I try to specialize in American authors--but If you want a random selection of my favorites to recommend in order to understand this modern era of America, I present these three:
J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired up by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.
Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."
Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon (2013)
It deals with government paranoia, conspiracy theories for 9/11, It uses Computer and ‘deepweb’ Internet as the framing device for the novel—which is why I bring it up in this context. It somehow fits fairly nicely into the political thriller genre, while addressing modern concerns.
Don Delillo - White Noise (1985)
While Jack Gladney is an intellectual academic, an expert in the unlikely field of “Hitler studies” (and something of a fraud, to boot), he’s also a pretty normal dad. Casual reviewers of White Noise tend to overlook the sublime banality of domesticity represented in DeLillo’s signature novel: Gladney is an excellent father to his many kids and step-kids, and DeLillo draws their relationships with a realism that belies–and perhaps helps to create–the novel’s satirical bent.
[Some other random american novels I find excellent/significant]
Crossing to Safety - William Gaddis
Chronic City - Jonathan Lethem
Latro in the Mist - Gene Wolfe
Arcadia (Play) - Tom Stoppard
The Last Picture Show & Texasville - Larry McMurtry [Read both]
The Blithdale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
^One of the most interesting novels touching on Southwestern United States. The First chapter regarding the Wolf is one of the most uniquely environmental sections I've seen by prominant American authors. Admittedly, I'm a bit biased in this regard.
Thanks for the recommendations. 'White Noise' definitely resonated during the time I read it. The white noise of anxiety sounded loudly.
Finished 'The Recognitions' a couple of weeks ago and will definitely get into 'J.R.' soon. I hear it's almost all dialog.
Of the Pynchon I've read, I find there's almost a recursive structure to his sentences/paragraphs...paragraph-sentences. Made 'Gravity's Rainbow' a bit of a challenge, for me. Though, 'Inherent Vice' was a bit easier to digest. 'Bleeding Edge' has been on my radar and the themes seem right up my alley, so it'll be read within the next couple of years for sure.
Besides being long, I didn't find "The Recognitions" exceedingly difficult. I was occasionally lost as to which character was speaking/being described, but the characters were mostly distinct enough to reason out. Pynchon's penchant for stringing along train-of-thought can be a bit more challenging. But, I definitely felt some proto-Pynchon vibes with Gaddis' writing.
That's a good assessment. I think my difficulty stemmed more from knowing that my Father could extract quite a bit from the text--especially since he is the son of a pastor/read the KJB at age 4 and could quote scripture to me seemingly at random. He is also the most interested out of my social group in art history, and is an english professor. Right up his alley!
3. What is J R about? Money. Capitalism. Art. Education. Desperate people. America.
4. The question posed in #3 is a fair question, but probably not the right question, or at least not the right first question about J R. Instead—What is the form of J R—How is J R?
5. A simple answer is that the novel is almost entirely dialog, usually unattributed (although made clear once one learns the reading rules for J R). These episodes of dialogue are couched in brief, pristine, precise, concrete—yet poetic—descriptions of setting. Otherwise, no exposition. Reminiscent of a movie script, almost.
6. A more complex answer: J R, overstuffed with voices, characters (shadows and doubles), and motifs, is an opera, or a riff on an opera, at least.
7. A few of the motifs in J R: paper, shoes, opera, T.V. equipment, entropy, chaos, novels, failure, frustration, mechanization, noise, hunting, war, music, commercials, trains, eruptions of nonconformity, advertising, the rotten shallowness of modern life . . .
8. Okay, so maybe that list of motifs dipped into themes. It’s certainly incomplete (but my reading of J R is incomplete, so . . .)
9. Well hang on so what’s it about? What happens?—This is a hard question to answer even though there are plenty of concrete answers. A little more riffage then—
10. Our eponymous hero, snot-nosed JR (of the sixth grade) amasses a paper fortune by trading cheap stocks. He does this from a payphone (that he engineers to have installed!) in school.
11. JR’s unwilling agent—his emissary into the adult world—is Edward Bast, a struggling young composer who is fired from his teaching position at JR’s school after going (quite literally) off script during a lesson.
12. Echoes of Bast: Thomas Eigen, struggling writer. Jack Gibbs, struggling writer human. Gibbs, a frustrated, exasperated, alcoholic intellectual is perhaps the soul of the book. (Or at least my favorite character).
13. Characters in J R tend to be frustrated or oblivious. The oblivious characters tend to be rich and powerful; the frustrated tend to be artistic and intellectual.
14. Hence, satire: J R is very, very funny.
15. J R was published over 35 years ago, but its take on Wall Street, greed, the mechanization of education, the marginalization of art in society, and the increasing anti-intellectualism in America is more relevant than ever.
16. So, even when J R is funny, it’s also deeply sad.
18. Young JR is a fascinating study, an innocent of sorts who attempts to navigate the ridiculous rules of his society. He is immature; he lacks human experience (he’s only 11, after all), and, like most young children, lacks empathy or foresight. He’s the perfect predatory capitalist.
19. All the love (whether familial or romantic or sexual) in J R (thus far, anyway) is frustrated, blocked, barred, delayed, interrupted . . .
20. I’m particularly fascinated by the scenes in JR’s school, particularly the ones involving Principal Whiteback, who, in addition to his educational duties, is also president of a local bank. Whiteback is a consummate yes man; he babbles out in an unending stammer of doubletalk; he’s a fount of delicious ironic humor. Sadly though, he’s also absolutely real, the kind of educational administrator who thinks a school should be run like a corporation.
J.R. - William Gaddis (1975)
(A very nice blog post on it here: https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-again-on-william-g...)
J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired up by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.
Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."
Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon (2013)
It deals with government paranoia, conspiracy theories for 9/11, It uses Computer and ‘deepweb’ Internet as the framing device for the novel—which is why I bring it up in this context. It somehow fits fairly nicely into the political thriller genre, while addressing modern concerns.
Don Delillo - White Noise (1985)
While Jack Gladney is an intellectual academic, an expert in the unlikely field of “Hitler studies” (and something of a fraud, to boot), he’s also a pretty normal dad. Casual reviewers of White Noise tend to overlook the sublime banality of domesticity represented in DeLillo’s signature novel: Gladney is an excellent father to his many kids and step-kids, and DeLillo draws their relationships with a realism that belies–and perhaps helps to create–the novel’s satirical bent.