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20th Century American Writers |
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Licks of Love : Short Stories and a Sequel, Rabbit Remembered by John
Updike
The dozen short stories in John Updike's new collection
revisit many of the locales of his fiction: the small Pennsylvania
town of Olinger, the lonely farm to which the hero moves as an adolescent,
the exurban New England of adult camaraderie and sexual mischief,
the New York City of artistic ambition and taunting glamour. Love,
including an old woman's for her cats and a boy's for his embattled
father, exerts its spell in all twelve; the title derives from a story
in which an American banjo virtuoso demonstrates his licks to an enthralled
Soviet audience in the heart of the Cold War, while being hounded
by the epistolary aftermath of a one-night stand in Washington, D.C.
To these tales Mr. Updike has added a novella-length sequel to his
quartet of novels about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. Several old strands
come at last together, and the dead man's survivors fitfully entertain
his memory while pursuing their own happiness over the edge of the
millennium. |
Bagombo Snuff Box : Uncollected Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut,
Jr.
- Kurt Vonnegut, selected by the New York Times as
one of the twentieth cetury's most important writers is back in print
with a collection of early works. Originally written for some of America's
top literary magazines, these stories are treasure!
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Demon Box by Ken Kesey
- In this collection of short stories, Ken Kesey
challenges public and private demons with a wrestler's brave and deceptive
embrace, making it clear that the energy of madness must live on.
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Sailor
Song by Ken Kesey
- The author of One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest depicts the collaboration of a big-bucks
Hollywood film company with a remote Alaskan Indian tribe in a rundown,
twenty-first-century fishing community.
KEN KESEY COLLECTION
AT TOP TEN BOOKS
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The
Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
- The famous "Nick Adams" stories show a memorable
character growing from child to adolescent to soldier, veteran, writer,
and parent -- a sequence closely paralleling the events of Hemingway's
life. |
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Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
- They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there.
But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely
declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his
Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously
playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made
the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. Wolf documents Kesey's
theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of "One Flew
over the Cuckoo's Nest" to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test"
soirees that launched The Grateful Dead. |
Mauve
Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine by Tom Wolfe
- When an author's canon includes such masterpieces
as "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "The Right Stuff," it is easy
to overlook his lesser-known, albeit no less brilliant, earlier work.
"Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine" includes a handful of
Wolfe's classic essays from the mid-1970s, including the title piece
(which close Wolfe readers will notice he reprised in a "Bonfire"
passage),"The Me Decade," and the hilarious "Street Fighters." Any
Wolfe fan looking for something to nibble on while they await the
long-overdue "A Man In Full" will thoroughly enjoy this book.
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 Anna
Karenina (Modern Library) by Leo Tolstoy, Leonard J. Kent, Nina Nikolaevna
Berberova, Constance Garnett (Translator)
Some people say Anna Karenina is the single greatest
novel ever written, which makes about as much sense to me as trying
to determine the world's greatest color. But there is no doubt that
Anna Karenina, generally considered Tolstoy's best book, is definitely
one ripping great read. Anna, miserable in her loveless marriage,
does the barely thinkable and succumbs to her desires for the dashing
Vronsky.
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 The
Three Musketeers (Modern Library) by Alexandre Dumas, Jacques Le Clercq
(Translator)
Perhaps the greatest adventure novels ever written.
Journey back in time to a tubulant era of politics and royal intrigues
with d'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos and Aramis. d'Artagnan first joins
the band of musketeers and soon finds lifelong frends and enemies.
His first mission; to help Queen Anne of Austria retain her title
and honor. A true masterwork of literature. |
 Twenty
Years After (Oxford World's Classics) by Alexandre Dumas, David Coward
(Editor)
Two decades have passed since the famous swordsmen
triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady in The Three Musketeers.
Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But
treasons and strategems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers
the throne of France, while in England, Cromwell threatens to send
Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of
retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and
the forces of history. But their greatest test is the titanic struggle
with the son of Milady who wears the face of evil. This is the second
book in the Musketeers saga. |
 The
Vicomte De Bragelonne (Oxford World's Classics) by Alexandre Dumas,
David Coward (Editor)
The Vicomte de Bragelonne opens an epic adventure
which continues with Louise de La Valliere and reaches its climax
in The Man in the Iron Mask. This new edition of the classic translation
presents a key episode in the Musketeers saga, fully annotated and
with an introduction by a leading Dumas scholar. This is the third
book in the Musketeer series and takes place ten years after the 20
years after book listed above (kind of confusing) |
 Louise
De LA Valliere (Oxford World's Classics) by Alexandre Dumas, David
Coward (Editor)
Louise de la Valliere is the middle section of The
Vicomte de Bragelonne, or, Ten Years After. Against a tender love
story, Dumas continues the suspense which began with The Vicomte de
Bragelonne and will end with The Man in the Iron Mask. Set during
the reign of Louis XIV and filled with behind-the-scenes intrigue,
the novel brings the aging Musketeers and d'Artagnan out of retirement
to face an impending crisis within the royal court of France. This
new edition of the classic English translation is richly annotated
and places Dumas's invigorating tale in its historical and cultural
context. |
 The
Man in the Iron Mask (Oxford World's Classics) by Alexandre Dumas,
David Coward (Editor)
Alexandre Dumas was already a best-selling novelist
when he wrote this historical romance, combining (as he claimed) the
two essentials of life--"l'action et l'amour." The Man in the Iron
Mask climactically concludes the epic adventures of the three Musk3ateers:
here, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and their friend D'Artagnan, once invincible,
meet their destinies. |
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On
the Road by Jack Kerouac
- On the Road is truly an influential work. Overnight,
it propelled Jack Kerouac from unknown status to "king of the beats"
and then helped awaken a nation of youth who shook America out of
the 1950s and ushered in the excitement of the 1960s. The novel continues
to inspire and has picked up a new generation of followers in the
1980s and 1990s. On the Road follows Sal Paradise as he traverses
the American continent in search of new people, ideas, and adventures.
But it's the way Sal and his friends--primarily Dean Moriarty--look
at the world with a mixture of sad-eyed naivete and wild-eyed abandon
that causes the rumbling in the soul of so many who read it. |
Dharma
Bums by Jack Kerouac
- One of the best and most popular of Kerouac's autobiographical
novels, The Dharma Bums is based on experiences the writer had during
the mid-1950s while living in California, after he'd become interested
in Buddhism's spiritual mode of understanding. One of the book's main
characters, Japhy Ryder, is based on the real poet Gary Snyder, who
was a close friend and whose interest in Buddhism influenced Kerouac.
This book is a must-read for any serious Kerouac fan.
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White-Jacket,
or the World in a Man-Of-War (Classics of Naval Literature) by Herman
Melville, Stanton Garner (Illustrator)
- Great beach reading! Herman Melville, who also wrote
"Moby Dick", published this first work in 1850. Melville, drawing
on his own experiences on a U.S. Navy frigate, describes a self contained
universe in the era of great sailing ships. The book's dipiction of
the horrors of corporal punishment was instrumental in Congress abolishing
the practice. The story presages the symbolism and powerful themes
that would characterize Melville's later works. |
The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse, Hilda Rosner (Translator)
- A relatively short novel but probably the most "mystical"
of Hesse's works. It is the story of a young man who sets off with
his friends to find enlightenment in the East. One by one, the young
man's friends disappear until he finds himself traveling alone. Tom
Wolfe quoted from Hesse's work at length in his book, "The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test". Wolfe drew many parallels between Ken Kesey odyssey
through 1960's America and Hesse's fictional travels in Asia at the
dawn of the century.
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Neuromancer
by William Gibson
- Here is the novel that started it all, launching
the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity
of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip
K. Dick Award. With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world
to cyberspace--and science fiction has never been the same. Probably
the most important book at the end of the millenium and for the start
of the new.
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2003
Pulitzer Prize Winners
