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My Ideal Bookshelf Part 5

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A reminder of the rules: like any other “best of” or “my favorite whatever” list, this one is subject to change every time I encounter a new text. Also, there is no specific order to this list, even though it’s numbered. #1 is not necessarily better or more important than #25. I only number them to give the columns a sense of structure. In terms of content, I have limited myself to one text per author, though on a few, I’ve cheated a bit.

5.         Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

Back in graduate school, we thought about making “I Survived Gravity’s Rainbow” t-shirts, but we never did. Perhaps it’s because we knew that, in spite of the book’s labyrinthine plot and dozens of characters, the book is something to be savored, not survived.

World War II is on, and Tyrone Slothrop finds himself meandering through the European theater, seeking Rocket 00000, a particularly deadly weapon. To say much more about the plot would be futile and just plain mean, since half the fun (and frustration) of reading the book for the first time is trying to keep things straight—who’s who, what they’re doing, where they’re doing it, and why. Dead people don’t necessarily stay that way. Kinky sex is had. Double agents appear; limericks and bawdy songs supplement the traditional narrative; and eventually, our protagonist—what? Explodes? Disappears? Evaporates? Becomes irrelevant?

Gravity’s Rainbow is truly a tour de force. You may have to read it two or three times before you start to get a real handle on it, but it rewards repeated readings. Though it takes place in wartime Europe, it is one of the quintessential texts of Postmodernism, and a book that is somehow very much American.

Other texts that would work well: Mason and Dixon; The Crying of Lot 49; Inherent Vice.

4.         Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

A candidate on the list of books that might actually qualify as the mythical “great American novel,” Melville’s Moby-Dick is another book that rewards repeated readings. From what I have gathered from talking to different people, the usual experience goes something like this. First reading—you get lost in all the footnoted material (or, worse, you read an edition with no footnotes and stay lost half the time) and the minutia of cetology, and so you’re afraid you missed half the plot. Second reading—you retain more of the information; you notice material that you may have missed the first time; and you realize that, in terms of plot, not a lot actually happens. Third reading—you start to appreciate the genius.

About that plot: our narrator, Ishmael, arrives in Nantucket, determined to go to sea, basically because he is sick of people in general (a feeling with which I can relate). He meets Queequeg the harpooner in a hotel. Together, they sign on to the Pequod, a whaler.  The ship sails, and they meet the monomaniacal Ahab, who reveals his true agenda—to find and kill the creature that took his leg, a white whale named Moby-Dick. The Pequod sails about the world’s oceans, asking other ships if they’ve seen Moby-Dick, killing a couple of different kinds of whales, and philosophizing about the nature of whales, humanity, obsession, revenge, religion, history, and a dozen other subjects. Eventually they find Moby-Dick; things go badly.

That’s about it.

In between all that, we get some of the most eloquent first-person narration in world letters and from the American Romantic era in particular. The action sequences are detailed and thrilling. The philosophy is thought-provoking. The symbolism is deep.

As Ishmael says, “Surely these things are not without meaning.”

The result of all this is a book that is absolutely essential. I never get tired of it. If you have the wherewithal to stick by it, it will grow on you.

Other texts that would work well: Typee; Billy Budd; Redburn; White Jacket; The Confidence-Man; the collected short works, which would include one of my favorite stories in existence, “Bartleby the Scrivener.”

3.         The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

War literature is often hard to take—for the former soldier, who might find him/herself forced to relive painful memories; for the civilian, who often has to wade through buckets of blood and gore, gallows humor, and the foulest of foul language; for the writer, who must give part of him/herself and live down in the trenches with the characters. Yet this kind of writing is crucial to the evolution of the world and the world spirit of which we are all a part. Art does not have to be pretty; in fact, it often needs to be ugly, horrendous, painful, so that it can drag kicking and screaming into the light things that we might otherwise gloss in order to avoid discomfort.

I’ve said this before. I say it again because Tim O’Brien’s—what? Linked story collection? Novel-in-stories?—The Things They Carried manages to be ugly and painful and unutterably beautiful, often all at the same time.

It’s an abstract examination of concepts like war and bravery at the same that it’s a concrete representation of how those concepts can manifest. It is a minute examination of how war affects the individual psyche even as it follows a group of men and the ways that they connect and disconnect, laugh and cry, live and perish, zapped while zipping.

From the opening story that scrutinizes all the different ideas that the words “things” and “carry” might mean, to the unravelling of the very concept of narrative in “How to Tell a True War Story”; from the coming-of-age-in-a-pressure-cooker tension of “On the Rainy River” to the gender-complicated heartbreak of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”; from the personal recriminations of “In the Field” to the desperate search for closure in “Field Trip”; from the loss and disconnection of “Speaking of Courage” to the redemptive power of stories in “The Lives of the Dead,” every single line and word in this book is indispensable.

Along the way, O’Brien examines such American concepts as patriotism and courage, individualism and group membership, language and action, war and that elusive concept we call peace.

The Things They Carried is a staggering artistic achievement and a deeply personal experience. Buy it yesterday. Read it now. Remember it forever.

Other texts that would work well: Going After Cacciato; If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home; July, July.

2.         Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

I knew that McCarthy would make the list, and that, if it were truly an ordered list, he would be near the top. I was not sure which text I would go with. How do you choose between Blood Meridian and the shattering experience that is The Road? Or the Border Trilogy? Even the short and highly disturbing Child of God or the mediocre-according-to-critics No Country for Old Men? Suttree, Outer Dark, The Orchard Keeper…any of them are worthy of this list.

While I almost went with The Road, and might well do so if you asked me to remake this list tomorrow, I must, at least for today, choose Blood Meridian: or, the Evening Redness in the West as the McCarthy book I cannot do without.

The scene: the American southwest in the late 19th century. Dramatis Personae: The Kid, our protagonist, a teenaged survivor with a vicious streak a mile wide; The Judge, the towering, hairless, possibly supernatural philosopher who just might literally be a devil; Glanton, the leader of a gang of bloodthirsty thugs who scalps Native Americans for fun and profit; and Glanton’s gang, any one of whom might make the subject of a long case study in socio- and/or psychopathy.

Based on historical events, Blood Meridian chronicles the travels and acts of this gang as the drown the southwest in gore, not all of it from “Indians.” We are witness to literal massacres. Death is never further away than one careless word or unguarded facial expression. Through it all, McCarthy’s unforgettable characters ponder the nature of humanity, of war, of freedom, of God. The Judge’s speeches alone are endlessly quotable and chilling.

Some find the book hopelessly bleak, and it’s tough to argue against that characterization, except…

Well, near the end, the Kid shows us a couple of glimmers of a human soul. What happens to him as a result is wrenching and ambiguous.

Several years ago, I gave the book to a relative who wanted a good read. The next time I saw her, she said, “What the heck did you get me into?”

Pick up the book and find out for yourself.

Other texts that would work well: any of the above-named texts. Start with The Road, which won more awards than a Spielberg film, and go from there.

1.         Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner.

Among the world’s people of letters, Faulkner has perhaps been the biggest influence on my own work, though he might have to duke it out with anybody else on this list (and a few dozen others) for that honor on any given day. He’s also another writer whose works are almost impossible to choose from. Even his minor works (if you believe in the viability of such a term) are good, thought-provoking reads.

During the 1920s and 30s, Faulkner went on a roll that is among the most creatively satisfying in history. The works normally described as his masterpieces were written during that time—not just GD,M but also his most complex work, Absalom, Absalom! (which was originally in this spot); his master class in point of view and voice, The Sound and the Fury; his insightful examination of race and class, Light in August; his surprisingly pot-boiling novel, Sanctuary; his story collection/novel-in-stories The Unvanquished, which takes us through the Civil War and beyond; and his OTHER master study in point of view and voice, the darkly comic and deeply sad As I Lay Dying.

One of my graduate school professors, a national authority on Faulkner and southern literature, once called Go Down, Moses Faulkner’s greatest work about race. That is, of course, debatable. But there can be no debate that this book—another collection/novel-in-stories—is a masterpiece of creative energy and daring.

Focusing on the families of old Carothers McCaslin, an antebellum plantation patriarch, the book begins in pre-Civil War times with the hilarious, deadpan, at times slapstick yet still dramatic tale “Was.” We first learn that there are two sides to old Carothers’s family—the white side and the black side, the latter of which resulting from his forced miscegenation—i.e., rape—of his female slaves, thus the references to Tomey’s Turl as “that damn half-white McCaslin.” The characters we meet in “Was” are the ancestors of those we’ll meet in the other stories, notably McCaslin Edmonds, Ike McCaslin (who would inherit and, out of shame, repudiate the land of his fathers), Carothers Edmonds, and Lucas Beauchamp, the African-American descendent of Old Carothers by the male line.

What follows in these stories is often funny; see, for instance, the way that Lucas outsmarts all the educated white men in the area. It is often shocking and emotionally draining; see “Pantaloon in Black” for one example. It is often confusing; try reading the second half of “The Bear” just once and see if you can keep it all straight. But the book is always fascinating and powerful.

Here are only a few topics you will encounter: family connections; how race impacts family connections in the south; economic class, and how race impacts it in the south; gender roles and assumptions, and how race impacts them in the south; the disappearance of nature in the face of encroaching urbanization and development (look for the heartbreaking images in “The Bear,” a story that is mythic in its scope and aims); the responsibility of an individual for his sons—or his fathers; how we relate to our elders; and the illusory nature of what we often call progress.

Look for characters like those named above and Sam Fathers, who brings to the book his own convoluted history;  Boon Hoggenback, the backwoods anti-marksman who loves his dog more than his own life; and the Beauchamps, whose familial drama is as powerful in its own way as anything in literature.

You can’t go wrong with Faulkner. If you start with this book, look up a family tree so you can keep track of who’s who and how they are related. Then sit back and watch the master work.

Other texts that would work well: any of the above-named works; The Uncollected Stories; The Town; The Hamlet; Soldier’s Pay; The Wild Palms; Intruder in the Dust.

There you go—the top 25 books on my ideal bookshelf, at least for now. If you haven’t read them, get started. You’re never too young—or too old—to appreciate greatness.

Follow me on Twitter @brettwrites.

Email me at brett@officialbrettriley.com.

 

 

My Ideal Bookshelf Part 4

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A reminder of the rules: like any other “best of” or “my favorite whatever” list, this one is subject to change every time I encounter a new text. Also, there is no specific order to this list, even though it’s numbered. #1 is not necessarily better or more important than #25. I only number them to give the columns a sense of structure. In terms of content, I have limited myself to one text per author, though on a few, I’ve cheated a bit.

10.       Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.

McMurtry himself once dismissed the Pulitzer he won for this book, saying it was a newspaperman’s award. Nevertheless, this book is an American classic—a western, a journey narrative, a coming-of-age saga, an adventure story, a doomed romance, and more.

The characters are indelibly stamped on the imaginations of everyone who has read the book—Gus McCrae, the jokester with the heart as big as Montana. Woodrow Call, the gruff ex-lawman who never met a task he couldn’t finish before dinner. Newt, the son of a dead whore whose absent father might not be so absent after all. Jake Spoon, cardsharp and outlaw whose careless words and actions haunt all the characters. Deets, the African-American scout and the real heart of the Hat Creek Outfit. Laurie, the whore who follows Jake Spoon into the wilderness, her heart set on San Francisco. And Clara, former lover of both Gus and Jake, whose resentment of Woodrow Call runs almost as deep as her love for horses—and Gus.

As Call, Gus, and company drive a herd of mostly stolen cattle from the U.S.-Mexico border to Montana, some characters live. Some die. Some turn outlaw; some find torture and pain where others find love. The journey thrills us, wounds us, and never lets us forget the personal price of ambition.

The made-for-TV film starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones is almost as good as the book. If you’ve seen it but haven’t delved into McMurtry’s doorstop of a novel, give it a go.

Other texts that would work well: Terms of Endearment; The Last Picture Show; Texasville.

9.         The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor.

Flannery O’Connor, an American novelist and master of the short story, once said, “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” Keep that in mind if you are an O’Connor newbie.

And while you’re at it, be on the lookout for one of the sharpest, most incisive senses of humor in the history of letters. Today, humor that makes you uncomfortable while you laugh, that makes you fear going to hell because you’re laughing, is all the rage; see Family Guy for exhibit A. O’Connor’s humor is much more focused, though, and it has an edge all its own.

Many of the tales have been widely anthologized—“A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the tale of a family trip that takes a left turn into terror; “Good Country People,” a fractured romance that deconstructs the insipid and egotistical way we read other people; “Revelation,” one of the best stories about a seemingly mundane day you’ll ever read; and more.

I’ve chosen the collected tales here, rather than one of the individual collections, because it will allow you to immerse yourself in the deep waters of a great southern writer, a great American voice, a keen observer of humanity’s darkness and hilarity.

Other texts that would work well: any of the individual collections, or her strange artifact of a novel, Wise Blood.

8.         The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.

A very different writer than O’Connor, Hemingway is no less a driving force of American fiction in the 20th century. A Nobel prize winner who wrote according to his own “iceberg theory”—that most of what happens in a story goes on beneath the surface of the text—Hemingway looms large for anyone who has ever put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

Any number of book-length texts could have served here, but for me, Hemingway is never better than when he’s working in short fiction. In fact, many of these stories could serve as an example of how to work with minimalist form for maximum effect.

Read the stories in order if you want. If not, maybe start with the Nick Adams stories, the most famous of which is probably “Big Two-Hearted River.” Move on to the war tales, including “A Soldier’s Home.” Delve into the existential ambiguity of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”

Two of my favorite Hemingway works are also among the longest stories. “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” details the last moments in a couple’s marriage. As a hunting trip grows in intensity, so does the bitterness between Macomber and his wife. You’ll see the end coming, but it still feels like a surprise. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is also about an ending, but it also resonates deeply with my own anxiety about my writing, about time, and about the way life passes by much more quickly than you could imagine. Tragedies and missed opportunities compound until you feel as overwhelmed by them as our protagonist.

“A Very Short Story” condenses the deepest of emotions into just a couple of pages. Flash fiction writers could do much worse than study that story.

“The Light of the World”; “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio”; the devastating “Hills like White Elephants”—Hemingway’s short fiction is truly a treasure chest of beauty and pain. Open it up and see what you can find.

Other texts that would work well: The Sun Also Rises; To Have and Have Not; A Farewell to Arms; The Old Man and the Sea.

7.         The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds.

Years ago, I discovered this book in Wal-Mart, of all places. Its jacket described a novel set in a religious separatist community. The church’s name? “The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind.” I could not resist. I bought it, took it home, and opened it. I’ve been in love with it ever since.

The novel traces the story of Ninah, a teenage girl growing up in a highly fundamentalist religion. Her Grandpa is the church’s preacher and its patriarch. He makes the rules—and the judgments.

Of course, part of her upbringing entails a blanket denial of sexuality for purposes other than procreation within a marriage. So when she and her prayer partner, James, realize that their bodies are responding in a heady, ecstatic way to each other’s presence, they mistake their burgeoning sexuality for religious fervor. And, they reason, how can something that makes them feel the presence of Jesus be wrong?

Soon enough, Ninah is pregnant, and the community is in an uproar. As Ninah and her grandmother butt heads with Grandpa, as James struggles with his deep sense of guilt, as Grandpa debates what to do with the baby, the emotional tension builds. Throughout it all, Ninah’s voice is always genuine, always compelling.

It also has perhaps the funniest version of the Rapture that I have ever read. No kidding.

A book that wrestles with serious questions about religion, sex, family, and stories themselves, The Rapture of Canaan will leave you, well, rapturous. I have read it many times. I wrote about it in my dissertation. I have taught it to eager students that have loved every page. Even if Sheri Reynolds had never written anything else, this book stands as a fine contribution to literature.

Other texts that would work well: Bitterroot Landing; The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb.

6.         Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

One of best novels about the intricacies of race relations in the 20th century, which is only one of its many subjects, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon is also one of the best works from one of America’s best writers. A Nobel Prize winner, Morrison has produced plenty of work about race, gender, class, and family. Song of Solomon marries all these topical concerns with a truly heart-rending story about one man’s growth.

Milkman Dead (the story of his name is alone worth the price of admission) is born in the shadow of a white hospital that refuses to treat his mother. His birth coincides with the death of a man who leaps from the building, certain that he can fly.

Milkman is fascinated with flight for the rest of his life. His own flight—the figurative one he undertakes as he seeks his family’s origins and the literal one he might well be taking in the possibly magic-realist ending—helps to structure the novel.

Along the way, Milkman must navigate the troubled relationship between his parents. His father, the unyielding Macon Dead, looms large in Milkman’s life. His mother—well, let’s just say that Milkman’s name stems from a rather unusual relationship with her. He often finds himself in conflict with his sisters, First Corinthians and Magdalene.

Even more conflicted is his relationship with his Aunt Hagar, her daughter Reba, and Reba’s daughter Hagar. These three women live apart from the rest of their family, and in a very nontraditional way. Milkman is drawn to them. They fascinate him; they repulse him. Milkman’s romance with Hagar, and its devastating termination, make for some of the novel’s best passages.

Milkman is also very much a part of the racial tensions of his time. His best friend, Guitar, eventually becomes a member of the Seven Days, a shadow organization bent on evening the tally of racial violence, no matter who must pay their price. As Milkman and Guitar take very different paths, Morrison explores a topic no less important than how young black men might respond to the virulent racism of their country.

An important book that wrestles with national issues even as it personalizes them, Song of Solomon rewards repeated readings as much as it does the very first one. When my daughter Shauna was young, I gave her a copy and told her to put it on her shelf. “It might be a little intense for you right now,” I said, thinking of the sexual and violent passages. “But when you’re older, you’ll appreciate it.” I don’t know if she ever read it, but you should. And often.

Other texts that would work well: The Bluest Eye; Beloved; Sula; Tar Baby; Paradise; Jazz.

More soon…

 Follow me on Twitter @brettwrites.

Email me at brett@officialbrettriley.com

 

My Ideal Bookshelf Part 2

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A reminder of the rules: like any other “best of” or “my favorite whatever” list, this one is subject to change every time I encounter a new text. Also, there is no specific order to this list, even though it’s numbered. #1 is not necessarily better or more important than #25. I only number them to give the columns a sense of structure. In terms of content, I have limited myself to one text per author, though on a few, I’ve cheated a bit.

#20.     Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin.

One of the best works by a great 20th-century author, Going to Meet the Man is a collection of short stories that examine, among other issues, the ways that racism scars both the oppressed and the oppressors. Baldwin deals with issues that mainstream America has worked hard to sweep under the rug—not just racism, but also sexism, classism, and homophobia—and, like the best art, he drags those issues back into the light. Art can be pretty, but it doesn’t have to be, and it often needs to be something else. Baldwin is not afraid to take his work to those places.

From the opening familial drama “The Rockpile” to the religion-meets-secularism-meets-race-meets-sex story “The Outing,” from the oft-anthologized “Sonny’s Blues” to the absolutely devastating and horrifying title story (one that always freaks out my students), this collection is essential, not just to your bookshelf but to America.

Other texts that would work well: Go Tell It on the Mountain.

#19.     Birds of America by Lorrie Moore.

Lorrie Moore may be the best writer that most people don’t seem to have heard of, and Birds of America is one of the best short story collections most people don’t seem to own. Combining wit with a sharp eye for detail, Moore creates works of great beauty, hilarity, deep sadness. Plus, she’s got some of the most interesting titles out there.

In “People Like That Are the Only People Here,” she examines the everyday tragedy of the badly sick child with keen insight. “Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens” looks at how important pets can be in our lives and the different ways that people grieve—even people who, ostensibly, should feel both happy and lucky. “Real Estate” takes the reader into a life that has gone horribly wrong in many ways. The stories are full of death, language so sharp it may cut you, pathos, emotional distance. If you have never experienced this collection, do yourself a favor and buy it today.

Other texts that would work well: Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

18.       Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

Whenever I want to feel transcendental, I read either Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson. In my experience, Emerson is a bit too esoteric for modern readers outside academia; sometimes he’s too esoteric for me, and I read/write/teach literature for a living. Thoreau is more accessible and just as eloquent.

For those who don’t know the “plot” of this nonfiction work—back in the mid-19th century, Thoreau decided to put aside most material things and squat near Walden Pond, a body of water close by Lynn, Massachusetts. For a little over two years, Thoreau lived there in solitude, welcoming the occasional visitor and walking about the pond and township whenever the desire arose. He lived as simply as possible, relied mostly on himself, and pondered the nature of society even as he removed himself from it. In Thoreau’s own words:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

What Thoreau discovered—about society, about humanity, about nature, about himself—is worth your time. Is progress really progress? Thoreau thinks not, and he articulates this idea in ways that would later find echoes in literary/popular cultural figures such as Fight Club’s Tyler Durden. “We do not ride upon the railroad,” he says. “It rides upon us.”

Structured through specific chapters that deal with the work’s major ideas, Walden is part early environmentalism, part spiritual journey, part philosophical treatise, part memoir, and fully worthy of its place on my ideal bookshelf.

Other texts that would work well: I’d seek out his various essays and poems—perhaps start with Collected Essays and Poems, which contains “Resistance to Civil Government” (sometimes called “Civil Disobedience”) and other important works like “Slavery in Massachusetts”—or, lacking that, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

17.       Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

I love poetry, but I’m only putting a few works on this list because I’m mainly a fiction guy. No ideal bookshelf of mine could ever be complete, though, without Walt Whitman’s masterpiece. Often credited, rightly or wrongly, with inventing what many call “free verse” (T.S. Eliot’s claim that it doesn’t exist notwithstanding), Whitman revised Leaves of Grass throughout his lifetime. He saw his work as being just as organic as the sprouts after which it was named, and he often let the poems grow, often trimmed them, let some of them die and planted seeds of others.

From the simple missions statement found in “One’s Self I Sing” to the complex, multifaceted “Song of Myself”; from the passionate, some say shocking, sensuality of “I Sing the Body Electric” to the melancholy of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”; from the national spirit of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” to the deeply personal yet universal “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” Whitman’s work spans the universe, the body, the soul. It erases borders between traditional dichotomies. It feeds the soul in ways that resemble the effects of holy texts. Indeed, one of my old professors used to say that when she wanted to be uplifted, she read one of two texts: the Bible or Leaves of Grass.

If you have never read Whitman, it takes some getting used to—the long lines that often seem to (but don’t really) meander, the catalogues, the odd spellings, the repetition. But Whitman is worth the effort. Pick up the book today; he stops somewhere waiting for you.

Other texts that would work well: try one of the collected prose volumes. Concentrate on Specimen Days. If you’re not in the mood for prose, support the works of another great 19th-century poet—Emily Dickinson or the in-my-opinion-underrated-as-a-poet Stephen Crane.

16.       The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Huck Finn is often wrongly dismissed as a children’s book. If you dismiss it as such, you’re making a mistake (and probably thinking of Tom Sawyer). Twain’s masterpiece is about a child, but the themes and ideas are very much adult-oriented.

Huck Finn is also often dismissed as a racist text. Critics who call it racist are right to a certain extent, though not because of the use of the “n-word.” That onerous word does appear far too much for comfort, but that’s part of Twain’s point. Twain was a Realist who, by definition, believed that literature ought to record life as it is, not as it should be. Southern white people used that word constantly. So do Twain’s characters. The novel’s (unintentional) racism lies in Twain’s failure to create realistic black characters rather than caricatures.

Still, when your young white protagonist chooses to go to hell rather than turn in his enslaved friend; when he makes the conscious decision to help Jim escape in spite of everything society has tried to make him believe; when he recognizes that those on top of the social ladder rest at the bottom of the moral hierarchy, we might recognize the book as a flawed but genuine attempt to critique racism, not perpetuate it.

“It’s enough to make a body ashamed of the human race,” Huck says in reference to how two white conmen trick rural rubes out of their cash. “He had a dream, and it shot him,” Huck says about Tom Sawyer’s misguided Romanticism. And when Huck decides to “light out for the Territories” rather than stay in a corrupt society, Twain reveals his own beliefs about what he once called the “damned human race.”

Huck Finn is often hilarious. It is often thought-provoking. It is often touching. But to the discerning reader, it is never anything but one of the finest pieces of literary art ever produced. If your school system bans the book, move, because you’re surrounded by idiots. Read this imperfect critique of American racism, this adventure story, this comedy, this living novel and join the conversation about a truly American text. Ernest Hemingway allegedly said that all 20th century literature comes from Huck Finn. I don’t know if that’s true, but it does cast one of the long shadows in which we writers labor and create.

Other texts that would work well: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; Life on the Mississippi.

Join us, won’t you?

More soon…

Follow me on Twitter @brettwrites.

Email me at brett@officialbrettriley.com

 

My Ideal Bookshelf, Part 1

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A few months back, Entertainment Weekly published a small article in which famous writers listed the contents of their “ideal bookshelves.” The concept intrigued me. What tomes would I buy over and over? What would I pack if I were exiled to a desert island? What books would I never want to live without?

For anyone who might care, I thought I’d answer those questions with a series of short columns. If nothing else, I hope that what follows might inspire you to think about the books that matter most to you.

Fair warning: like any other “best of” or “my favorite whatever” list, this one is subject to change every time I encounter a new text. Also, there is no specific order to this list, even though it’s numbered. #1 is not necessarily better or more important than #25. I only number them to give the columns a sense of structure. In terms of content, I have limited myself to one text per author, though on a few, I’ve cheated a bit. You’ll see what I mean.

Without further preamble, below you will find the first five texts on my ideal bookshelf. Comments, alternatives, compliments, and protests are welcome.

[Note: the Bible is not on this list because I didn’t want to suggest it might be “just” a creative work. But I’d take it with me.]

#25.     Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman (graphic novel).

For those not in the know, Sandman is simply the best comic-book series ever. If you only read comics for superheroes, don’t buy this series. But if you believe that the medium is supple enough to tell any kind of story—and it is—then give Neil Gaiman’s book about an uber-race of gods a try. Known as the Endless, these gods, unlike any other pantheon, do not depend on mortal worshippers to maintain their power. They transcend human will and belief. They rule the areas of life that all humans encounter, no matter the faith or dogma. Their names are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Delight, Desire, and Despair.

Sandman focuses on Dream, also known by many other names, including Morpheus and Oneiros. A tall, pale stranger with eyes like stars and a cloak made of night, Dream walks the realms of our sleep, building his empire, shaping our nightmares.

I would love to put the entire Sandman series on this list. In fact, I’ll go ahead and tell you to buy it all, either one trade paperback at a time or in the doorstop hardcover editions I’ve been collecting over the last few years. But if you’re going to read one, and only one, I’d go with Season of Mists.

The plot: thousands of years ago, a less-mature, colder version of Dream imprisoned a woman in hell for the crime of rejecting his love. In the present day, Dream incurs the wrath of Lucifer, the fallen angel called the Morningstar. I won’t tell you why. For that, you’ll need to consult Sandman vol. 1. In that storyline, you’ll also see the events that cause Dream to reconsider his earlier behavior.

As Season of Mists opens, Dream finally decides to journey back to Hell and free his old lover. In spite of his fear of Lucifer, the second-most-powerful being in the universe, Dream enters the gates of Hell. Soon enough, he encounters Lucifer—but no one else. Having foreseen Dream’s coming, Lucifer has made a rather startling decision that has a triple purpose—to fulfill Lucifer’s own desires and to torment Dream. This decision will have far-reaching implications for Earth, for the metaphysical plane, for every pantheon of gods, and for Dream himself.

Exploring world religions and universe-shaking powers while concurrently delving into the recesses of individual motivations and emotions, Sandman: Season of Mists is exciting, thought-provoking, and, of course, well-written. Beautifully penciled primarily by Kelly Jones, with Mike Dringenberg and Matt Wagner filling in, this book is a gorgeous and eerie edition to anyone’s bookshelf. If I could pick only one Gaiman work to take with me, I’d pick this one.

Other texts that could work well: Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes; Sandman: The Doll’s House; Sandman: A Game of You; Sandman: The Kindly Ones; American Gods; Neverwhere.

24.       Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (graphic novel).

Probably the greatest limited series in comic-book history, Watchmen attempts to answer the question, “What if superheroes were real?” The result is not pretty, but it is absolutely fascinating.

Actually, only one of the heroes qualifies as super, and he’s not much of a hero. He’s aloof at best, viewing the world’s mad dash toward destruction with curiosity, when he thinks about it at all. The rest are middle-aged and struggling—undersexed, overweight, psychopathic, egotistical.

When the fate of the world really does depend on these all-too-human outlaws and their godlike acquaintance, they perform much better than you might expect. They reveal they have skills. They work together well in spite of their bickering. They solve a mystery that no one even knew existed. And yet….

It’s hard to save the world when you’re fighting yourself.

A series of deep and nuanced character studies, a labyrinthine mystery, an action-adventure, a romance, a science-fiction romp spanning the solar system—Watchmen is all that and more. It takes its subject matter completely seriously even as it deconstructs the usual tropes of the genre. It makes your average superhero comic seem naïve and quaint. I read it once every couple of years just to remind myself of the medium’s possibilities. You should, too. Skip the so-so film adaptation and go right to the source.

Other texts that could work well: any trade paperback of Moore’s run on Swamp Thing; The Killing Joke; V for Vendetta.

23.       Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros.

Whenever I teach a multicultural literature class, I try to include something by Sandra Cisneros, and the titular story in this collection almost always makes it into my World Literature II and American Literature II syllabi.

The stories in this book focus on women who live on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Sometimes those women cross the border, but no matter where they go, they are confronted with a sense of cultural dislocation, of Otherness, as they encounter patriarchal attitudes and outright abuse. Readers are immersed in a rich evocation of Hispanic cultures and the triumphs, failures, and contradictions of what those cultures mean.

Yet for all the high-minded darkness of that description, the book is also full of joy as women connect to each other, overcome their circumstances, reject the deadening influences of authority in their lives, find the joy in acts of rebellion great and small. Read this book and, like one of the women in the titular story, you might find yourself shouting with the pure joy of freedom and possibility, even if you’ve got tears in your eyes.

Other texts that could work well: The House on Mango Street.

22.       The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

You can’t have a list like this without Shakespeare. This is one of those “cheats” I was talking about, where I’m taking an anthology instead of a single work. Given that this anthology actually exists (there are several versions),  that it isn’t just a product of my wishful thinking, I’m including it.

If you’re older than, say, thirteen or fourteen, you don’t need me to tell you what’s so great about Shakespeare. From the great tragedies—Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, etc.—to the comedies—Much Ado about Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, and so forth—to the histories like the King Henry plays, Shakespeare’s work is synonymous with theater and what we often call “literary” work.

One great thing about the Complete Works is that you also get the poetry, especially the sonnets. Shakespeare was good enough as a poet that it almost seems unfair; it would be like discovering that Alfred Hitchcock was also a piano prodigy.

I’m linking to the Bevington anthology because that was pretty much the standard back when I studied the works in graduate school. But feel free to pick your own. As for me, this is the one I’d take with me.

Other texts that could work well: if I couldn’t take Shakespeare, I’d take some other dramatist—Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner, George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams, etc.

21.       In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason.

In the mid-80s, seventeen-year-old Sam Hughes tries to come to terms with her father’s death in Vietnam and her uncle Emmett’s inability to get over the war. What could be a real downer of a novel (not that there’s anything wrong with that; some of my favorite texts are downers) evolves into much more through Mason’s deft handling of Sam’s teenage viewpoints and her dependence on popular culture to define her life (M.A.S.H. in particular).

Sam struggles to understand seemingly contradictory ideas that would confuse anyone who thinks about them for too long—a veteran’s erectile dysfunction with a friend’s pregnancy, the way the world changes around her so fast even as her father’s picture remains frozen in time, and more. Through her, we view the 80s as a confusing landscape that belies the homogenous nature of its politics and pop culture. Through the novel, we see Vietnam from an outsider’s point of view and reimagine it as the crux of understanding different lives, rather than just as a world event that kills.

Often dismissed as “only” a YA novel, In Country is that and much more. For whatever reason, it resonates with me. I think you’ll dig it, too.

Other texts that could work well: Shiloh and Other Stories.

So there you have the first five. More to come soon.

Email me at brett@officialbrettriley.com.

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