SOME OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS AND BOOKS

These are just a few of my favorite great fiction writers, taken from a long list.

American

Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Augie March
Henderson the Rain King
Herzog
Humbolt’s Gift (my favorite)
Seize the Day

F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
The Last Tycoon

Joseph Heller
Catch-22

Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises
A Farewell to Arms
(Some of his short stories)

Henry James
Daisy Miller
The Portrait of a Lady
The Turn of the Screw
(Avoid his long novels)

Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian
(Any of his earlier novels; don’t bother with The Crossing)

Carson McCullers
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Reflections in a Golden Eye

Herman Melville
Billy Budd
(The novella Barnaby the Scrivener)

Flannery O’Conner
Wise Blood
The Violent Bear It Away


J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye
Fanny and Zooey

Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(Anything else, if you like him)

John Updike
The Poorhouse Fair
Rabbit Run

Robert Penn Warren
All The King’s Men

Eudora Welty
(Any of her short stories)

Nathaniel West
Miss Lonely Hearts
The Day of the Locust

Thornton Wilder
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
(Any of his plays)


Writers from the rest of the world

Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
(Any of her other novels if you like her)

Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
(Anything else if you enjoy him)

Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe

Charles Dickens
(Anything you want to read by him; the bigger and fatter the book the better)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
(And anything else)

Henry Fielding
Tom Jones
Joseph Andrews

Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary
A Simple Life (novella)

E.M. Forster
A Room With a View
Howard’s End

Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
One Hundred Years of Solitutde

Homer
Ulysses
(Don’t bother with The Iliad; it’s a whole ‘nother book)

James Joyce
The Dubliners
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses (read Homer first)

D.H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers
Women in Love

Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks
The Magic Mountain
Death in Venice
(Novellas)

W. Somerset Maughan
Cakes and Ale
(Fine short story writer and playwright; his plays made him most of his money)

George Orwell
(I like his non-fiction books best)
Down and Out in London and Paris
Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past (at least from the Overture through Combray and Swan in Love, and as far into Within a Budding Grover as you can get.)

Stendhal
The Red and The Black
(You might at least try him)

William M. Thackeray
Vanity Fair (wonderful book)

Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
The Death of Ivan Ilych
The Kreutzer Sonata

Anthony Trollope
Barchester Towers
Phineas Finn
(Love Trollope, especially the Palliser novels; you can start in anywhere. I started with The Eustace Diamonds and Phineas Finn Redux; i.e. out of order)

Ivan Turgenev
Fathers and Sons
(Good short story writer, too)

Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
Mrs. Dalloway



Some personal favorites


THE TRUE BELIEVER by Eric Hoffer. What a wonderful little book. It's about the fanatic. Hoffer was a stevedore, I understand, who published this one book when he was in his sixties. But I would guess he had made notes on the subject for years, and finally, after much reflection, finally published them.

VALUES IN A UNIVERSE OF CHANCE: Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), Edited by Philip P. Wiener and published by DoubledayAnchor in 1958 is an important book for me in as much as the philosophical values and beliefs it contains are pretty much those I also have come to after much reading of philosophy.

The first 50 pages of A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes, the part that takes place on the island before the kids leave with the pirates.

STONER and BUTCHER’S CROSSING by John Williams. Fine writer; too bad I have to wait until they’re dead before I find them. He has also written an historical novel called AUGUSTUS, which I haven’t read, plus an early novel he doesn’t recommend. Haven’t seen that, either.


A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole. Such a marvelous sense of humor. Too bad that, turned down by 8 publishers, he committed suicide. His mother, who is marvelously caricatured in the novel, persisted and got it published after his death.

CARDS OF IDENTITY by Nigel Dennis. Wonderful spoof on Communism and the Church of England in the 50s. Probably out of date now.

THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND by Julian Jaynes. Such a seminal book for me! I always wondered why history only began about 4000 BC; this book answers the question -- at least to my satisfaction.

WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys. This is considered her masterpiece, but I prefer her short stories, even though they all deal with the same subject. Rhys was an alcoholic who was still throwing up in the toilet at 82 (she died at 86). Fine stylist.

TO THE FINLAND STATION by Edmund Wilson. This is a great history of an ideology. Published in 1940, it provided great insight into the development of Communism, focusing entirely on the characters involved. Unless you’re a history buff, it may not interest too many people today.But if you want to understand the 19th and 20th centuries, it’s a must read. Wilson was also one of our finest literary critics, and I imagine his analyses of prominent authors probably stand up well.

ISLAND by Alistair MacLeod. Fine writer. Makes the landscape of Cape Breton and the people come marvelously alive. My personal favorite is “The Road to Rankin’s Point.” It’s a perfect gem, a masterpiece. You may find some of the others as equally good, maybe better. These are the collected stories of a lifetime, unless he is doing more writing in his retirement. His one and only novel is NO GREAT MISCHIEF. I haven’t read it yet, but will when I get the chance.

Andre Dubus (beware you don’t confuse him with Dubus II and III), THE TIMES ARE NEVER SO BAD. Fine writer, also. Great at the novella length. This and ADULTERY & OTHER CHOICES are both collections of stories. Writes about very physical people, and some of the stories are ugly. I especially like his attention to detail as to the physical surroundings of the characters. Makes it all very much alive. Takes his time detailing a scene; don’t know how he gets away with it. I don’t think I can, or do, in my own writing.