The 100 Greatest American Novels

Heyyyyy guys! It's the fourth of July! Happy Birthday America, and well done for shattering the chains of British Imperialism and being your own people. Nice job! Had I been more organised, I would have posted my review of America today and written something about Canada on Monday (I missed Canada Day! Sorry Canada, I still like you plenty) but I didn't and LUCKILY Book Riot posted a list of the 100 Greatest American Novels (1893-1993) yesterday and so I had an insta-post. Cause let's face it, who doesn't love a list?! Oh, you don't?

I consider 20th Century American Literature to pretty much be my jam, not out of any conscious I-Must-Read-20th-Century-American-Writers urge, but just because those are the books that I seem to like the most, and those are the ones I tend to go for. Since this list is kiiind of done by author rather than actual books though (one of the conditions of the list is that each author only gets one entry) I'm not that convinced I've read that many of them- I've tended to go 'Steinbeck, you fucking genius' and read EVERYTHING by him (I don't think I'm far off that) rather than going further afield with ALL THE WRITERS. But, this is pretty much how I read anyway (that is, by author) and

So here goes. I'm going to bold the books I've read, italicise the ones I own (and so intend to read) and also underline ones where I've read something else by the author, just to make myself feel better when I've read not-that-many books. It sounds good, I know.

Maggie, Girl of the Streets- Stephen Crane (1893)
The Country of Pointed Firs- Sarah Orne Jewett (1896)
The Awakening- Kate Chopin (1899)
The Call of the Wild- Jack London (1903)
The Golden Bowl- Henry James (1904) (I've read The Europeans, The Turn of the Screw and What Maisie Knew, so I think I'm doing fine with James)
The House of Mirth- Edith Wharton (1905)
The Jungle- Upton Sinclair (1906)
Three Lives- Gertrude Stein (1909)
My Antonia- Willa Cather (1918)
The Magnificent Ambersons- Booth Tarkington (1918)
Winesburg, Ohio- Sherwood Anderson (1919)
Main Street- Sinclair Lewis (1920)
Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man- James Weldon Johnson (1921)
Cane- Jean Toomer (1923)
The Great Gatsby- F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
An American Tragedy- Theodore Dresier (1925)
The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway (1926)
The Bridge of the San Luis Rey- Thornton Wilder (1927)
Home to Harlem- Claude McKay (1928)
The Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner (1929)
Look Homeward, Angel- Thomas Wolfe (1929)
The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett (1930)
Flowering Judas and Other Stories- Katherine Porter (1930)
The Good Earth- Pearl S Buck (1931)
Call it Sleep- Henry Roth (1934)
The Tropic of Cancer- Henry Miller (1934)
Appointment in Samarra- John O'Hara (1934)
The USA Trilogy- John Dos Passos (1936)
Gone With The Wind- Margaret Mitchell (1936)
Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
Day of the Locust- Nathaniel West (1939)
The Big Sleep- Raymond Chandler (1939) (I don't own this but I REALLY want to read it)
The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck (1939) (And the rest...)
Native Son- Richard Wright (1940)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter- Carson McCullers (1940)
The Fountainhead- Ayn Rand (1943)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- Betty Smith (1943)
All the King's Men- Robert Penn Warren (1946)
Tales of the South Pacific- James Michener (1947)
The Naked and the Dead- Norman Mailer (1948)
The Sheltering Sky- Paul Bowles (1948)
The Lottery and Other Stories- Shirley Jackson (1949)
The Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger (1951)
Invisible Man- Ralph Ellison (1952)
Go Tell It On The Mountain- James Baldwin (1953)
The Adventures of Augie March- Saul Bellow (1953)
Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury (1953)
Andersonville- MacKinley Kantor (1955)
On the Road- Jack Kerouac (1957)
Gimpel the Fool- Isaac Bashevis Singer (1957)
The Wapshot Chronicle- John Cheever (1957)
Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov (1958)
The Magic Barrel- Bernard Malamud (1958)
Goodbye, Columbus- Philip Roth (1959)
Naked Lunch- William Burroughs (1959)
The Little Disturbances of Man- Grace Paley (1959)
Browngirl, Brownstones- Paule Marshall (1959)
To Kill A Mockingbird- Harper Lee (1960)
Rabbit, Run- John Updike (1960)
The Sot-Weed Factor- John Barth (1960)
The Moviegoer- Walker Percy (1961)
Catch-22- Joseph Heller (1961)
Revolutionary Road- Richard Yates (1961)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest- Ken Kesey (1962)
The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath (1963)
A Sport and A Pasttime- John Salter (1967)
The Confessions of Nat Turner- William Styron (1967) (Not... Sophie's Choice?)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?- Philip K Dick (1968)
Slaughterhouse 5- Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
House Made of Dawn- N Scott Momaday (1969)
them- Joyce Carol Oates (1969) (I haven't read them, but Joyce is my HOMEGIRL)
The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford (1969)
Play it as it Lays- Joan Didion (1970)
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor (1971)
Mumbo Jumbo- Ishmael Reed (1972)
Angle of Repose- Wallace Stegner (1972)
Gravity's Rainbow- Thomas Pynchon (1973)
Ragtime- E.L. Doctorow (1975)
JR- William Gaddis (1976)
Roots- Alex Haley (1976)
Ceremony- Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
The World According to Garp- John Irving (1978)
Airships- Barry Hannah (1978)
Housekeeping- Marilynne Robinson (1980)
A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole (1980)
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1982)
The Color Purple- Alice Walker (1982)
Cathedral- Raymond Carver (1983)
Love Medicine- Louise Erdrich (1984)
Neuromancer- William Gibson (1984)
White Noise- Don Delilo (1985)
Blood Meridian- Cormac McCarthy (1985) (I've read No Country For Old Men and I own The Road)
Lonesome Dove- Larry McMuntry (1985)
City of Glass- Paul Auster (1985)
Beloved- Toni Morrison (1987)
The Joy Luck Club- Amy Tan (1989)
The Shawl- Cynthia Ozick (1989)
The Things They Carried- Tim O'Brien (1990)
How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents- Julia Alverez (1991)
Bastard Out Of Carolina- Dorothy Allison (1992)

SO! What did I do. I've read... 18, read books by 4 more of the authors listed, and I own another 9 of the books. That is... Pretty fucking lame.

Apparently the majority of my reading of the American novels is from the 50s and 60s, and then after 1992, apparently. Because, trust me, I barely ever read things set in England! I really don't! Still. I have this list to work off now, if I really want to, or I can just carry on reading things by authors I know I like and be all happy and stuff. Gee, which shall I do?!

Really quick complaint- No Stephen King? REALLY? I mean, I won't go into whether or not Stephen King is literature (he is. He definitely is.) but I think either The Stand or It really wouldn't be out of place on this list. And then I would have read 19 and that would be way cool. But anyway. Got to go and read some American Classics now, k bye!

Devouring Books: America by Jean Baudrillard

"No one is indifferent to his own life and the least event still has something moving about it. I was here in my imagination long before I actually came here."

If you want a book that makes you sing a certain Simon and Garfunkel song EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you look at it, or pick it up, or remember that you're reading it, then this is definitely the book you should read. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't want that, so I assume you've all gone to buy it right now. It's cool, I'll wait.

We've all come, to look for Ameriiiica...

Ok, so. I was excited to read this because the genre identifying thing on the back said 'Philosophy/Travel' and I was like 

But also I REALLY LIKE both of those things, and even though I sometimes... struggle with Philosophical works (translation: I don't think I've ever finished one. And HALF OF MY DEGREE is in Philosophy. That's good learning, kids!) I was like meh, I'll be fine. Because it's a book about America, did I not make that clear? I love America, AND I love thinking! What could possibly go wrong?

Well. When I started reading it, I was overly aware of two main things- I am so not used to reading academic texts anymore, and this guy seems to dislike America a bit. Which I pretty much wanted to yawn at, because a french intellectual who doesn't think America is the bees knees? Quelle Surprise! For the first, ooh, 40 pages or so, I was kind of skimming along the surface of it and trying to find a way in whilst simultaneously trying not to punch Baudrillard in the face for being mean about America (I mean, I think he was being mean, but it was kind of hard to tell. Philosophers, you know?)

BUT THEN- I got to this bit where Baudrillard makes an argument that I kind of understood and I felt the synapses and things start firing in my head and started kind of nodding in agreement and sort of getting it, and started feeling like maybe I wasn't doomed to be an idiot forever? Which is always a good feeling. But the thing that I understood was when he started saying that the culture of America (and, really, I think, the developed world) is an anorexic culture, in that because everything is so readily available to us, we reject it and deny ourselves it and in this we are kind of, you know, stupid. And I was all like YES and RIGHT ON and WOW MY BRAIN STILL WORKS and then I read this:

"The obsessive desire for survival (and not for life) is a symptom of this state of affairs and doubtless the most worrying sign of the degradation of the species"

And I was like, well, it's a bit heavy handed, but mostly YES, isn't that how we live now? Just... trying to do everything that's good for us and healthy so we can survive that little bit longer, but when do we really live? I mean, I don't necessarily agree that it's a sign of degradation because, like, what if it's just really evolved of us to want to have as much life as we possibly can, but STILL- even this disagreement is a good thing in my brain because I am thinking about shit and that's just awesome. 

And really, that's just the first in a long list of the things Baudrillard comes up with regarding America- some of which are undoubtedly bullshit, and some of which undoubtedly are just there to serve his wider philosophical vision (I wish I could tell you what that is, but I don't know. Something something post-modernism something simulacrum something?) as in, making the situation fit his pre-existing ideas rather than getting new idea because of the situation; but there was enough here to make me think about things and feel like I was learning something and just generally nerd out and get excited and sort of wish I could do a whole unit just on this book, each week taking one idea and slowly and gently pulling it apart.

But. Instead I just have this blog post so you get to hear about the anorexic culture and stuff instead. And also these few things:

• "Santa Barbara is a Paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the US is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise." - I feel like this is a really french (dare I say European? Maybe...) idea that paradise isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be, and a realised paradise becomes less awesome the more you live there, because what else is left to do? Nothing. And so boredom ensues...
• "Everything that has been dreamt on this side of the Atlantic [Europe] has a chance of being realised on the other. They build the real out of ideas. We transform the real into ideas, or into ideology. Here in America, only what is produced or manifested has meaning, for us in Europe only what can be thought or concealed has meaning." - On the one hand, he's basically saying, 'America doesn't appreciate thinkers!' but on the other, he says this with admiration- Americans get things done and that's why they're successful and rich and lots of other things (although as far as that success and wealth is a good thing is up for debate too)
• And, this was written in the eighties, so the following is kiiiind of time specific, but also kind of specific to right now, too: "The very last traces of marginality excised as if by plastic surgery: new faces, new fingernails, glossy brain cells, the whole topped with a tousle of software. A generation nether fired by ambition nor fuelled by the energy of repression, but completely refocused upon themselves." I mean, right?!

So yeah. Basically I liked this book for making me think, even if there were large chunks of it I read that I didn't understand at all- I'm kind of used to that (have you read Kant? Of course you have not, because you are smart people), and what I did get out of it was enough to give me faith that my brain hasn't turned to mush because I haven't had any formal education for over three years (although I have, of course, learnt shitloads). I'm not saying it's going to be everyone's cup of tea because normal people aren't so much into the philosophical texts, but it's worth a try because understanding just a few ideas in it makes you feel all smart and good and stuff. It sure as hell doesn't make you eloquent though.