‘–coeditor CounterPunch
Books-writ-in-English I’d throw in the car to read on the way to somewhere? 20th century novels I truly love? Start with P.G. Wodehouse. Two of his best, written in the late 1930s or early 40s, The Code of the Woosters and Jeeves in the Morning. Up there with Shakespeare’s best comedies. And talking of Shakespeare, try to find Hugh Kingsmill’s Return of William Shakespeare, a first person account of his life and work by the Swan of A. Now move over to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Close out with a little surrealist classic, written as a series for the old English Lilliput, Maurice Richardson’s Exploits of Engelbrecht the Dwarf.
Adventure? Stanley Weyman’s Under the Red Robe, tighter than Dumas, set in Richelieu’s France, with its terrific first line, “Marked cards!” Now for Arthur Ransome’s children’s classic We Didn’t Mean to Go To Sea, and then in a natural aquatic progression, to that Irish revolutionary, Erskine Childers and his Riddle of the Sands, then to John Buchan’s Greenmantle, chock with all the ingredients of today’s headlines about Islam, terror, Osama, the Great Game, only written 70 years ago.
Now to Eric Ambler’s Mask of Dimitrios, then head east from Istanbul to India and John Masters’ haunting thriller The Deceivers about stranglers (The Thugs) in the service of Kali. Don’t forget to pack Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, made into that great movie Plein Soleil. Pack at least one of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books, maybe Flying Colors, where the austere commander has that torrid fling with the Comptesse Marie de Gracay. Not enough women in this list. How about Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Rebecca West’s The Thinking Reed, with its playboy who “even when he was peering down a woman’s blouse managed to look as though he was thinking about India”.
Pick up my father Claud Cockburn’s Beat the Devil, so much better than the movie Huston made from it.Then on to Patrick Hamilton’s London-set Slaves of Solitude, noirer than noir. Something short, though still noir-ish? Evelyn Waugh’s Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, so superior to the pompous war trilogy. Now settle down with two by Joseph Conrad, both brilliant about terrorism, Under Western Eyes and The Secret Agent. Close out with Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds and my one concession to heft, James Joyce’s Ulysses. Throw in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.
You forgot to pack Mann, Musil, Broch? Lucky you. Another summer safe from attack by Joseph and His Brothers, The Man Without Qualities, not to mention the Death of Virgil. Next year, you promise.
Jeffrey St. Clair–co-editor CounterPunch. (My top 20 in rough order of preference.)
Far Tortuga-Peter Matthiessen
(Moby Dick narrated by Bob Marley.)Mumbo Jumbo-Ishmael Reed
(A conspiratorial history of America that Howard Zinn might have written if he’d been a black radical, obsessed with the blues and jazz and blessed with a vicious sense of humor. Reed is our funniest novelist since Twain and also one of the most painful.)Solo Faces-James Salter
(The best novel ever written about mountain climbing, sex and France–yes, they go together. The prose is as clear and deadly as the sheer face of the Dru.)Almanac of the Dead-Leslie Marmon Silko
(The reconquest of America by the people, animals and plants the masters of the nation mistakenly assumed they had annihilated.)Ray-Barry Hannah
(The white Ishmael Reed…on drugs.)A Feast of Snakes-Harry Crews
(The deep south in all it’s gothic weirdness, populated by the next generation of Faulkner’s Snopes, in prose distilled to two syllable words and eight word sentences. But what sentences!)The Plumed Serpent-DH Lawrence
(Sex, power, sun and the old Mexico. Oddly, it’s also Jean-Luc Godard’s favorite novel.)The Executioner’s Song-Norman Mailer
(The crowning achievement of Mailer’s career and the best book ever written on crime and punishment in the US.)Tropic of Cancer-Henry Miller
(The most liberating novel in English and one of the very best.)Gravity’s Rainbow-Thomas Pynchon
(The secret history of WWII and the corporate plot behind the engineering of the Cold War, with lots of gratuitous sex, pigs, dirty limericks, hallucinations, anarchists, bad puns and screwball comedy to rush things along.)Tender is the Night-F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Fitzgerald’s true masterpiece about a Lost Generation of rich and dissipated American expatriates, who almost get what they deserve.)A Place of Greater Safety-Hilary Mantel
(The most enthusiastic account of the French Revolution written in English since Twain and a rip-roaring read.)The Violent Bear It Away-Flannery O’Conner
(Religious zealots, sadistic families, visionary schizophrenics, greedy bastards and a gumbo of freaks and outcasts. Just another day in O’Connor’s America.)Sleeping Beauty-Ross McDonald
(Lost children, narcissistic adults and the destruction of the southern California coast by big oil. McDonald is a superior writer than the more acclaimed novelist of So Cal’s unique brand of degeneracy, Chandler and Nathaniel West.)The Last Good Kiss-James Crumley
(For my money, the greatest hard-boiled detective novel ever written and, like the second greatest, Hammett’s Red Harvest, it takes place in our greatest state: that would be Montana.)Deserted Cities of the Heart-Lewis Shiner
(Shiner defies categorization. He’s often lumped with the cyberpunks, but he here writes about rock ‘n roll, drugs and the haunted past of Mexico better than any living writer.)The Monkeywrench Gang-Edward Abbey
(Too bad it’s fiction. Or is it?)Fool’s Crow-James Welch
(Hemingway spoke of loss as a measure of character. Papa was bluffing. James Welch isn’t. The Blackfoot novelist is the American West’s great historian of loss and this haunting novel about the Blackfeet Tribe, the great horse raiders of the Rocky Mountain Front, at the time of the white invasion is a beautiful and excrutiating evocation of his tribe’s history–and our own.)Children of Light-Robert Stone
(The best novel about Hollywood since the Last Tycoon.)Captain Blood-Rafael Sabatini
(The first novel I reread.)
Ben Sonnenberg–CounterPunch counselor, former editor of Grand Street, author Memoirs of a Bad Boy
Riddle of the Sands — Erskine Childers
Kim — Rudyard Kipling
Riceyman Steps — Arnold Bennett:
Manservant and Maidservant — Ivy Compton Burnett
Parade’s End — Ford Madox Ford
Cakes and Ale — Somerset Maugham
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight — Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
Island of Dr Moreau — H.G. Wells
Scoop — Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm — George Orwell
Death of the Heart — Elizabeth Bowen
Novel on Yellow Paper — Stevie Smith
The Rainbow — D.H. Lawrence
The Man Who Was Thursday — G. K. Chesterton
USA Trilogy — John Dos Passos
A Lost Lady — Willa Cather
Zuleika Dobson — Max Beerbohm
Stew Albert–poet and manages the Yippie Reading Room. He can be reached at: stewa@aol.com
An American Dream–Norman Mailer
USA--John Dos Pasos
The Sun Also Rises–Ernest Hemigway
The Iron Heel–Jack London
The Great Gatsby–F. Scott Fitzgerald
It Can’t Happen Here–Sinclair Lewis
Dog Soldiers–Robert Stone
American Pastoral–Philip Roth
Catch 22–Joseph Heller
Underworld–Don DeLillo
Lady Chatterley’s Lover–DH Lawrence
The Jungle–Upton Sinclair
Dharma Bums–Jack Kerouac
This Side of Paradise–F. Scott Fitzgerald
Elaine Cassel — former English professor turned lawyer, law professor and legal columnist and blogger.
The Golden Bowl — Henry James (My favorite James. The strains in a relationship are symbolized in a cracked urn; emotionally charged, yet exquisitely restrained.)
The Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison (The outsider portrays his separateness with sarcasm and a touch of humor.)
The Sweet Hereafter — Russell Banks (Aching emotionality simmers just beneath the surface; spare prose, nary an unnecessary word. My favorite short story author is Ray Carver, and this Banks is the most Carveresque.)
Mr. Bridge & Mrs. Bridge — Evan Connell (Two novels, actually, of a 1940s couple describing their life and marriage each through their own eyes. Each captures his/her loneliness in a subtle way_read them together for the best experience of two lives passing in the hall.)
The Citadel — A. J. Cronin (The tale of a young Scottish doctor in the 20s, as he goes from a small-town doctor barely making it to a London physician who has it made. But he become disillusioned and recovers his love for medicine and people.)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce (The ultimate “coming-of-age” novel from surely the most important writer of the 20th century.)
To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf (A stream-of consciousness narrative of a middle-class matron; dreamy setting.)
Sorrell and Son — Warwick Deeping (A father sacrifices and devotes his life to making a good life for his son. Poignant, but with a “happy” ending.)
My Man Jeeves — P. G. Wodehouse (Hard to pick my favorite Wodehouse, but this one will do. What is it about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, his valet, that appeals to me? The deadpan sarcasm and subtle humor, I guess.)
A Handful of Dust— Evelyn Waugh (A master of satire and dry humor, Waugh pokes fun at his favorite victims–the British upper class.)
Down and Out in Paris and London — George Orwell (Ostensibly a novel, this book is Orwell’s thinly fictional account of a time he spent “slumming it” in Paris and London. The decadence is compelling.)
Ethan Frome — Edith Wharton (The darkest of Wharton’s novels, the tragic tale of a desperately unhappy man locked in a loveless marriage.
Native Son — Richard Wright (One of the most important novels in the 20th century about the hopelessness of being poor and black in the US in the 30s. In many ways, not much has changed.)
Chris Clarke — editor of Faultline: the Magazine of the California Environment.
Tortilla Curtain–T.C.Boyle
Black Sun–Ed Abbey
The Brothers K–David James Duncan
Continental Drift–James Houston
Tripmaster Monkey–Maxine Hong Kingston
The Octopus--Frank Norris
Straight White Male–Gerald Haslam
All the Little Live Things–Wallace Stegner
The Turquoise Dragon–David Rains Wallace
Vida–Marge Piercy
The Giant Joshua–Maurine Whipple (Spelling correct)
All the Pretty Horses–Cormac McCarthy (despite the movie)
Animal Dreams–Barbara Kingsolver
Bless The Beasts And Children–Glendon Swarthout
Bucking the Sun–Ivan Doig
Adam Engel — New York writer, poet and CounterPunch contributor.
Gravity’s Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon
JR — William Gaddis
Americana — Don Delillo
Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
Ulysses — James Joyce
Catch 22 — Joseph Heller
Naked Lunch — William Burroughs
Absalom, Absalom! — William Faulkner
The Book of Daniel — E.L. Doctorow
Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Salinger
Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream — Kathy Acker
Blood and Guts in High School — Kathy Acker
Mumbo Jumbo — Ishmael Reed
USA Trilogy — John Dos Passos
The Making of Americans — Gertrude Stein
Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable — Samuel Beckett (3)
Murray Dailey — Detroit-based comic, poet and environmentalist.
Tough Guys Don’t Dance–Norman Mailer
The Monkeywrench Gang-Ed Abbey
Ulysses–James Joyce
The Town and The City–Jack Kerouac
Lightning On The Sun–Robert Bingham
Deadeye Dick–Kurt Vonnegut
TDY–Douglas Valentine
Borstal Boy–Brendan Behan
Michael Donnelly — Salem, Oregon-based environmental organizer.
Slaughterhouse Five–Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Where is Joe Merchant?–Jimmy Buffett
The Dispossessed--Ursula LeGuin
A Canticle for Liebowitz–Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Lord of Light–Rodger Zelazny
Tourist Season–Carl Hiaasen
Little Altars Everywhere–Rebecca Wells
Dog Soldiers–Robert Stone
Sometimes A Great Notion–Ken Kesey
The Butcher’s Theater–Jonathan Kellerman
A Thief of Time–Tony Hillerman
King Rat–James Clavell
Condominium–John D. MacDonald
1876–Gore Vidal
Devil in a Blue Dress–Walter Mosley
The Foundation Trilogy –Isaac Asimov
Brave New World –Aldous Huxley
Invisible Man –Ralph Waldo Ellison
Carl Estabrook —
SWORD OF HONOUR — Evelyn Waugh,
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME — Anthony Powell,
DOCTOR FISCHER OF GENEVA — Graham Greene,
AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS— Flann O’Brien
ULYSSES — James Joyce
THE SOUND AND THE FURY — William Faulkner
Gravity’s Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon
EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE –Flannery O’Connor
THE BLACK PRINCE — Iris Murdoch
MASTER AND COMMANDER — Patrick O’Brian
MANHATTAN TRANSFER — John Dos Passos
NAPOLEON SYMPHONY — Anthony Burgess
REGENERATION — Pat Barker
WOMEN IN LOVE — D. H. Lawrence
LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL — Thomas Wolfe
BEAT TO QUARTERS — C. S. Forester
A FLAG FOR SUNRISE — Robert Stone
LUCKY JIM — Kingsley Amis
OLIVER WISWELL — Kenneth Roberts
JULIAN — Gore Vidal
DAY OF THE LOCUST — Nathaniel West
THE GOLDEN GATE — Vikram Seth
LOLITA — Vladimir Nabokov
THE BLUE FLOWER — Penelope Fitzgerald
MR. AMERICAN — George MacDonald Fraser
GAUDY NIGHT — Dorothy L. Sayers
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET — Lawrence Durrell
THE LORD OF THE FLIES — William Golding
MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR — Herman Wouk (Wait, I can explain…)
Julie Hilden — laywer, columnist and author of the newly published erotic novel Three and the memoir The Bad Daughter.
A Book of Common Prayer — Joan Didion
The Book of Daniel — E.L. Doctorow
“His Dark Materials” trilogy — Philip Pullman
The Left Hand of Darkness — Ursula LeGuin
The Dispossessed — Ursula LeGuin
Affliction — Russell Banks
The Sweet Hereafter — Russell Banks
The Foundation Trilogy — Isaac Asimov
July’s People — Nadine Gordimer
The Late Bourgeois World — Nadine Gordimer
Age of Iron — J.M. Coetzee
The Comfort of Strangers — Ian McEwan
House of Stairs — William Sleator
Anything by Philip K. Dick
Bruce Jackson — edits the web magazine BuffaloReport.com. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo.
Absalom, Absalom! — William Faulkner,
The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison,
Native Son — Richard Wright
Call it Sleep — Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts — Nathaniel West
The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett,
Gone With the Wind — Margaret Mitchell
From Here to Eternity — James Jones
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold — John Le Carre
The French Lieutenant’s Woman — John Fowles
The Stand — Stephen King
Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
Wise Blood — Flannery O’Connor
Little Big Man — Thomas Berger
Ulysses — James Joyce
Lolita — Vladimir Nabakov
Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
Ironweed — William Kennedy
Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee
Christine Karatnytsky — New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Voss by Patrick White
Martha Quest by Doris Lessing
Swing, Hammer, Swing by Jeff Torrington
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien
Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Valis Trilogy by Philip K. Dick
Bill Kaufman– Author of Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town’s Fight to Survive (Henry Holt) and of a novel, Every Man a King (Soho Press), and three other books.
Burr and Lincoln by Gore Vidal–(America, by a true patriot and our greatest living man of letters.)
The Brave Cowboy by Edward Abbey–(An anarchist Western. In the film version (Lonely are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas’s jaw), screenwriter Dalton Trumbo shamefully changed the hero’s crime from rescuing a draft-resister to harboring a family of adorable illegal immigrants. Abbey: Brave. Trumbo: Coward!)
The Octopus by Frank Norris, Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag, and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck–(The great American novel: take your pick.)
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis–A regionalist dystopia by a Minnesota Firster. George Babbitt is a fool not because he is provincial but because he has bought into the lie of mass culture. If you drink at Starbucks and watch SEX AND THE CITY, you’re Babbitt. Dump FRIENDS; make friends!
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington–You’ve seen Welles’ butchered movie; now read the superior novel.
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry–The finest book ever written about a barber. Berry is the exemplary American agrarian.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury–Just lovely. My daughter and I read the opening pages (about the first day of summer) every summer solstice. Yeah, I know, dandelions yellow the yard in May, not June, but maybe things were different in Ray’s Waukegan.
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe and On the Road by Jack Kerouac–I loved these books when I was 23, and I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING!
The Adventures of Wesley Jackson by William Saroyan–An Armenian-American pacifist confronts The Good War and loses his career. Saroyan was a soldier when he wrote this charming story of a 19-year-old draftee who discovers that “our own army was the enemy.” Office of War Information commissar Herbert Agar–a turncoat bastard who had been a Kentucky distributist before going proto-Ashcroft–threatened him with a court martial and tried to kill the book. Saroyan nailed the chickenhawks but good: “when everybody else got shipped overseas they were still writing scenarios for films encouraging everybody else to face death like a scenario writer.”
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson–Inspired an aptly bleak album by one of my all-time favorite bands, Green on Red.
Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, Jr.–Indiana golden boy writes 1,000-page Whitmanesque novel, then kills self. No one has read this book for 50 years, but I love it.
Crazy Legs McBain by Joe Archibald–Hey, it’s my list. Every fall I read this 1961 boys book about an unlikely college football star, a gawky kid who runs punts back 90 yards, makes one-handed catches, and piledrives the pretty boy-rich kid quarterback’s face into the turf. Go Bobcats!
Standard Shaefer–an independent economic journalist and cultural historian. He also co-edits the New Review of Literature. He can be reached at ssschaefer@earthlink.net
Lincoln –Gore Vidal
American Tabloid — James Ellroy
If He Hollers, Let Him Go — Chester Himes
Love in the Ruins — Walker Percy
White Noise — Don Delillo
Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
Harlot’s Ghost — Norman Mailer
Five Doubts — Mary Caponegro
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things — Gilbert Sorrentino
The Bushwacked Piano — Thomas McGuane
Max Sawicky
don’t die before reading:
Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
Good as Gold — Joseph Heller
Catch 22 — Heller
Naked Lunch — William S. Burroughs
Why Are We In Vietnam — Norman Mailer
less taxing:
Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match (really one book)–Len Deighton
Spy Hook, Spy Line, Spy Sinker (ditto); — Len Deighton
The Foundation Trilogy — Isaac Asimov
Day of the Jackel — Frederick Forsythe
everything by John Le Carre
Lewis Shiner — author of Deserted Cities of the Heart, Slam, Glimpses, and Say Goodbye: the Laurie Moss Story.
HEART OF DARKNESS — Joseph Conrad
(Tainted by racism and imperialism, but undeniably compelling, both in the
narrative techniques and the sheer power of the story.)THE SWEETHEART SEASON — Karen Joy Fowler
(Nostalgia was never like this–a women’s baseball team in the late 1940s reveals a weird America just under the surface, full of wit, grace, and beauty.)THE DIGGING LEVIATHAN — James P. Blaylock
(A loving attack on the very nature of science, hysterically funny, and wonderfully unwilling to pass judgment.)A THOUSAND ACRES — Jane Smiley
(Hard to pick just one from an oeuvre that’s so varied and uniformly excellent, but the emotional level in this one is stunning.)MASTERS OF ATLANTIS — Charles Portis
(Deadpan novel of fringe culture and conspiracy from a seriously underrated writer.)Gravity’s Rainbow — Thomas Pynchon
(The funniest, easiest-reading “difficult” book I know, taking a slight edge over the also wonderful MASON & DIXON.)SAINT MAYBE — Anne Tyler
(Again, hard to pick just one, but this may be my favorite of hers–caring, patient exploration of damaged characters trying to make some headway in life.)LAND OF LAUGHS — Jonathan Carroll
(Flawed novel with a deeply unsatisfying ending, but completely unforgettable, with twists and turns unlike anything else out there.)DREAM SCIENCE — Thomas Palmer
(Hyper-realistic book about a man caught up in a series of impossible events that have a primal, almost mythic quality, finally hijacking our sense of what reality is.)MARTIAN TIME-SLIP — Philip K. Dick
(Essentially a mainstream novelist of character, his best work uses SF elements to tighten the screws on his protagonists–you’ll never look at Ken and
Barbie the same way after reading this.)ENDLESS LOVE — Scott Spencer
(I don’t know many other novels that get the obsessive quality of young love as right as this one does–Spencer is another writer with a large and varied body of work, all of which is great.)DOG SOLDIERS — Robert Stone
(Word for word I can’t think of a better stylist, but Stone’s books are too often about self-pitying drunks. Among the exceptions, DAMASCUS GATE may be a better novel, but this is his archetypical work.)
Sam Smith — editor of the indispensable Progressive Review and author of The Great Political Repair Manual.
I don’t read that many novels in part because I resent novelists. They write lies, then get to call it literature and turn beautiful women gooey-eyed at parties. Journalists write the truth, then get to call it news and turn bleary-eyed listening to politicians at press conferences. If they start writing like novelists, it becomes a major scandal, witness the recent troubles at the Times.
There are plenty of literary truth-tellers and any summer would be better spent reading them than the average novel. I particularly recommend the work of The Intitials: E.B White, A.J. Liebling and H.L. Mencken, as well as anything by James Thurber. Consider, for example, a good novel that makes my list: “All the King’s Men.” Fine as it is, it doesn’t match Liebling’s description of another Long in “The Earl of Louisiana.”
Further, having more than enough dysfunction in my own family, I get no particular joy out of reading about other people’s problems, whether fictional or mildly disguised. And I agree with Joe Rauh who once told me that he once declined an invitation from Arthur Miller to see a tragic play because “I didn’t see why I should have to pay to see what I try to avoid in real life.”
But, unlike novelists, journalists tend to do what they’re told, so here’s my list:
Sister Carrie–Theodore Dreiser
The Great Gatsby–F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brave New World–Aldus Huxley
Catch 22–Joseph Heller
1984–George Orwell
Slaughterhouse Five–Kurt Vonnegut
Animal Farm–Orwell
All the King’s Men–Robert Penn Warren
The Sun Also Rises–Ernest Hemingway
Catcher in the Rye–JD Salinger
Lord Jim–Joseph Conrad
Lord of the Flies–William Golding
Invisible Man–Ralph Ellison
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy–Douglas Adams
Finally, when I do read fiction, it tends to be detective mysteries. I’m convinced that Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Nero Wolfe, and Michael Innes tell all one needs to know to get along in this life and how to avoid trouble along the way. As Chandler once wrote of the detective hero, “He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks — that is, with a rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”
David Vest — CounterPunch columnist and rock’n’roller. His scorching new CD, Way Down Here, is now available from CounterPunch.
MASTERS OF ATLANTIS–Charles Portis
Written on the Body — Jeannette Winterson
Ellen Foster–Kaye Gibbons
The Handmaid’s Tale–Margaret Atwood
The Knockout Artist–Harry Crews
Hue and Cry–James Alan MacPherson (I know, hush about it)
The Ambassadors–Henry James
Last Exit to Brooklyn–Hubert Selby, Jr.
The Talented Mr Ripley–Patricia Highsmith
Jesse Walker — An associate editor of Reason and author of Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America (NYU Press, 2001). http://jessewalker.blogspot.com
The Place of Dead Roads — William S. Burroughs
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — Michael Chabon
The Man Who Was Thursday — G.K. Chesterton
David Boring — Daniel Clowes
Aegypt — John Crowley
A Scanner Darkly — Philip K. Dick
The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner
Red Harvest — Dashiell Hammett
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
Impollutable Pogo — Walt Kelly
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — Ken Kesey
Motherless Brooklyn — Jonathan Lethem
The Third Policeman — Flann O’Brien
Wise Blood — Flannery O’Connor
Mumbo Jumbo — Ishmael Reed
Burr — Gore Vidal
Jimmy Corrigan — Chris Ware
The Woman Chaser — Charles Williford
Illuminatus! — Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea
Kimberly Willson (Millar Library, Portland State University)
Golden Notebook— Doris Lessing
Justine — Lawrence Durrell
Aaron’s Rod — D. H. Lawrence
The Years — Virginia Woolf
Light Years — James Salter
The Executioner’s Song— Norman Mailer
Sula— Toni Morrison
Solstice — Joyce Carol Oates
Desperate Characters— Paula Fox
The Crying of Lot 49— Thomas Pynchon
Slaughterhouse Five— Kurt Vonnegut
In the Cut — Susanna Moore
Death in the Family— James Agee
Farewell, My Lovely— Raymond Chandler