What contemporary novels would you like to learn about?

I just got assigned to teach a course for English majors in the novel since World War II–I’ve got a list of books I’ve taught before in similar courses, probably too many books to teach in a single course, but I’m still looking to expand my reading list, which consists of novels I happen to like, novels I identify with, etc.

In particular I’m looking for some novels not written by white guys (like Mailer, Roth, Heller, all of whom I’ve got to include some stuff by because I love their work), novels written in the last few decades (I made up my syllabus in the early 1980s, and have just tweaked it since), and most important of all, novels that are FUN for students to read and for me to teach, novels that excite you, thrill you, amaze you. (They’ve also got to be by Americans, as the course is “The American Novel Since WWII”).

If anyone has a favorite to help me enter the 21st century, I’d like to know. I’ve got almost a year to hand out the syllabus, so I will be reading a lot of books over the next six months and I’d be grateful for any input from all of you.

Let me clarify the title…I mean “What contemporary novels would you like to learn about if you were a student in my class and not yourself?” of course, because you would have read the novels you recommending.

How about Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”? Sure, he’s British, but he lives in the US now and the book is about America. Gaiman is also one of the best writers working today.

I also think John Barth’s “Coming Soon!!!” is a truly great novel, though I may be the only one.

Octavia Butler’s “The Parable of the Sower” would be another great choice.

Tough - not a lot of good stuff out there, although there is a lot of stuff.

I would’ve recommended Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as the two best novels I have read in the past 15 years, but neither author is American.

How about A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole - great book, great commentary on society, great backstory about the author and getting the book published.

Kavalier & Clay didn’t strike me as timeless lit, nor did Cold Mountain. And frankly, I thought American Gods was not good at all (sorry RealityChuck), and even posted a thread about it, to ask what I might’ve been missing.

Other recommendations - maybe not “Lit” with all of its high-falutin’ ness (look, we have all read or tried DeLillo, Pynchon and even Franzen - but you are including the better practitioners of that ilk already, so why go there?)

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara - best Civil War novel, some would say one of the best war novels.

Dune - by Frank Herbert - best sci-fi

Neuromancer or Snow Crash - the most well-known of the Cyberpunk novels, both well-written but completely different from one another.

The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace - Lit, sure, but funny and interesting before he got too wordy.

And I almost completely forgot - one of the best writers out there:

The Things They Carried or Going After Cacciotto by Tim O’Brien - I much prefer The Things They Carried - a story cycle about his time in Vietnam - probably the third best book I have read in the past 15 years; but Cacciotto beat out Garp to win the National Book Award (or maybe the Pulitzer - one of the two) and is also highly regarded.

Best of luck PRR - let us know what you pick!

I second Octavia Butler. She’s a black woman, so she fits the “no more books by white guys” criteria. I’d go for “Kindred” over “Parable of the Sower”, though. I love PofS, but Kindred would appeal to more people, IMO. The basic premise of Kindred is that a black woman in the 1970s gets transported back to slave times, and find herself a slave. Very interesting book.

What else? James Halperin’s “The Truth Machine” is another book that will really make you think. Basic premise is that in the very near future they’ve figured out a way to make a machine that can tell 100% if a person is telling the truth or lying, and how this discovery changes our political and social system.

Exciting stuff. Keep 'em coming, please.

Chuck, if I ever see you, remind me to tell you why I’m not teaching Barth no matter how good his novel may be. (I get to Sch’dy all the time, though not to Rotterdam so much, so this is lilkelier than you’re thinking.)

Ooops. I forgot to vote for Octavia Butler as well. I enjoyed her Xenogenesis series (Dawn, Adulthood Rights, Imago) as well as Parable of the Sower - although PofS is pretty much of a downer. I haven’t read Kindred - seems like I should. Also, in the non-white male category, Toni Morrison seems an obvious choice - I like Song of Solomon and Beloved, but who doesn’t?

Hey Pseudotriton Ruber Ruber (interesting name, btw - what’s it mean?): any feedback you can provide on our recommendations would be helpful, e.g., your avoidance of Barth. That way, we can get a sense of the type of book you are circling and provide better recommendations. Did any of my previous recommendations make you go “hmmm, that has possibilities” or “I will add that to my 6-month reading list to see if I should include it”?

For that matter, help us understand your take on the Post WW2 “classics” - e.g., To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, Catch-22, A Separate Peace, Slaughterhouse 5, Garp, etc…they certainly seem worth considering - any reason we should focus on or avoid them when making recommendations?

And finally - what is your take on genre fiction, e.g. sci-fi or crime? Some of Elmore Leonard’s best (e.g., Unknown Man No. 89, Swag, etc.) stands up better than most lit, and others mention O. E. Butler, and I already included Dune and the cyberpunk books - all of these are genre, but clearly transcend that box as well. Your thoughts?

Continued luck!

The Dispossessed, by Ursula LeGuin.

Here are a few offbeat choices, since so many I would have mentioned are already up there:

The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

Live from Golgotha by Gore Vidal

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick (two connected short pieces, but “The Shawl” rivals “The Things They Carried” as the best story of its decade.)

Except for Cloudsplitter, they also have the advantage of being short, unlike way too many of the doorstop books that get most of the attention.

Exapno:

  1. The Mezzanine is wonderful
  2. Glad to hear you also like The Things they Carried
  3. Happy 1000th post! (no, I am not going for a “Hi Opal!” for the third entry - your 1000th post is more important)

Either Bailey’s Cafe or Mama Day by Gloria Naylor–both have aspects of the Magical Reality that one finds in South American lit.

Maybe one of Flannery O’Connor’s novellas.

Don’t discount DeLillo or Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy just because they’re living white males–in fact, I’d do McCarthy’s Child of God just for shock factor. :slight_smile:

The Kundalini Equation
by Steven Barnes

Hokey smokes, Rock! I didn’t even notice that was #1000. Glad it was this one and not some dumb wisecrack. Thanks for pointing it out!

We do have some similar tastes, Wordman. I liked Chabon’s book a lot more than you did and Toole’s less, but both Neuromancer and Snow Crash are fine examples of modern genre. Actually, Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon was the one that utterly blew me away. Would be a tough one to teach, though. Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 might be an alternative, since it is the proto-cyberpunk novel and Delany is a gay black Marxist, which kinda hits all the bases.

For the equivalent in literary modern fantasy, Little, Big by John Crowley and Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin.

Also loved The Killer Angels, BTW.

And I should have remembered Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying which was done here to tremendous acclaim as one of those everybody reads the same book events.

How about Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, who is both female and Native American? It’s got some interesting things to say about alienation and cultural appropriation, and it’s extremely well-written.

I think my reading list, which has to be pared down some, includes THE CRYING OF LOT 49, and I just jotted down CLOUDSPLITTER before reading your post, E.M., and I was thinking about UNDERWORLD, and THE MEZZANINE, already, so you’re all coming up with great ideas–problem is, these great books are all by white guys.

Short List so far:

Mailer: Naked and the Dead, or Armies of the Night
Roth: The Breast or the SHYLOCK thing or HUMAN STAIN
Heller: Catch-22, or Good as Gold
Crying of Lot 49
O’Hara’s Novellas
Richard Yates’ EASTER PARADE
and a few dozen or so more on the long list. I’ve got a smattering of women, too (Anne Tyler, Mary Gordon, Alice Adams, Nora Ephron) and a few non-whites (Reginald McKnight, John A. Williams). Maybe I should run the whole list of forty or so writers I’m thinking about, but I’m addding a writer every few hours --without your excellent contribution–and then I’ll pare the list down to ten or so. What you’re helping me is to think of writers who I don’t ordinarily read for pleasure, so this is working out great.

My issue with Barth is personal–I’ve had a lot of contact with the man, and my distaste for him is matched, only perhaps, by his for me. He’s a wonderful writer, but I’ve got so many other choices that I don’t need the agita of having to speak well of him in class. That would burn my ass a bit.

So you can see how I still need to diverify a bit.

I third the suggestion of The Killer Angels – it’s beautifully written, the characters are very well-fleshed out and engaging, and it’s (from what I’ve heard) factually/historically accurate. Students with no interest in war or war stories should have no problem reading and enjoying this book.

Paul Auster’s City of Glass, a novella in the New York Trilogy but capable of standing alone, is an excellent post-modern examination of language, authorship, and memory. There is much to discuss and much fodder for term papers in this book.

Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina is a modern classic – the women are granite-strong, the men are good-looking, and the child narrator is sensitive and intelligent. The writing itself is compelling and lyrical, and well, dammit, everyone should read this book! It’s fabulous. It also totally nails what it feels like to be an abused child, more so than any other book on the subject I have ever encountered.

PRR - if you’re going to include Anne Tyler - I vote for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - it’s my fave of hers.

I prefer, though, Ann Patchett - Bel Canto just won something and is wonderful, but I much prefer The Magician’s Apprentice.

Sounds like you’re on your way - still, any comments on the recommendations made would be helpful to further tune our suggestions…

Two others worth recommending:
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson - Completely underappreciated when published, now his crime fiction is held up as the progenitor of a wide vein of books and movies.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - by Philip K. Dick - Dick is kind of coming up like the Van Gogh of sci-fi - unknown and/or underappreciated in his lifetime, now you can’t spit without hitting a new movie based on his work or influenced by it. Any of his more well-regarded books would do…

Exapno - I will check out Babel-17 and A Lesson Before Dying - thanks. As for Helprin, I absolutely love A Dove of the East and other stories - some of the best short fiction I have ever read. I have a wonderful first edition of it, with a couple of signed letters from Helprin inside. Now, if only I could figure out his politics…

Just saying I second gallows fodder on Paul Auster, though I’d recommend the whole New York Trilogy. It’s not a long read (though I guess the students who like City of Glass, which certainly is the best of the three novels, will read the rest by themselves).

I don’t have a suggestion that would help you, but I did want to say thanks to everyone who has written in. I’ve been trying to break away from murder mystery/read a book in an evening/no depth in the stories, characters, etc.

I’ve read Anil’s Ghost recently by Michael Ondaatje (I don’t think he fits with your criteria), but I didn’t know where to go next. Now, I’ve got a good reading list to start from for myself.

Thanks.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds. A heavy-handed but still interesting look at a repressive religious ‘cult.’

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (one of my new favorite books)

The Further Adventures of Halley’s Comet by John Calvin Batchelor. I really enjoyed his writing style and I plan to read more of his novels.

Contact by Carl Sagan. The themes of religion versus science are explored much better in the novel than in the movie–though I didn’t dislike the movie. Sagan–who was not religious–gives fair treatment to both sides of the issue here.

The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle is a great discussion generator, though the characters are extreme stereotypes (I know–that’s kind of the point) and one-dimensional.