.

I see what you mean about gravitys rainbow being almost entirely set in Europe, but I don't think that's a problem really. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for exactly, just exploring more american authors and broadening the ol' horizons. It doesn't matter too much if it's not set in America. Cheers though

[Anonymous No.15473046]

>>15472366
Read more Steinbeck. Cannery Row is short, but a good choice as well.

[Anonymous No.15473054]

Mark Twain

[Anonymous No.15473144]

>>15472366
I have about 53 pages left of Moby Dick and I have not enjoyed it. I suppose it isn’t for me and I would not recommend it for you.

[Anonymous No.15473164]

>>15472366
The Catcher in the Rye

[Anonymous No.15473181]

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. It's an excellent book in and of itself and very small-town 60s America in feel

[Anonymous No.15473219]

>>15473144
Shame

[Anonymous No.15473249]

>>15473219
I don’t know where I am going wrong. I sometimes have asked why Moby Dick isn’t clicking for me but I never get a response other than I am being filtered.

[Anonymous No.15473252]

I’ve only read Gravity’s Rainbow from your picture, and I would recommend you read most of his other books prior to that one, but here are some great American classics that I love:

Huckleberry Finn by Twain
Cannery Row by Steinbeck
V. by Pynchon
A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Kesey
The Book of the New Sun by Wolfe
Catch-22 by Heller
White Noise by Delillo
Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut
Dandelion Wine by Bradbury
As I Lay Dying by Faulkner

I think any of these are decent places to start.

[Anonymous No.15473334]

>>15473249
Kek
I was going to say filtered but instead chose shame
I haven't finished Moby Dick yet, but I am enjoying it so far
I don't know why you didn't enjoy it

[Anonymous No.15473383]

>>15473334
I suppose I find the constant descriptions and analogies of things to be very tedious. Half a page just to describe how the Japanese ocean is like a meadow really isn’t what I want out of a book. I suppose it isn’t my cup of tea. I find the actual story fascinating but the structure of the book is that the story abruptly stops for some chapters akin to what I said above about descriptions and analogies that are too excessive to add much more to the experience.

[Anonymous No.15473425]

>>15473383
Different strokes, anon. I enjoy the descriptions and don't mind the start and stop of the story

[Anonymous No.15473447]

>>15473252
Thanks for the list anon. I actually have already read catch 22, which I thought was a genuinely funny book. Book of the new sun I think I'm too retarded for, I definitely struggled with the first 50 pages.

I really really hated slaughter house 5. I actually read it twice, the first time I hated it. But it gets so much praise, I thought I must of missed something spectacular. Reread it and hated it even more. I just don't get it I guess, but I did give it a chance.

[Anonymous No.15473453]

>>15472366
You might consider following along with these lectures:

https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-291
https://oyc.yale.edu/american-studies/amst-246

I also recommend Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor to you!

[Anonymous No.15473491]

>>15473252
As someone also only marginally exposed to American novels, why does Huckleberry Finn get recommended far more than Tom Sawyer?

[Anonymous No.15473517]

>>15473491
Huck Finn explores a much wider range of interesting themes. Tom Sawyer, by contrast, is lighter (though still very satirical). Huck Finn also deals with racial issues more - since one of the central characters is a runaway slave.

[Anonymous No.15473521]

>>15473491
The Chad Huck Finn vs the virgin Tom Sawyer

[Anonymous No.15473530]

>>15473491
Dunno, I just started Tom Sawyer today, although I read Huck Finn like ten years ago, I think it has more adult themes

[Anonymous No.15473532]

>>15472366
>is there another book entirely you would recommend?
nope read moby dick

[Anonymous No.15473541]

>>15473447
Maybe you have to read Slaughterhouse Five as a teenager or something. I haven’t reread it as a adult, but it was the book to get me into reading real literature when I was sixteen (along with Count of Monte Cristo)

[Anonymous No.15473813]

Here are some of the reading lists from the american lit courses I've taken:
John Steinbeck - a Russian Journal
Flannery O'Connor - The Violent Bear It Away
James Baldwin - Notes of a Native Son
Norman Mailer - Armies of the Night
Joan Didion - Play it As It Lays
William Gibson - Neuromancer
Brian Turner - Here Bullet
Frank O' Hara - Lunch Poems
Don Delillo - White Noise
Allen Ginsberg - Howl and other poems
John Hawkes - The Cannibal
Dashiell Hammett - Red Harvest
John Okada - No No Boy
Sutton Griggs - Imperium in Imperio
Frank Norris - McTeague/The Octopus
Henry James - Washington Square/Daisy Miller/Turn of the Screw
Sarah Orne Jewett - A Country Doctor
Muriel Rukeyser - Book of the Dead
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Self-Reliance and other Essays
Henry David Thoreau - Walden/Civil Disobedience
Herman Melville - Bartleby the Scrivener
Edgar Allan Poe - Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado
Kate Chopin - The Awakening
James Cain - Double Indemnity
Amy Hempel - The Harvest/The Cemetery where Al Jolson is Buried

[Anonymous No.15474013]

>>15472366
grapes of wrath isn't that good for steinbeck. If you want to read him, read of mice and men or east of eden. both are much better in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.15474180]

Try Hunter S Thomson
He captures the American spirit of not giving a fuck petty well, and his writing was unique

[Anonymous No.15474214]

>>15474013
this, east of eden is incredible

[Anonymous No.15474395]

>>15472366
I only know atlas shrugged

[Anonymous No.15474749]

>>15472366
Literally all those books are good, I would read those books. Moby-Dick is arguably the best in the English language, it's got less attention-whoring than joyce does and the plot is amazing. Gravity's Rainbow is fucking hilarious. Grapes of Wrath is supposed to be really good (according to my GF)

[Anonymous No.15474764]

>>15472366
Just finished Winesburg, Ohio and I can't recommend it enough.

[Anonymous No.15475902]

>>15473249
I read moby dick and I loved it. But there's no book that everyone will universally love. Sometimes some books just don't work for some people. Might be the style or content. When it first came out no one really liked it either. I can kind of understand why a lot of people don't like it and why so many people do like it. Idk, I think it's probably one of the best books of American literature

[Anonymous No.15475965]

>>15475902
Tell me, when you read that 4 page chapter on masts, did it entertain you? Did you find a philosophy in that chapter? Did it in any way contribute to the story? Or was the story itself just a reason to have a book about all things related to boats and whaling?

[Anonymous No.15476218]

>>15472366
I am an American that has spent a good amount of time living in London as a graduate student. I believe that The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller is the underrated and vastly underappreciated novel you are searching for...it changed my life.

[Anonymous No.15477551]

>>15472366
The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Moby Dick are all essentials. In my opinion, Another Country, The Naked and The Dead, A Death in the Family, and Underworld are all really terrific, also.

[Anonymous No.15477896]

>>15472366
I am also European but not a native english speaker. I also want to read more American novels and I was thinking about reading faulkner and blood meridian next. I heard they are really tough to read though. I was able to read Steinbeck in a reasonable tempo without having to google too many of the words and currently I am about to finish Lolita (an annotated version with the more difficult vocabulary translated at the bottom page though). Would you recommend reading something easier first or do you think these books are managable? Blood meridian costs 30€ here so I don't want to just buy it for the heck of it and try it out.

[Anonymous No.15477922]

>>15472366
>I want to read more American novels.
No you don't, it's shit.

t. British/European

[Anonymous No.15477963]

You should start with the easy novels first like
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
JR by William Gaddis
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

[Anonymous No.15478062]

>>15477963
Alright I will, thank you!

[Anonymous No.15478589]

>>15477963
>easy
That list is final boss tier maximalism lmfao
To add to it:
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Omensetter's Luck by William H. Gass
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

[Anonymous No.15478623]

Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written.

[Anonymous No.15478989]

>>15474395
Fucking ew

[Anonymous No.15479089]

>>15472366
Steinbeck is a great introduction to American lit. I wouldn’t start Pynchon (or the whole of American literature) with GR though, at least read Crying of lot 49 and maybe V as well first.
Moby Dick is the best book I have ever read in the English language, probably the greatest I’ve ever read at all, which I feel somewhat reticent saying because I’m English but I can’t deny his greatness, if you haven’t read the bible first you should at least be pretty familiar with the Old Testament to appreciate a lot of The Whale.
>inb4 muh fart-fetish Irishman is better
He’s better than any English author, he wrote a higher number of great books than Melville, but none as good as Moby Dick

[Anonymous No.15479129]

>>15479089
You really don't need to be that familiar with the bible to appreciate Moby Dick. Especially if you get an edition with even half-way decent notes which will clarify the actually important allusions.

[Anonymous No.15479144]

>>15479129
>notes
That’s true actually, you’re right. I forgot because my only copy atm that I’ve been reading for the month of may was cheap and noteless. I still feel that prior familiarity will help you understand the themes, but I agree that you don’t need to in order to appreciate the book

[Anonymous No.15479158]

>>15479144
Even without notes I think you still aren't going to have any trouble appreciating Moby Dick. Moby Dick largely uses allusions "responsibly" for lack of a better term, which is to say, understanding the allusion can be beneficial, but not understanding it doesn't ruin the experience.

[Anonymous No.15479270]

>>15472456
>>15472524
>>15473334
>>15473532
>>15474749
>>15475902
>>15477551
>>15479089
>>15478623

Cheers for the help lads, I'm going to go with Moby Dick. Being a sailor in the navy it seems appropriate. Sailing soon so it'll be a nice time to start it.

[Anonymous No.15479401]

>>15479144
I can't seem to find any notes in this everymans library edition