I am picking William Gay. I have heard for years about how great a writer he is and I just never find my way to him.
How about you? What writer do you mean to read but haven't?
Let's make a pledge to read this writer (whoever yours is) by Labor Day. At least one book. What do you say. Any genre, any writer--as lo
ng as you haven't gotten around to reading him/her yet.
30 comments:
Hard to think of anyone I've heard praised to the skies that I've yet to read at all.
Hmm...
William Trevor
Saul Bellow (I know, I'm so ashamed)
T. C. Boyle
Jeff M.
Never been able to get through a TC Boyle but love Trevor, and like early, very early, Bellow.
T. C. Boyle is a colleague and I should be more gracious, but unless you like an author who wants to make you squirm, my advice is to forego his fiction.
The book group is reading HEART OF DARKNESS (discussion set for Saturday), and I'd like to read more Conrad. NOSTROMO, for sure. Saul Bellow would be a close 2nd.
watch as I make peoples jaws drop... I've never read the novels of..
Salinger, Hemingway, Hawthorne, Heller, Harper Lee, Mark Twain,
Henry Miller
Good idea, Patti. I'm getting into sci-fi these days, but have yet to read Harlan Ellison.
I'm gonna cheat just a bit. I read John O'Hara's "Appointment in Samarra" in the late 60s and thought it was great. I always meant to get back to him and never did, and since then his reputation has slipped considerably. But he still has a few ardent supporters. I recently read a strong recommendation of "Ten North Frederick" by Lawrence Block, so I'm going to try that one.
Jack London. Really looking forward to his stuff, I think I'm going to really dig it.
And B. Traven.
One of them by Labor Day -- and hopefully both!
Henry Miller. I have been "chastised" by several people for not reading any of his works... so, that will be my challenge.
Maybe Lawrence Block.
@ Iren - Wow! You haven't read Tom Sawyer or To Kill A Mockingbird? :)
Small confession... I haven't read Salinger, Hemingway, Heller either.
But, hey... we're young, right? Plenty of time to make up for... :)
You're young, yes.
I have never read Miller either. I saw the movie Henry and June though. Does that count?
You (all of you) don't need to bother with Miller, really. I'm mean, there's a lot better out there.
MP: I'd recommend O'Hara's short stories as the place where he was strongest.
There's a pretty funny take on Hemingway in Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS.
I've felt guilty for years because I just couldn't read T. C. Boyle after several people raved about him, so it's good to see I'm not the only one.
Jeff M.
Proust. I've tried three times and failed each time. I just don't "get" his work. Maybe it's the translation.
I've read a lot of Miller and remember liking most of it, especially his essays and non-fiction. There is an interesting doc on Miller shot by Tom Schiller in the 1970s that is available for free on YouTube called "Henry Miller: Asleep and Awake." He gives a walking tour of his bathroom and discusses all the clippings, postcards and pictures that are on his wall.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPJmm4_rcSU
Well isn't this interesting. Takes some thought, but I might try something by Flannery O’Connor, Saul Bellow or maybe I'll try The Stone Raft by Jose Saramago, which I bought years ago. I have Library of America volumes of the first two authors.
Oh, I agree with Jeff on Henry Miller. Not worth your time, at all. I've read some and it was too much.
@Patti - If movies count, then I want to change my choice to Tolstoy! Lol!!
"Henry and June", eh? I will have to check that out. THX! :)
@Anonymous - An interesting take on Miller. Be careful though... you could find yourself "disdaining" all in search of "something better".
I still eat mac 'n cheese, even though there is "a lot better out there"....
I think we need to experience both ends of the spectrum, and everything in between. :)
to be fair my High School teachers thought that I would get all that stuff in college, they made sure that we read minority authors..... of course when I got to college, first of all there isn't much lit that you have to read to get a criminal justice degree, but the english profs that I did have assumed we had gotten all that dead white male cannon in high school and wanted to make sure we got a couple of minority authors in before hitting the real world. The only reason that I did read Orwell, Fitzgerald, and Lord of the Flies is because I read them on my own....
The usual run of TC Boyle's work, all but the very best of it, reads like Harlan Ellison's worst. Rather similar approach, but Boyle's clumsy overstatement and snide sense of humor again remind me of Ellison's misfires more than anything else...the best Boyle I've read is comparable to middlin' fair Ellison, who at his best is remarkable by any standard.
Boyle is not quite as overpraised as Bret Easton Ellis nor certainly as much as William Vollmann, but is horribly overpraised.
There are Lots of writers I've barely read, but I'm still stuck for one whom I know I haven't read anything of who's been really pushed on me (I've read at least a short story or essay from everyone in this thread so far, and usually more)...aside from self-help gurus such as Tolle. I ain't gonna start down that road.
Thanks, Todd. That's exactly what I was hoping to hear! (Oh, I couldn't read Vollmann either.)
Jeff M.
HENRY AND JUNE is a pretty dire film. I'll say this for Miller...he's better than Nin. There are much better explorers of that territory.
Glad to have been of service, Jeff. It is remarkable how popular jejunely broad farce, usually with a dash of obscure reference, can become with supposedly sophisticated readers (see also, JK O'Toole, David Sedaris, many others). Contrast some Benchley, Leacock, Thurber, Parker, I will indeed mention Avram Davidson and Joanna Russ and R. A. Lafferty again, and other possessors of actual wit, and then tell me again how damned funny that first bunch is.
Working in a library among thousands of books, it's a hopeless cause. Not in this lifetime.
Todd - so you've read some Jose Saramago? Whoa. I'd add to your list E.B. White, not so much for humor ad wit. Then there;s Bennett Surf...
There are hundreds I haven't read, but of those I wish I had, or hope to some day: Steinbeck, James, and Ennis Willie.
I'd heard the name before BLINDNESS the film, but not before the Nobel (I'm a little better with Hispanophones than Portuguese-language writers), Rick, and have read a bit. Cerf mostly collected anecdotes and jokes (sometimes without credit), but I certainly read at least one of his collections and one of his anthologies of humorous fiction as a kid...and what child at midcentury escaped White? I liked his joint book with Thurber as well, and the occasional piece...
I have three HC books of E.B. White, essays, letters, etc. plus the White-Thurber book.
I spent a little time browsing the shelves last evening, and while there are literature authors, 3 previously named, there are mystery and SF authors I have not yet read but want to. Is it cheating to go with the genre writers, or is this about more literary books?
I've never read James M. Cain, but I have both Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice on my shelf. I vow to read them both by Labor Day, Patti!
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