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The prologue of Underworld is a fictionalized account of The Shot Heard 'Round the World, a home run by Bobby Thomson in 1951. The HR won the National League pennant for the New York Giants against their cross-town rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. In DeLillo’s account, the game-winning ball is caught by a young black fan named Cotter Martin. Meanwhile, J Edgar Hoover is also in the stands that day. During the game, he is informed of the game of the...
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Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness became immensely popular and established Le Guin’s status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is part of the Hainish Cycle external link , a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin set in the eponymous fictional universe, which she introduced in 1964 with ‘The Dowry of the Angyar’. The Left Hand of Darkness is part of Le Guin’s Hainish novels. City of Illusions precedes it and The...
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Set in America in 1951, during the Korean War, Indignation is narrated by Marcus Messner, a Jewish college student from Newark, NJ. Messner describes his sophomore year at Winesburg College in Ohio ( a reference to the fictional Winesburg, Ohio). Marcus transfers to Winesburg from Robert Treat College in Newark to escape his father, a kosher butcher. He wants to escape him because he is consumed with fear about the dangers of adult life. The world, and the uncertainty that...
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Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule...
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Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California. The street is one lined with sardine canneries known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there, including Lee Chong, the local grocer. Doc, a marine biologist. And Mack, the leader of a group of derelicts. The actual location Steinbeck was writing about in Monterey, was later renamed “Cannery Row” in honor of the...
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The Dharma Bums follows the character of Ray Smith, a thinly veiled representation of Kerouac himself, as he embarks on a series of adventures and encounters with various individuals. The narrative is set against the backdrop of the Beat Generation’s counter-cultural lifestyle and the exploration of Eastern philosophy. The novel begins with Ray’s friendship with Japhy Ryder, a character based on the poet and essayist Gary Snyder. Japhy becomes a mentor to Ray, introducing him to Zen Buddhism, mountaineering, and...
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Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West is set in New York during the Great Depression, a time of economic hardship and social upheaval. Miss Lonelyheart’s real name is never revealed. He receives countless letters from individuals seeking guidance and solace in their troubled lives. However, he finds himself unable to offer genuine help or find meaning in the face of the overwhelming suffering he encounters. As Miss Lonelyhearts becomes increasingly burdened by the weight of his readers’ despair, he descends into...
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Jake Barnes, a journalist and World War I veteran narrates The Sun Also Rises . He is impotent due to a war injury. Jake is in love with Lady Brett Ashley, a beautiful and independent woman. Ashley and Robert Cohn (writer and former amateur boxer) are in a tumultuous relationship. The characters are part of a circle of expats living in Paris. They seek to escape the emptiness and disillusionment of post-war society. The group travels to Pamplona for the...
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Kindred by Octavia Butler begins with Dana, a young Black American, and her white husband, Kevin, moving into their new home. Suddenly, Dana is yanked back in time to a Maryland plantation in the early 19th century. She finds herself in the presence of Rufus Weylin, a white plantation owner’s son, who is in danger of drowning. Dana quickly realizes that she has been brought back in time whenever Rufus’s life is at risk. Her survival is tied to his....
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of essays divided into two sections: “Life Styles in the Golden Land” and “Personals.” In the first section, Joan Didion provides a series of journalistic essays that offer a critical and perceptive look at different aspects of American life. She delves into topics such as the counterculture movement, the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, and the cultural and social dynamics of California. Didion’s writing is characterized by her keen observations, sharp prose, and her...
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Fox 8 is a novella written by George Saunders and published in 2013. It tells the story of Fox8, a clever and curious fox living in a suburban landscape impacted by human development. The novella is narrated from Fox 8’s perspective. His unique voice and broken English add a distinct charm to the story. Or a lady drops her purse and bends to retreev her guds, when sudden lee her hat blows away, at which time, speeking a bad werd,...
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In Zero K , Jeffrey Lockhart’s father, Ross, is a billionaire in his sixties, with a younger wife, Artis Martineau. Her health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a remote and secret compound where death is exquisitely controlled. Bodies are preserved until a future time when biomedical advances and new technologies can return them to life. Jeff joins Ross and Artis at the compound to say “an uncertain farewell” to her as she surrenders her body. These are...
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Thomas Pynchon wrote The Crying of Lot 49 in 1966. The story follows Oedipa Maas, a California housewife, as she becomes entangled in a complex and bewildering conspiracy. Invararity’s estate names Oedipa the executor of his estate. As she delves into her role, she discovers a series of puzzling and interconnected clues that lead her on a surreal and convoluted journey. Oedipa’s investigation takes her into a world of enigmatic underground postal systems, secret societies, and strange encounters with eccentric...
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Eli Sisters, the more introspective and sensitive of the two brothers narrates The Sisters Brothers . A wealthy man known as the Commodore hires Eli and Charlie to hunt down and kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. The Commodore says Harm has stolen from the Commodore. As the brothers travel from Oregon City to California, they encounter a variety of eccentric and often dangerous characters. Among these include rival bounty hunters, sex workers, and gold prospectors. Eli begins to...
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Andy Weir wrote the sci-fi novel The Martian in 2011. It is a gripping and realistic tale of survival set on Mars. Watney’s crew strands him on Mars after they believe he is dead, killed in a giant dust storm. With limited supplies and no means of communication with Earth, Watney must rely on his ingenuity. He turns to his scientific knowledge and resourcefulness to survive in the harsh Martian environment. Watney faces numerous challenges, including finding ways to grow...
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“Paterson” is a long poem written by American modernist poet William Carlos Williams and published in five parts between 1946 and 1951. Williams names the poem “Paterson,” as Patterson, NJ is where he lived and worked as a doctor. The poem is a sprawling and ambitious work that was published in four parts and tend in my reading to go from great (Book 1) to so-so (Book 2), and on downward in overal quality. Just a fragment from the first...
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Look Homeward, Angel is a novel written by Thomas Wolfe and published in 1929. It is a coming-of-age story that follows the protagonist, Eugene Gant, as he grows up in the fictional town of Altamont, North Carolina, during the early 20th century. The novel explores Eugene’s tumultuous upbringing in a dysfunctional family. His father, Oliver, is a restless and ambitious stonecutter, while his mother, Eliza, is a controlling and domineering woman. Eugene’s siblings and extended family members also contribute to...
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China Mountain Zhang is a science fiction novel written by Maureen McHugh and published in 1992. Set in a future where China has become the dominant global superpower. The world is one where social and technological advancements have shaped a new society. The novel follows the life of Zhang Zhong Shan, a young man living in New York City. Chinese culture now influences most aspects of life. Zhang is a construction worker with a Chinese heritage who struggles with his...
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All I Asking for Is My Body is a novel written by Milton Murayama and published in 1975. Set in early 20th-century Hawaii, the novel follows the life of Kiyoshi. Kiyoshi is a young Japanese-American boy growing up in a plantation community. Murayama’s novel explores the struggles of the Japanese immigrant community in Hawaii during a time of social and economic inequality. Kiyoshi comes from a poor family. They face discrimination and prejudice from both the white plantation owners and...
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“The Purloined Letter” begins with Dupin’s friend, the narrator, visiting him at his home. The Prefect of the Parisian police interrupts the investigation. The Prefect seeks Dupin’s assistance in locating a stolen letter. He informs Dupin that the letter contains sensitive information. And potentially has blackmail material against a prominent societal figure. The Prefect explains that the letter was stolen by Minister D—, who concealed it in plain sight. Minister D– placed it among his correspondence. Despite conducting thorough searches,...
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“The Gold Bug” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. It follows the adventure of an unnamed narrator and his eccentric friend, William Legrand, as they search for buried treasure. The story begins with the narrator visiting Legrand on an isolated island in South Carolina. Legrand, who has recently become obsessed with finding buried treasure, shows the narrator a mysterious scarab-like bug (aka “The Gold Bug”). He believes holds the key to discovering the treasure’s location. Legrand describes...
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Let Me Be Frank with You ( LMBFWY ) is a novel by American author Richard Ford and published in 2014. LMBFWY is a collection of interconnected stories featuring Frank Bascombe. Bascombe is a middle-aged retired sportswriter and real estate agent living in New Jersey. The book serves as a sequel to Richard Ford’s previous novels: The Sportswriter , Independence Day , and The Lay of the Land . Following Hurricane Sandy, Let Me Be Frank with You explores Frank’s...
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Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse 5 from his own experiences serving in the armed forces. It tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist and World War II veteran. Billy becomes “unstuck in time,” experiencing moments of his life out of chronological order. Vonnegut structures the novel in a non-linear fashion. Billy’s experiences during the war, particularly the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, serve as a central focus. Vonnegut himself was a survivor of the Dresden bombing, and the novel draws from...
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Henry Adams, journalist, historian, and member of the Adams political family, posthumously published The Education of Henry Adams in 1918. It won a Pulitzer the following year. The book chronicles Adams’ personal and intellectual journey throughout his life. He reflects on the changes and challenges he witnessed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Adams recounts his privileged upbringing as a member of a prominent New England family. He explores his experiences in education, from his time at Harvard...
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Hunter S Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1971. It is a semi-autobiographical account of a drug-fueled journey through Las Vegas by the narrator, Raoul Duke. His attorney, Dr. Gonzo, joins him for the ride. The story follows Duke and Dr. Gonzo as they travel to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race. However, their trip quickly descends into a chaotic and hallucinatory adventure fueled by drugs, alcohol, and reckless behavior. Throughout the novel, Thompson explores the...
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On California’s fog-hung North Coast, the enchanted redwood groves of Vineland County, a wild assortment of sixties refugees from the “Nixonian Reaction” live on. They’re still struggling with the consequences of their past lives. Aging hippie freak Zoyd Wheeler is revving up for his annual act of televised insanity. The latter typically involving self-defenestration to keep government checks flowing. When news reaches that his old nemesis, sinister federal agent Brock Vond, has come storming into Vineland. And with him a...
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Philip K. Dick published the sci-fi novel Eye in the Sky in 1957. The story follows a group of individuals who find themselves trapped in a bizarre and ever-shifting alternate reality created by a malfunctioning particle accelerator. The novel begins with the main characters, Jack Hamilton and Marsha, visiting a new tourist attraction - an experimental particle accelerator. The particle accelerator goes awry and transports the group into a series of parallel worlds. Specific beliefs and prejudices govern each of...
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Man Walks Into a Room is a novel written by Nicole Krauss and published in 2002. The story centers around Samson Greene. Greene is a professor of cognitive science who discovers that he has lost all memory. All memories of the first 24 years of his life–due to a brain tumor. The novel follows Samson’s struggle to come to terms with his memory loss and to reconstruct his identity. As he grapples with the gaps in his past, he embarks...
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Lise begins her final journey not with a whimper, but with the jarring visual discord of a dress—a lemon-yellow skirt paired with a bodice of violent, unnatural pink. In the sterile, fluorescent-lit boutiques of her unnamed northern city (could be in Scotland, where Spark is from?), she rejects the tasteful and the subdued, opting instead for a costume that ensures she cannot be missed. There is a brittle, porcelain quality to her composure, an existential restlessness that Muriel Spark renders...
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Bleeding Edge is a novel written by Thomas Pynchon and published in 2013. Set in NYC in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, we follow fraud investigator and mother Maxine Tarnow. She becomes entangled in a vast conspiracy involving technology, finance, and the shadowy forces of the digital age. The world of the “bleeding edge” of technology pulls Maxine into its complex narrative circuitry. It is “here” where she uncovers a series of suspicious financial transactions that hint at...
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