i know they’re kind of obvious, but the two i’d recommend are:
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
and
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
two of my favorites
Even better, The Left Hand of Darkness.
From the “I Can’t Believe Nobody Else Has Already Said…” file:
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It should be on your list even if you weren’t looking for diversity of viewpoints.
Good one, AS. Invisible Man is powerful and important along with all its other many virtues. It’s sitting right there on my fiction shelves, and I’m embarassed that I missed it before.
Native American writer Louise Erdrich has a number of books to look for, including Love Medicine and Tracks.
John Nichol’s The Milagro Beanfield War is a fine novel on an aspect of Hispanic culture that doesn’t get covered often, but I think he’s not Hispanic himself.
bump
I’d go with White Noise as a classic of contemporary American culture before Underworld, as recommended reading to students. Just a humble O.
How about:
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. A good entry into contemporary southern fiction.
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. Great example of experimental prose and large metaphors.
92 in the Shade by Thomas McGuane. A beaut about America and becoming your own person in the face of your’s and previous generations.
The Bell Jar by Slyvia Plath. Yeow, the artist and the world collide and the artist loses.
Tangent, nice call on Geek Love. If nothing else, that book is a guarantee of great discussion.
pseudotriton, are you going to post a list of your forty-odd potentials? I’d love to see it. I don’t have all that much to suggest that hasn’t been mentioned already, particularly seeing as how I tend to read a lot of novels by white men. It’s a shame Zadie Smith isn’t American. Or Hanif Kureishi. Or Martin Amis.
Also, I know he’s a white guy, but I just finished Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2 and thought I’d suggest it.
Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire Of The Vanities
Yeah, Judith. I’ll probably do it soon, whenever I can get me, my list, the computer, and ten minutes together at the same time.
Someone else mentioned Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which I would like to cheerfully second. However, I have a computer background and really enjoyed it - some people might be turned off by the serious math thrown in at various points (My own mother complained about the half-page sized graphs at one section, until I pointed out that they were a series of diagrams depicting a character’s “horniness index” as he went through life). But that shouldn’t stop you. It’s a great story.
I’m currently reading Bruce Serling’s Distraction, which is a futuristic political thriller in an almost-defeated America. Maybe you can take a look at that as well.
The Risk Pool by Richard Russo. Or perhaps Empire Falls. Or perhaps Straight Man.
Radiance by Carter Scholz.
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. I seem to recall that he’s Canadian, but that’s certainly still American, and his books are set in the US.
God’s Pocket or Deadwood by Pete Dexter.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
The Chivalry Of Crime by Desmond Barry.
I have to second Catch-22. I must admit that I bought it about 3 years ago and I’m still not finished with it but it’s really good so far and I’m always glad when I pick it up and read a page or two.
On The Road also seems kind of obvious but I can’t fully recommend it yet as my friend let me borrow it last summer and I just opened it for the first time literally about 20 minutes ago.
On second thought, I guess such a lazy reader as myself has no business in this thread :P.
Is there a length limit? Cryptonomicon might be too long for a 12 week course.
John Gardner’s Grendel is short, but loaded with philosophy and thought provoking ideas. Personally, I love stories from the point of view of the “villain.”
If you’re remotely interested in science fiction, check out Mary Doria Russells’ The Sparrow. Well worth reading and will definitely spark avid discussion.
How about Alice Walker’s The Color Purple? It seems like everyone has already read it, but maybe not.
Too bad you can’t include Canadians… Margaret Atwood is my favorite.
I actually had Carol Shield’s LARRY’S PARTY under consideration for a while until I remembered her Canadian-ness.
I’m not being reticient, but my computer at home is disabled now, and my stack of books are next to it, so when I’m on the comuter I don’t have my books handy. I’m going to fix what’s wrong tonight, I hope.
One thing that strikes me as a I read over people’s suggestions, and that I’m sure you’re already thinking of if you’re the guy teaching the course: If I was a student in such a course, I wouldn’t want to just read and analyze a bunch of novels that were cool and fit the category of “American post-WWII writing.” I would want to have some sort of coherent flow to the books, and come out of the course with an understanding of the major currents in fiction over the last 60 years. I’m afraid I’m not familiar enough with those currents to suggest what they are, but I would hope there’s more to it than needing a couple books by minorities and a couple books from the last 20 years.
E.g. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius would qualify as recent and probably more “fun” to read and discuss while still representing the obsessively ironic or meta- or whatever trend of recent years. You could throw in maybe one piece of genre fiction in there, but I can imagine a lot of English majors dropping a course that had much genre work.
No, you’re right, Auntie, I need some some sort of thematic linkage, but if I can look over some books that fill categories I’m weak in anyway, that would be better than filling the course with more stuff I’m already strong in.
As someone starting teaching a reading course on Tuesday, I just went through this myself. I had a thematic linkage in mind for the course but I still asked friends for more general examples, just to prompt my memory or acquaint me with books I somehow had missed.
But as for “Genius,” Eggars’ work is not a novel, so it hardly belongs in a novel course. It also happens that I personally found it overwrought and boring and never finished it.
If you want a good representative of modern post-ironic writing, a better candidate is Douglas Coupland. I really like Microserfs.
[minor nit, but could have ramificatons for your class]
Hey PRR, Carol Shields has dual Canadian/US citizenship - that’s why her book, Stone Diaries, was nominated for both a Booker and a Pulitzer. Her niece is a friend, which is why I know this, but I am sure a cite would be easy to come by…
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Looking forward to seeing your list…
Shoulda searched before I posted, so I wouldn’t have to post again.
I found the cite here at the Pulitzer Prize site:
So you can use that book if you wish…