I just discovered that one of the finer books ever written – The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – was also published in 1961. Also James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. These two books were profoundly important to me as a young reader.
Thanks you, David, for this marvelous and learned compendium. I've just gone back into the high school classroom, so can barely raise my head to eat let alone spend time in thoughtful consideration of books. Of anything.
However, this is MY birthday year list, and thus of specific interest to me. And it's delightful. Oddly fun to see the literary works arising around the time of my entry to this mortal coil.
Some thoughts: Catch-22. 'Nuf said. Read it once or twice, maybe, but listened to this audiobook a year or so ago. I audio-read because I'm outside working so much, and because, frankly, the narrators are often remarkable. If you were standing in my kitchen window and looking out at me in the fields, you would see whether I liked a book or not by the number of times I paused what I was doing, sometimes for quite a while, to listen more closely. Or to rewind and listen again to some remarkable bit of writing (style and wisdom). Sometimes, you'd see me sit down for a moment, so overcome with the beauty and pathos of a work that I couldn't stand, that I had to rest my body in order to hold the weight of the words. That was 'Catch-22' a few times. I felt like I'd rediscovered it.
'Franny and Zooey'. Still here, still here. A week, a month, a semester(?) ago I encountered it in some pop-cultural reference that I can't currently track down in my overburdened brain, but which so specific it even mentioned the Jesus prayer Franny was using to work her way through her existential crisis/appropriate response to a world far too cruel, honestly, for some of us. Read it 3-4 times? At least.
'Stranger in a Strange Land'. Used the word grok just the other day, and I'm pretty sure it was understood. Was it referenced to this work? Eh. This book defined some version of the free love era for me.
Frantz Fanon! Just two days ago finished reading Michael Welch's (Pacific, same time as me) novel in manuscript, and in it a homeless street performer alcoholic is reading - wait for it - 'The Wretched of the Earth.' So, there you go, the algorithm of reality (aka coincidence) has once again thrust it into my orbit. Twice. Well, three times really because if you've read 'The Sympathizer' and 'The Committed' (which if you haven't put on your list) you'll also hear about Fanon, multiple times. A hero of the Ho Chi Minh intelligentsia. And Parisian revolutionaries, via Algiers. Sort of.
John C. Lilly. Back in high school, when I wanted to be an oceanographer, my mother gave me 'Man and Dolphin' which naturally prompted me to also want to live in a half-ocean-filled house with a dolphin because . . . hello? Dolphin! Just looked him up - wow - he's into some seriously cosmic mind travel! I'm fresh out of shrooms, and I've got to teach in the am, or I'd dive right in.
Thanks so much for a great response. When I started this blog I thought there'd be more back and forth--so far, not much. But I need to think there's communication going on. This has been soaking up my time lately, but it's given me a strong sense of usefulness, which, as I'm not writing or teaching, I need. This format has allowed me to work in lots of info bits and opinion-though it's hard to know when to stop. "Grok"--yes, this is where it came from and I've been known to let it slip out, too. I hope that we all find some gems to read or re-read on account of this. As I said in the opener, it's all about trying to keep oblivion at bay. Be well, sir. Illegitimi non carborundum.
I clearly remember reading Catch 22, I think at Albion. I'm sure it was not assigned reading, and it's not like I was entirely on top of my school work, but I remember thinking it was the funniest book I had ever read. I'd read half a page and break out in giggles so I had to wait until the giggles passed before I could read on. Haven't looked at it since, so I don't know how much it would amuse me now.
For a time I sort of specialized in not-entirely serious, but really very serious books about World War II. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five stands out.
Another book from that period was Richard Fariña's Been Down So Long It Looks Lke Up to Me.
I found it, entirely serendipitously, it the tiny book department at Sears and Roebuck. Not really where you go generally for lit-ra-ture. I read it again recently, and from my now- aged perspective it's just every budding novelist's embellished autobiographical book about "How crazy I was in college." But at the time it was aspirational. I really wished I had the cojones to smoke paregoric Pall Malls, skip every class, and know the location of all the out-of-control parties that IRL I was missing out on.
Scott: I've got an upcoming post about speculative lit and Slaughterhouse-Five is on it--it's my favorite of his--for a long time it was Cat's Cradle, but I'm kinda afraid to re-read it now. A while ago I read a couple of his late books, and while I had endless admiration for the guy, they were fluff. But SH5 seems like a great mix of slipstream elements--coming "unstuck in time" for instance--and very serious intention to tell about the horrors of Dresden, in a tone that keeps us reading. Catch-22 I haven't re-read, either, but I might. Re-reading I do somewhat rarely and usually for a purpose . . . because you can log more new books instead. I never did read Fariña's--might've passed the window on that one, but you never know. Thanks for paying attention to these posts--makes it all worthwhile, reminds me of what we used to mean, long ago, when we talked about the great promise of the internet.
I just discovered that one of the finer books ever written – The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – was also published in 1961. Also James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. These two books were profoundly important to me as a young reader.
Thanks you, David, for this marvelous and learned compendium. I've just gone back into the high school classroom, so can barely raise my head to eat let alone spend time in thoughtful consideration of books. Of anything.
However, this is MY birthday year list, and thus of specific interest to me. And it's delightful. Oddly fun to see the literary works arising around the time of my entry to this mortal coil.
Some thoughts: Catch-22. 'Nuf said. Read it once or twice, maybe, but listened to this audiobook a year or so ago. I audio-read because I'm outside working so much, and because, frankly, the narrators are often remarkable. If you were standing in my kitchen window and looking out at me in the fields, you would see whether I liked a book or not by the number of times I paused what I was doing, sometimes for quite a while, to listen more closely. Or to rewind and listen again to some remarkable bit of writing (style and wisdom). Sometimes, you'd see me sit down for a moment, so overcome with the beauty and pathos of a work that I couldn't stand, that I had to rest my body in order to hold the weight of the words. That was 'Catch-22' a few times. I felt like I'd rediscovered it.
'Franny and Zooey'. Still here, still here. A week, a month, a semester(?) ago I encountered it in some pop-cultural reference that I can't currently track down in my overburdened brain, but which so specific it even mentioned the Jesus prayer Franny was using to work her way through her existential crisis/appropriate response to a world far too cruel, honestly, for some of us. Read it 3-4 times? At least.
'Stranger in a Strange Land'. Used the word grok just the other day, and I'm pretty sure it was understood. Was it referenced to this work? Eh. This book defined some version of the free love era for me.
Frantz Fanon! Just two days ago finished reading Michael Welch's (Pacific, same time as me) novel in manuscript, and in it a homeless street performer alcoholic is reading - wait for it - 'The Wretched of the Earth.' So, there you go, the algorithm of reality (aka coincidence) has once again thrust it into my orbit. Twice. Well, three times really because if you've read 'The Sympathizer' and 'The Committed' (which if you haven't put on your list) you'll also hear about Fanon, multiple times. A hero of the Ho Chi Minh intelligentsia. And Parisian revolutionaries, via Algiers. Sort of.
John C. Lilly. Back in high school, when I wanted to be an oceanographer, my mother gave me 'Man and Dolphin' which naturally prompted me to also want to live in a half-ocean-filled house with a dolphin because . . . hello? Dolphin! Just looked him up - wow - he's into some seriously cosmic mind travel! I'm fresh out of shrooms, and I've got to teach in the am, or I'd dive right in.
And the rest? They're on my list.
Thanks again, friend.
Thanks so much for a great response. When I started this blog I thought there'd be more back and forth--so far, not much. But I need to think there's communication going on. This has been soaking up my time lately, but it's given me a strong sense of usefulness, which, as I'm not writing or teaching, I need. This format has allowed me to work in lots of info bits and opinion-though it's hard to know when to stop. "Grok"--yes, this is where it came from and I've been known to let it slip out, too. I hope that we all find some gems to read or re-read on account of this. As I said in the opener, it's all about trying to keep oblivion at bay. Be well, sir. Illegitimi non carborundum.
I clearly remember reading Catch 22, I think at Albion. I'm sure it was not assigned reading, and it's not like I was entirely on top of my school work, but I remember thinking it was the funniest book I had ever read. I'd read half a page and break out in giggles so I had to wait until the giggles passed before I could read on. Haven't looked at it since, so I don't know how much it would amuse me now.
For a time I sort of specialized in not-entirely serious, but really very serious books about World War II. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five stands out.
Another book from that period was Richard Fariña's Been Down So Long It Looks Lke Up to Me.
I found it, entirely serendipitously, it the tiny book department at Sears and Roebuck. Not really where you go generally for lit-ra-ture. I read it again recently, and from my now- aged perspective it's just every budding novelist's embellished autobiographical book about "How crazy I was in college." But at the time it was aspirational. I really wished I had the cojones to smoke paregoric Pall Malls, skip every class, and know the location of all the out-of-control parties that IRL I was missing out on.
Scott: I've got an upcoming post about speculative lit and Slaughterhouse-Five is on it--it's my favorite of his--for a long time it was Cat's Cradle, but I'm kinda afraid to re-read it now. A while ago I read a couple of his late books, and while I had endless admiration for the guy, they were fluff. But SH5 seems like a great mix of slipstream elements--coming "unstuck in time" for instance--and very serious intention to tell about the horrors of Dresden, in a tone that keeps us reading. Catch-22 I haven't re-read, either, but I might. Re-reading I do somewhat rarely and usually for a purpose . . . because you can log more new books instead. I never did read Fariña's--might've passed the window on that one, but you never know. Thanks for paying attention to these posts--makes it all worthwhile, reminds me of what we used to mean, long ago, when we talked about the great promise of the internet.