American literature you should read.

The last post was fairly abstruse, so I compiled this list:

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (the Great American Novel, and the first experimental novel)

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (great first-hand introduction to the problem of American racism)

Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis (best introduction to the "American dream" and business politics)

 

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (just beautiful)

 

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau (explains why the 1960s happened)

 

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (one of the finest novels of all time, and best fictional presentation of the Depression)

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (fishing, baseball: it's the ultimate American adventure story)

 

Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut (hilarious, one of the first great postmodern novels and a brilliant deconstruction of American civil religion and military smugness)

The Deerslayer, by James Fenimore Cooper (the first American adventure novel; at least, the first good one)

 

Wieland, by Charles Brockden Brown (the first American novel, and a great horror story)

 

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor (a Southern Gothic allegory about Jesus and scary fundamentalists)

 

The Movie-Goer, by Walker Percy (an expose of American individualism and confusion)

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allan Poe (a little-known but AWESOME horror/adventure story)

 

Black Boy, by Richard Wright (posing as an individual's autobiography, this is better described as the autobiography of blacks in America)

 

Roughing It, by Mark Twain (the American West as it really was)

Ethan Fromme, by Edith Wharton (heartbreaking, and very New England)

 

The Sea Wolf, by Jack London (survival of the fittest, more action-packed and scary than Call of the Wild)

 

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner (a dead woman tells of her life from the coffin her people are carrying her to her grave in)

 

The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder (great redemptive adventure story)

 

Hiroshima, by John Hersey (what America did to Japan in WWII, very sad)

 

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison (the Black experience told with full literary abandon)

 

The Thin Red Line, by James Jones (redemption in Guadalcanal; the best WWII novel ever)

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac (the American rebel spirit encapsulated in vigorous prose)

 

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (how real-life becomes fiction, in the form of a terrifying crime story)

Lie Down in Darkness, by William Styron (the finest stream of consciousness novel written by an American)

 

Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein (the great sci-fi novel by a man who knew sci-fi was more than just escapism)

Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya (the best book no one's ever read, and the best Latino novel)

 

The Man in the High Tower, by Philip K. Dick (what if Hitler had won?)

 

The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. LeGuin (what if Hitler hadn't won?)

 

Dune, by Frank Herbert (the greatest sci-fi novel of all time)

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (post-apocalyptic monks saving what remains of civilization while philosophizing: how awesome is that?)

Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo (the saddest war novel I've ever read, and one of the best)

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien (man oh man oh man. maybe my favorite novel ever)