Sunday, March 17, 2024
11:51 AM |
The Great American Novels
The Atlantic just dropped their list of
The Great American Novels...
Goodness, I have only read
25 of these. Must really go back to serious reading. But happy for Jessica Hagedorn’s
Dogeaters making it. I read that book when I was studying in Japan at 21, and I loved it. [I lent it to a Finnish friend, and when she finished, she told me: “Now I understand you much better,”
hahaha.] But I’m perplexed with its inclusion in this list, given its “American-ness” conceit: that novel is very much about post-war Philippines. Carlos Bulosan’s
America is in the Heart feels like the better fit.
The list, and my reads thus far:
[✓]
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
[ ]
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925)
[ ]
The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein (1925)
[ ]
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1927)
[ ]
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929)
[ ]
Passing by Nella Larsen (1929)
[ ]
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
[ ]
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936)
[ ]
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (1936)
[ ]
East Goes West by Younghill Kang (1937)
[ ]
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
[ ]
U.S.A. by John Dos Passos (1937)
[ ]
Ask the Dust by John Fante (1939)
[ ]
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
[ ]
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
[ ]
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
[ ]
Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)
[ ]
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)
[ ]
A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell (1942)
[ ]
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
[ ]
The Street by Ann Petry (1946)
[ ]
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes (1947)
[ ]
The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford (1947)
[✓]
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)
[✓]
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White (1952)
[ ]
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
[ ]
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
[ ]
Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks (1953)
[ ]
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)
[✓]
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
[✓]
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956)
[ ]
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious (1956)
[ ]
Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (1957)
[ ]
No-No Boy by John Okada (1957)
[✓]
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
[✓]
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
[ ]
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
[✓]
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (1962)
[✓]
Another Country by James Baldwin (1962)
[ ]
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)
[✓]
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
[ ]
The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald (1962)
[✓]
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
[ ]
The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963)
[✓]
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1966)
[ ]
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (1967)
[ ]
Couples by John Updike (1968)
[ ]
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
[ ]
Divorcing by Susan Taubes (1969)
[✓]
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)
[ ]
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
[✓]
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (1970)
[ ]
Desperate Characters by Paula Fox (1970)
[ ]
Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (1970)
[ ]
Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford (1972)
[ ]
Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed (1972)
[ ]
Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)
[ ]
The Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Zeta Acosta (1973)
[ ]
Oreo by Fran Ross (1974)
[ ]
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)
[ ]
Winter in the Blood by James Welch (1974)
[ ]
Corregidora by Gayl Jones (1975)
[ ]
Speedboat by Renata Adler (1976)
[ ]
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
[ ]
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)
[✓]
A Contract With God by Will Eisner (1978)
[✓]
Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran (1978)
[ ]
The Stand by Stephen King (1978)
[ ]
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (1979)
[ ]
The Dog of the South by Charles Portis (1979)
[✓]
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1980)
[ ]
The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara (1980)
[ ]
Little, Big: Or, the Fairies’ Parliament by John Crowley (1981)
[ ]
Oxherding Tale by Charles Johnson (1982)
[ ]
Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips (1984)
[ ]
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
[ ]
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1986)
[✓]
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986)
[ ]
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
[ ]
Dawn by Octavia E. Butler (1987)
[ ]
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1989)
[ ]
Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston (1989)
[✓]
Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn (1990)
[✓]
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
[ ]
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (1991)
[ ]
Mating by Norman Rush (1991)
[ ]
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (1992)
[✓]
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
[ ]
So Far From God by Ana Castillo (1993)
[ ]
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993)
[ ]
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993)
[ ]
Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee (1995)
[ ]
Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth (1995)
[ ]
Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena María Viramontes (1995)
[ ]
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
[ ]
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (1997)
[ ]
Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
[ ]
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (1999)
[ ]
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (2000)
[ ]
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)
[ ]
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
[✓]
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (2000)
[ ]
The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams (2000)
[ ]
Erasure by Percival Everett (2001)
[ ]
I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine (2001)
[✓]
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
[ ]
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros (2002)
[ ]
Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling (2002)
[ ]
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart (2002)
[✓]
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
[ ]
Veronica by Mary Gaitskill (2005)
[✓]
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
[ ]
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
[ ]
I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (2010)
[ ]
Open City by Teju Cole (2011)
[ ]
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (2011)
[ ]
The Round House by Louise Erdrich (2012)
[ ]
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
[ ]
Nevada by Imogen Binnie (2013)
[ ]
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2014)
[ ]
Family Life by Akhil Sharma (2014)
[ ]
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (2015)
[ ]
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (2015)
[ ]
The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2015)
[ ]
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
[ ]
Amiable With Big Teeth by Claude McKay (2017)
[ ]
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017)
[ ]
Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (2018)
[ ]
Severance by Ling Ma (2018)
[ ]
There There by Tommy Orange (2018)
[ ]
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (2019)
[ ]
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (2019)
[ ]
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (2019)
[ ]
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (2021)
[ ]
The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (2021)
[ ]
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (2023)
Labels: books, list, philippine literature, reading
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, May 03, 2015
10:07 PM |
Speakeasy Cats
What can I say about Depression Era cats meowing it out to the tune of jazz, gunfire, bootlegging, and speakeasies? Tracy J. Butler's
Lackadaisy was a hoot of a read. This volume, which gathers together her initial work for an apparently very popular webcomic, is an immersive read into the sweet shenanigans of the 1920s, this time starring cats. I keep getting fascinated by this era's generosity with its capacity for being reread and reconstituted in pop culture. There's
The Great Gatsby, of course, and countless movies. But it reminds me most of all of Alan Parker's
Bugsy Malone -- essentially occupying the same thread as Butler's meowy narrative, but this time starring kids.
Lackadaisy does not exactly end with a close-knit ending: it comes with a cliffhanger, touting a continuation -- and I wish it had been a standalone volume, promising only more standalone volumes still to come. But it's intriguing enough for a graphic novel, granted a language that may be a little bit too whimsical for comfort. The characters are drawn by Ms. Butler with an eye for clarity and fervent characterisation, and it is easy to fall in love with its hapless heroes, in particular the conflicted Freckles, who has some issues Bruce Banner and Dr. Jekyll can help him with. This book has been in my reading list for almost two years now, and I'm happy I've finally reached its last page. Given that slow-burning read, I wish it had closed with a more determined decisiveness. But, oh well,
meow.
Labels: books, comics, life, pop culture, reading, writers
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
9:07 PM |
Writing and Reading: A Rant of Sorts
I've been guilty of this. But no longer. Starting this semester, I've been telling my students to buy the original copies of books I'm requiring them to read. Absolutely no photocopies. Because I think, as teachers, we have somehow helped create a culture of disregard for books and reading by allowing our students to photocopy pages upon pages of text, with utter disregard for copyright and the authors' bottomline.
It has also reduced written works produced with so much sweat and blood and research to the level of the cheap and disposable. No wonder there is a diminished regard for the writing profession in general to the level of the impractical. No wonder people keep going up to me, always asking for free copies of my book, as if they can do the same with an engineer, or a doctor, or a lawyer. Living in a third world country is no excuse. So yes books can be expensive sometimes. But that's paying premium for knowledge gained and a sense of literature found. You're already paying almost P400 a month to cable television that gives you nothing but the
WoWoWee kind of stupidity. Why can't you do the same to something that can actually make you think and ponder and learn?
Labels: rants, reading, teaching, writing
[3] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
1:19 AM |
Reading and Poverty
By Roberto S. SalvaI began to read prodigiously when I was around 17 years old. I was trying to make it on my own in the big city and found myself diving into abject poverty. If one of the priest-speechwriters of Jaime Cardinal Sin had not hired me as his research assistant, I would have been a janitor.
I applied as a janitor. I already had a plan. I would mop floors and clean rooms, and at the end of the day, I would come home, turn my lamp on and read. I could not have wished for a more comfortable arrangement.
I did research, instead, and read for work until late in the evening. But I still found time to come home and read for myself.
I had not probed into the reasons why I read and why reading seemed to iron out all the wrinkles at the end of my everyday life then. It is only now that I am able to ponder on reading after seeing the results of the Reading Surveys done by the Social Weather Stations in early 2003 and late 2007.
According to the surveys, around 91 percent of Filipinos in 2003 and 85 percent in 2007 read non-school books to gain knowledge and more information. As a statistician, I feel that something is amiss in the crafting of that category. Or, many of the readers may not have captured perfectly the reason why they read. (The next consistent reason given is “enjoyment.”)
It is hard to nail down the one reason why we read, much like falling in love. If we do give reasons, they do not give justice at all to the act. Yet, we continue to read, just as we continue to love.
The reasons given also seem inconsistent with the books read by most. The list is topped by the Bible (67 percent in 2007), followed by romance or love novels (33 percent), cookbooks (28 percent), comic books (26 percent), and religious or inspirational books (20 percent).
Except for cookbooks, the books on the list are not the best books to read if we want to gain knowledge or more information. We do attain certain knowledge and get information from these books but if we are reading toward these ends, we are being inefficient. Enjoyment as the primary objective for reading would have made more sense, given that list.
But it would have been awkward for the survey respondents to give more emphasis on “enjoyment” rather than the more ideal reason of gaining knowledge as the reason for reading. We are a predominantly Catholic country after all, and we abhor any trace of pleasure in our bones.
Given also our education and our country’s poverty, reading for pleasure seems to be an impractical reason. And this is not the time to be impractical.
Perhaps reading is really not practical, especially if we are living in poverty. When I was 17 and poor, I did not read for some pragmatic results that reading would have in my life. But with my every reading, I was able to struggle with the imagination, rationality and ideas of Dickens, Chesterton, Camus, Kafka, Buber, Augustine, Marcel, Levinas, Chaim Potok, Fr. Roque J. Ferriols—some of the authors on my reading list then. (And yes, I am bragging a little.)
I found compassion and camaraderie in these authors. My own imagination and my own ideas surfaced and they were strengthened by being rubbed against their works. I had no illusions whatsoever that I was in their league. (But that is another one good thing about reading books: we rub elbows with the authors, even the big ones.)
Reading made me acknowledge the existence of my own imagination, my own ideas, and my own visions. My own mind. These were strengthened with every reading.
If you are poor and marginalized, you need to have your own mind for important discourses are taking place with every step you take toward development—every single step.
Being poor and marginalized—as I have observed in myself, in the urban poor I worked with before and among the people I am working with now—is like being stuck as a teenager. You do not seem to have control over your life. You don’t have your own money. Nobody seems to understand you. You hear a lot of voices telling you that you do not belong, how you should be, how you should live your life, how far you can go and what your limits are. The loudest voices come from within.
It is easy to be defeated by these voices when you do not have your own mind. It is easy to accept that you are poor because you are supposed to be lazy. You are a criminal because you live in the squatters’ area. You deserve to be ridiculed and treated badly because you are deaf or poor. You do not have to go to college because higher education is only for those who are “normal.” You do not have a future because you were born to a hopeless situation. You do not read because reading is only for the educated and the well-placed.
Most of the development initiatives do not touch upon the discourses going on in the mind of the poor and the sidelined. There may be livelihood projects, but do you know that many urban poor are paralyzed when they are asked to fill up a bio-data form or to take a personality test? Gawad Kalinga may build you a house, the microfinance institute may give you access to credit, and your community organization may give you a voice, but what happens when you have your house, money or voice?
Read.
[From the
Philippine Daily Inquirer]
Labels: books, issues, reading, writers
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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