What "classic" book to read?

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For some more modern 'classics' I would recommend Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Herman Hesse, Catch-22, 1984, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn.

One minor correction: War of the Worlds was written by H.G. Wells

 

Update: I read The Grapes of Wrath on holiday and it was pretty powerful stuff. Did the events recounted in that book really happen (i.e. the displacement and alienation of all those farmers)?

I didn't get to Last of the Mohicans by the end of the holiday so I'll read that some other time.

 

If you're talking about the "Dustbowl" and displacement of farmers in the midwest, yes it did happen. Farmers abandoned their farms all over, especially in Oklahoma. The fact that it happened during the great depression didn't help either.

 

I haven't read most of these books, but of the few I have, Moby Dick definitely stands out. I haven't read it in many years, but I remember it being very well worth the time. I find it very hard to get in to any book not fantasy related these days, even sci-fi, so I don't know if I could re-read it now.

 

Yes, it did. The novel, which is about the underside of the "American Dream," uses the real historical ruination of many small farmers during the 1930s as its backdrop.

Steinbeck, and I'm sure Falstaff could elaborate more on this, used the quest for Eden, or man's desire to return to the Garden of Eden, as a central theme in much of his work. He liked to use the migration of many of the downtrodden to his homestate of California as representative of this quest. But the book, as I'm sure you noticed, is about the search for social justice as well. Watch out, HB, you may become a liberal as a result of reading such "subversive" renderings of the "American Dream" in action.

 

So what happened to all those Okie camps? The book just ends without elaborating, despite continuously hinting that the oppressed masses would eventually rise up and crush the ruling classes.

 

From all the ones I do remember reading was Bram Stokers Drac... I remember sitting in the classroom while everyone else was outside playing, and I was totally hooked, Im not much of a reader but this book got me from the word go, the next time I see it in the shop I WILL buy it!

 

The novel, to this day, generates a lot of controversy. Steinbeck has his defenders who claim that his book defined the plight of those migrating to California during the depression years. He visted the camps himself and interviewed many of the people living there.

But others have described his novel as myth-making, and that he shaped the details of the story to suit his politics. Capitalists and conservatives believe that the novel is a complete fabrication with a liberal, socialist agenda. I never have really researched it, but I suspect that those conservatives have an agenda of their own. Sorry I'm not more help, HB. Even though I was a Literature major, I still only did limited work on the 20th century writers. But in that area I did my major work on Hemingway. Falstaff would be the guy in the know here regarding Steinbeck.

[ January 10, 2005, 08:46: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

Steinbeck saw himself as a proletariat author - a writer "of the people" - and has been hailed as such since the publication of Grapes, Of Mice and Men, and In Dubious Battle.

And indeed the novel is controversial - conservatives claimed then (and claim now) that the book is naught more than pinko propaganda, and denounced it as such. Socialists have denounced the book as well, as a negative portrayal of socialism, or even an overly subversive semi-socialistic viewpoint. (Some have even gone so far as to call it a vilification of socialist systems, although not nearly so much as In Dubious Battle ).

And though Steinbeck certainly didn't mean for it to be "socialist" per se, the novel is meant to be overtly political - creating a sense of national awareness of the true plight of the "Okies," while at the same time (as Chandos says) taking part in a recreation of "The American Dream" in the modernist view. Steinbeck knew some American socialists, but didn't think all that much of them. He was incredibly liberal (politically speaking), but never "red" so to speak.

Oh, and Grapes is still on many banned book lists.

Yes, they did. Steinbeck traveled extensively in his preparation for this novel, hanging out with "Okies" and other displaced migrant workers, both in their camps and on the road. He wrote a number of articles (published with some fantastic photography as The Harvest Gypsies) about this time in his life, and it was a major concern of his for the first part of his literary career. Although some of the book is purely fictional, a great deal of it is taken from anecdotes that Steinbeck gathered in his research for the novel - stories and accounts retold by the migrants themselves.

As for the ending, Steinbeck is imparting his own feelings on humanity - its resilience and resistance. Steinbeck was a great believeer in the power of both the individual and the group - a believer in the "human spirit" - and though he does not give a resolution for the migrants themselves, he does give a resolution for humanity in the closing image of the novel - mankind helping mankind in the most natural, basic way - Steinbeck is trying to show that mankind, despite all the horrible and traumatic things it goes through, despite all the terrible things they do to one another, still contains that shred of humanity and decency that will keep us all from consuming one another in corporate lust and capitalist bloodshed.

 

Fascinating. I'm learning all sorts of things on SP. I for one think that this book was a bit too anti-capitalist. It reads a bit like something those May Day protestors keep banging on about. But that's a discussion for another forum.

 

I never thought The Agony and the Extasy would so interesting. It's about the life of Michelangelo Buonaroti, real good reading. I recommend it to everyone.

 

About War and Peace,

It’s true that the book starts out with sixty odd pages of introductions and an interminable series of balls.
Patience however, is a virtue that in this case is richly rewarded with several of the most finely crafted plots I’ve ever read. Interwoven is such a way that it’s often difficult to tell which is taking the lead as they dance around one another.
Hands down and by a distance the best characterisation in anything I’ve ever read. Ever. Bar none.
It also contains possibly the single most perfect sentence in any language.
And, if all that weren’t enough, when I finally, all too soon finished the book, I was enveloped by an immense feeling of contentment.
For me contentment is all too rare a feeling, so I can but regard War and Peace a rare and precious treasure that I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on because it starts out slowly.

As to my own recommendation, and speaking of perfect sentences.

For a book to start

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

And to then follow it with

“Murphy sat out of it, as though he were free…”

guaranties my recommendation.

Hence;
Murphy by Samuel Beckett.
Not his best work, ( that would be the Molloy/Malone Dies/ The Unameable trilogy), but good enough, with the added bonus that it won’t make you’re brain melt, well, not more than once or twice a chapter.

 

Hmm...Catch-22, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 already mentioned...

How about Animal Farm?

@Chandos and Falstaff
Wow. Very enlightening. It's stuff like this that make posting on SP such a delight--you never know what you'll learn.

 

Catch-22, now that was a funny/weird book.

 

One person here who is dead against Moby Dick. 50 odd pages gone and still no sign of Ahab. I got as far as the cow which ate fish bones before finally giving up.

1984 is damn grim. The ending almost left me in tears regarding the unrelenting grind of the system.

Sherlock Holmes is great. If you are short on time just read the short stories.

 

Yeah, would definitely recommend Sherlock Holmes. Also agree that 1984 depressed the hell outta me

sounds like that movie "Equilibrium" :/ I have it, will think about reading it.

I wanted to ask, is T.H White's The Once and Future King worth reading?

 

Can't beleive that nobody mentioned Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

 

Tolstoi's War & Peace is awsome. I also like the the beat era Jack London, Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac, I don't know if the latter two are considered classics yet.

 

i've read it. it was oka, but nothing really great imo. at least not the version i had :/

 

Try the essays of Montaigne.