Okay, Veeky Forums, let's say you're designing a university course called "The American Experience in Fiction." Which works do you choose. Let's say around 7-10 novels, novellas and/or short story collections for the semester depending on length. This is what I'd go with. Let the autism and shitposting begin.
I put mine roughly in order of time period they're set.
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison Underworld - Don Delillo American Pastoral - Phillip Roth Reservation Blues - Sherman Alexie The Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
Underworld might be a meme for length but it seems so essential.
Justin Cruz
Let's see your list, user.
Jaxson Cruz
I guess I'd use a three-class system. And, of course, you need some context from non-American writers and settings.
Middlemarch - Elliot You Can't Go Home Again - Thomas Wolfe
Dubliners - James Joyce Iliad - Homer As I Lay Dying - Faulkner Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens East of Eden - John Steinbeck Suttree - Cormac McCarthy Uncle Remus series - Joel Chandler Harris
Christian Johnson
>And, of course, you need some context from non-American writers and settings.
Say more?
Like with Dubliners for example. Is your thinking that because Joyce always wanted to show the universal in the local and particular that the the experiences of the characters in Dublin are also by extension the experiences of any number of people in America too? Are you alluding to Irish-American immigrants?
Anthony Bell
Yeah, exactly
Owen Rogers
>no Walt Whitman >no Ralph Waldo Emerson >no Henry David Thoreau >no Emily Dickinson >no Edgar Allan Poe >no William Carlos Williams >no Allen Ginsberg
Colton Kelly
Don't try to fill an American fiction course with non-American writers. I don't care what your justification is, just stop it.
Ayden Wood
J R The Recognitions moby dick any carver mason and dixon the atrocity exhibition the rainbow stories east of eden libra angle of repose
it's really fucking hard man. just 10 is so hard. a lot of great authors left out. I'm a shitty Canuck and I love the Pomo Americans. good stuff. but that's the most American shit I read.
Dominic Perez
Dude! Come on.
Robert Murphy
replace Atrocity Exhibition with Naked Lunch
Colton Robinson
sure. but I fucking hated that book. but that makes sense on list..gg
nigger
Michael Diaz
>hating Naked Lunch but liking Atrocity Exhibition how the fuck does that work
Jace Bennett
Day of the Triffids. - Wynham Less than Zero- BEE Gravity's Rainbow- the Pynch Atlas Shrugged- Rand Cannery Row- Steinbeck Blood Meridian - Mccarthy The Quiet American, Greene Bear- Engles Neuromancer- Gibson The Great Gatsby- FSF Farewell to Arms - Ernie Hemhem. The Times They Are A-Changin'- Dylan
David Edwards
Get rid of: Reservation Blues - Sherman Alexie The Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
Add: Willa Cather Toni Morrison Moby Dick Poe maybe Hunter Thompson?
Nathan Ward
naked lunch was just so gay
Logan Anderson
oh. fuck you.
Charles Rogers
The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged would be great, how much fun would that be to teach.
Jason Russell
I feel like you need On The Road in there. Its the beat bible.
Gavin Barnes
On The Road is America in book form
Asher Collins
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Huckleberry Finn yet. That one's a must.
I'd also put Native Son in the running.
Kevin Richardson
>meme'd an RWE essay into a career >only wrote one good essay >unessential >good point here >le spooky sound in the night man >zzzzzzzzzzz >le drugs are cool man
Jacob Sanchez
Huckleberry Finn? More like Cuckleberry Finn.
Angel Campbell
I'd let the students chose their own reading list because that's what being an American is truly about.
Asher Carter
Moby Dick by Herman Melville Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman USA trilogy by John Dos Passos Paterson by William Carlos Williams The Ways of White Folks - Langston Hughes Go Down, Moses - William Faulkner Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison.
Tyler Jackson
Short works by Irving and Poe Selections from Emerson and Thoreau Moby-Dick Huck Finn The Sun Also Rises East of Eden Invisible Man The Crying of Lot 49 Gilead
Gabriel Gonzalez
I've actually been meditating on this for a while. I haven't read any of the lesser-known or minor early writers, but I think I can offer my two cents:
(as a special side-note: it's interesting to me personally that the first long-form narratives of note in both the US and Mexico were picaresque quixotisms)
Tocqueville—I only include him because he saw the nation at its outset and you could probably include some short quotes about the uniqueness of American life in the introductory session of the course. Include something about St John Crèvecoeur and maybe something about the American character from the founding fathers.
From there it becomes standard stuff Hawthorne—Wakefield, Minister's Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown, Rappaccini's Daughter plus more. Melville—Bartleby, Benito, Encantatas, selections from MD (I don't trust today's undergrads with the big D, just sayin'); also, Melville's poetry is seriously underappreciated. Whitman—standards, although I would put special emphasis on the marked differences between the original LoG and the expanded, overburdened and ultimately unfinished version. Dickinson—anything, really. You guys should READ Dickinson. Poe—standards, emphasis on Tales of Ratiocination. (really, you can't go wrong with any of the more recognizable titles in their catalogs)
Evan Powell
>Hawthorne Also, Earth's Holocaust* and The Ambitious Guest >Poe I think I'd add an option for an essay on the novella, with Billy Bud and Arthur Gordon Pym as options* Twain—Jumping Frog, A Curious Dream, Some Learned Fables..., A Curious Experience, The Diary of Adam and Eve, The £1M Bank-Note, The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and The Mysterious Stranger (*also these two). Seriously, Twain NEEDS to be read more widely. Goddam... Faulkner—Barn Burning, A Rose for Emily, Dry September, That Evening Sun, Red Leaves, Lo!, All the Dead Pilots, A Justice, The Bear* Dos Passos—The Manhattan Transfer, nuff said. Anderson—as much as I like Winesburg, Ohio, it's not gonna fly with everyone. Just a few select stories from this, as well as A Death in the Woods. O'Connor—The Displaced Person, Everything That Rises..., Greenleaf and Judgment Day are absolutely necessary. Fitzgerald—Bernice, May Day, Diamond as Big, Babylon Revisited and Crazy Sunday.
I'm missing someone, but I can't remember who...
Levi Gomez
>first letter of every line
Juan Ramirez
do you actually think these things? or were you just responding to the fact that his objection was presented in the most abrasive format possible (namely greentext)?
good eye
Eli Sanchez
are/is the rainbow stories really good? Been meaning to read it. It'll be my intro to him
Andrew Gomez
OP here.
Why Moby Dick? Why Poe? I said the course is called "The American Experience in Fiction". It's not "A Survey of Great American Writers"
Melville is certainly one of the greatest American writers and Moby Dick is one of the greatest novels of all time, but does Moby Dick really capture the "American Experience?" It was written by an American, and of course its themes are universal, but does Moby Dick really and immediately capture life in America? I don't really think so.
Poe's specialty was horror/suspense. I don't see a lot of "the American Experience" in Poe.
David Powell
OP here again.
None of these individuals except Poe wrote fiction (and I explained in my previous post why I wouldn't include Poe). The hypothetical class is called "The American Experience in Fiction."
Dylan Moore
Basic Mathematics, Serge Lang An Introduction to Mathematics, Alfred North Whitehead Precalculus, Sullivan Calculus, Gilbert Strang Differential Equations and Linear Algebra, Gilbert Strang Introductory Physics 1-3, Robert Brown An Introduction to Formal Logic, Tim Button Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
Matthew Jenkins
pure autism
Kevin Ramirez
>BAAPCDIAI What's that supposed to mean?
Asher Bailey
yeah I liked it. very American. but the fucked up drug addicts and street scum is only one side of vollmann. it doesn't represent everything he is.
Dominic Davis
These are all brits you tool.
Isaac Edwards
Actually they aren't.
I should have done that though. Would have added an additional layer of trolling.