Post-War American Fiction: Name Your Canon

Well, Pynchon is pretty obvious in my book, we'll take him as implicit, oh yes. ;-) I might feel the same about David Foster Wallace once I get around to reading more of his stuff. John Rechy, Toni Morrison, possibly Edmund White as well. Folks like Samuel Delany, Philip Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin, P. C. Hodgell, Neal Stephenson and Orson Scott Card have generally been unfairly dismissed/ignored due to their work in genre fiction, but they're all definite candidates in my book.

Norman Mailer. I thought that Tom Wolfe's attack on him was ridiculous, Wolfe writes about the Merry Pranksters and vain stockbrokers, Mailer writes about the religious mania at the heart and mind of the body politic ('Harlot's Ghost') and proximal-life- death-correlation ('Executioner's Song').
Philip K. Dick for stretching the limitations of a two-dimensional printed page into a Moebius strip leaving phosphene-like afterechoes of a 3D image, and doing it within the sonnet-like conciseness of the genre form. (However, Dick seems to be closer to a Latin American or European tradition than American - I don't think any American writer has gotten him quite right).
I believe that in 100 years time Pynchon, DeLillo, and Brett Easton Ellis will be seen as exemplars/paragons of some form of genre, of a type we don't have a name for yet. This is not good or bad BTW

Ever seen Mailer's film of Tough Guys Don't Dance? Classic bad movie value.

PKD of course, but my canon - another way of saying, 'this is what I like' - wld also include Saul Bellow, Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, William Gaddis (why doesn't he get more props - totally unique stylist, vision, technical skills w/dialogue to match Pynchon or Joyce), Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Burroughs (have a soft for WSB JR but wouldn't dare to call him 'grate'), John Hawkes, George V. Higgins, Nicholson Baker, Stephen King, Anne Tyler, Bukowski, Paul Auster, James Ellroy etc. etc. Have never been able to find any fiction by William Gass, but always thought he wld be 'up my street'.

Most overrated post-war American writer = John Updike.

Ned's list plus Gass, Gaddis, Barthelme, Barth, NOT wallace, but certainly Vollmann. Also, Federman and McElroy and Suckenick.

97% of the post-war fiction i read is comic books.

A list of some i think will last . I have missed at least a dozen. William Gass - In the heart of the heart of the country
a poetic and accurate account of the blessings amd curses of rural living. It is not ludcruisly tragic (ie In Cold Blood) or cute

Gish Jen- Typical America
How one becomes an American. Through hard luck and hopeful chance. Lyrical and intensly personal

Toni Morrison Beloved
How our history and folklore become us. How the tragedies of our ethnicities become muderous ghosts. Extended the work of Zola Neale Hurston at discussing the hidden narrative Of slaves who were not allowed to write their own stories.

Phillip Roth - Human Stain The second best book on the pyschic unravelling of a human who we think is perfect . A Jewish Gatsby with all of the prestige and none of the money. A catoulge of how messy sexuailty is
Dan Dellio - Libra , Joyce Carol Oates _ Blonde

The secret history of these United States. We no longer know what is Myth and what is History. Marylin is our Helen and JFK is our Paris. So much of it needs to be written and recorded that they need companion volumes. These are they.
Thomas Pynchon- The Crying Of Lot 49 All is conspiracy. We are ruled by unseen evil factors or a G-d with a sense of humour. Since Nagasaki our Parnoia seems justified , Pynchon runs this theory through the ringer.

Edmunnd White- The Paris Books The Expat who is such an elegant stylist he only finds worrk in Paris is a cliche. Edmund White infuses so much humanity and anger into his plauge journals that he does not fall into this trap

William S Burroughs - The Deadland Westerns Homoerotic and Homosocial Westerns where everyone seems to live in hell. Windswept and barren the only fecundity happens as a scavenger or as a parasite. Burroughs is the buzzard and the structures of language is a dead coyote.

Saul Bellow - Ravelstein An epic where the swashbuckling happens during conversation. The action and affection is intelectual.

Ugh, augh, ugh, I read Typical American for my first-ever class as a lit major, and it wasn't the class, it was the book: it just sucked.

Really. I thought it was lyrical and graceful with this flint edge .

In parts. The prose was acceptable. I thought the plot was inane though. And Ralph - was that his American name - was a complete schmuck, and not the good kind.

I thought Ralph was an interestign way to deal with assimaltion vs intergration. What about the rest of my list.

Except for Lot 49 I've not read any of the books you list, though I've read some of the authors. I have to go with Gravity's Rainbow over 49, of course. And for the others that I've read I can't really compare. I still haven't read any of Gass's fiction but his essays alternately fascinate me and piss me the fuck off. Not sure what this would mean for his novels. I prefer Underworld for DeLillo but have never read anything else but White Noise. Underworld has just got so much amazing prose in it. And I like my novels to be big and sprawling.

Oh and re Ralph: perhaps it was effective as a device for illustrating that tension, but that kind of making-a-point bullshit doesn't sit well with me. Cf. Invisible Man, the point of which was quite admirable and clear to me and all, but I found it inordinately frustrating to follow the narrator through. Maybe: sort of like reading a parable or an allegory, BIG MESSAGE YOU SHOULD GET, but writing is in realistic mode, which to me clashes with the author pushing a meaning on me.

burroughs, elizabeth wurtzel, brautigan, delillo, coupland, dennis cooper, gary indiana, james robert baker, edmund white, ginsberg, kerouac, chuck palahnuik.

Coupland is a canuck
Visons of Gerad by Kerouac is holy .
Defend Wurtzel .

De White-Male-izing my list, I now mention Ishmael Reed and Maxine Kingston. Also Kathy Acker.

Ishamel Reed WAS ROBBED of the National Book Award . He is the most incredible poet.

Never cared much for his poetry, actually.

I liked his novels but his poetry was such a tutorial, not serious but ritualistc knowledge. Like the Set stanza in I am a cowboy in th boat of Ra.

add lou reed for poetry; and yeah, support kathy acker and patrick callifa.

anthony - did you want me to defend wurtzel, or are you saying you defend her? In case it's the former, Prozac Nation rates as one of the most chilling, well-written, shining examples of depression literature, up there with plath - don't ask me how she managed to get it all down. Bitch was difficult - more thought-enraging than superb, bitch rules was funny, but still waiting for something more. Either way Prozac Nation represents one of the best books from the first five years of the nineties.

Taking sides: Pat Califia the writer when a lesbian woman vs Pat Califia the writer as a gay man.

[I know ordinarily the phrase "lesbian woman" is redundant – but NOT HERE. Here it is valuable and much-needed information.]

I hate Plath as neurotic and whiny. If you said she wrothe like SExton thats another matter. I am thinking bbout reading her.

I adore her prose, don't get much out of the poetry. (What's that worth? Nowt to you, something to me.)

one of the unfortunate side effects of depression is sounding neurotic and whiney - not having read sexton, can't compare, but wurtzell's prozac is fast, intense, at times agonizing, but she seems to have a good grip on outsiding herslef enough to get inside her experiences without asking for this self-pitying poor me thing/

― Geoff, Sunday, 22 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well fix that now :) . I have suffered minor major fepression for 10 years and have been hospitalized for it. I guess i do not apprecaite those who wallow.

I didn't think Wurtzel wallowed: I didn't expect to like Prozac Nation AT ALL, and actually did, a lot. It was practical and serious, I tht (ie if Plath had read it c.1955, then who knows how things wd have turned out different).. Bitch was disappointing, tho it had *some* great bitz.

Th putting Wurtzel in the CANON = Grave Case of Madness. Not that I approve of canons so yeah, big her up.

Gave up on Wurtzel after 20 pages, will have to go back and peresevere.

Anyway some pretty good choices above to which I’d add James M Cain ‘Double Indemnity, Postman always rings twice and Mildred Pierce', not enough crime (or genre) pieces chosen. James Baldwin ‘Another Country’, T Coraghessan Boyle ‘The Tortilla Curtain, Raymond Carver’s collected short stories.

I agree that Updike’s overrated but the Rabbit books are pretty essential for an overview of the period between 1960-90.

Billy - does Cain count as 'Post-War'? Thought at least some of his bks were pre-war? Also bit confused abt Chandler - pre or post-war writer (if post, he should be in the 'canon', as should Jim Thompson.) Forgot abt poets in my earlier post - Anne Sexton, Charles Olsen, some of Ginsberg and esp. John Berryman cannot be excluded.

Yeah, good call. Postman 1934, Milder Pierce 1943, Double Indemnity 1945. I'm a bit surprised that they're so old, in that their virtues are those associated with more modern writing i.e Tight plotting, sparse concise dialogue, a degree of cynicism about human motives in that all the protagonists are corrupt to a greater or lesser extent etc.

Chandler's pretty much a contemporary of Cain so I would think some of his work is post war, but yeah he's a major writer and probably more 'literary' than Cain, not that I consider that to be a virtue. In fact I was considering a Cain v Chandler thread, some other time perhaps.

"more modern writing i.e Tight plotting, sparse concise dialogue, a degree of cynicism about human motives": invented by a. wounded E.Hemingway out of G.Stein in post-WW1 paris; b. the writers at the new yorker, same date (ish), out of the deadline pressures and limited word-space and exposure to the worst behaviour typically experienced by young newspapermen and women. Futurism in print: spare, speedy, jaded, complicatedly humane, attentive to the nature and rhythms of the city that sustained them. (Did Cain write for the New Yorker? Not sure: vaguely think he did... )

(the movie that connects the dots most of all = his girl friday)

Yup. Agree that (for UK at least) WWI is the watershed re class,empire etc. WWII prob more important to US through greater involvement (and slaughter).

Hemingway, justifiably cynical after having half his cock shot off, and like Cain, Chandler straddles pre/post WWII. Another pre war writer with 'modern' attributes, Damon Runyon. Maybe Prohibition/Wall St Crash/depression more significant in US culture?? Going back further Twain equally black, concise, etc Civil War the watershed??? Shows how difficult it is to marry cultural shifts to historical events.

So did Hemingway actually go through that? I always thought The Sun Also Rises wasn't meant to be that autobiographical.

Side note = 'lost generation' = so fucking American. "We actually only had troops over in the final months and comparatively had very small losses compared to everyone else in Europe, but *we've* got the pain and will express it!" Fuck you. Nothing against the actual honest-to- god vets, of course.

Garry Wills makes a brilliant case for Lincoln's Gettyburg Address as the ur- moment of modern conciseness: two people spoke that day; the first, a great orator of the time (who I cd look up and shan't) spoke for THREE HOURS (= quite normal). Lincoln said 243 words!! (= totally avant garde! He was back sitting down again before the photographer was able to get the lenscap off his leica!!)

(Odd thing is, American newspapers — despite pioneering role of American newpaperman attitude — have themselves remained surprisingly sludgy until very recently: cf New York Times with its three- line headlines!! Tabloid-ism was invented (first phase) in the UK, by a Canadian (?): Beaverbrook, and (second phase) in the UK, at the Mirror, by eg by Keith Waterhouse and others, following ideas they got from Orwell. Result: the Sun! Thanks George)

Lincoln said 243 words!! (= totally avant garde!)

Avant garde probably right description as apparently his speech was met with a muted response from those present, with the press complaining that it was dull and mediocre.

Bloody critics eh ;-)

Was it so much 'avant-garde' as 'handy for later generations to memorize'? ;-) I'm thinking of my role as Mayor Shinn in a high school production of The Music Man, who is always trying to deliver the Gettysburg Address himself, but failing to get in a word edgewise. The character of Mayor Shinn, though he loves to hear himself talk (perfect for a guy like me to play ;-)), would probably not want to memorize a three-hour ramble.

"handy for later generations to memorize" = modernism: thus Mr Sterling Clover, somewhere, today!!

Maybe I shouldn't have said anything -- no doubt a wish many have though regarding myself.

Thanx, Mark. Three hour speeches = holdover from the past. Communication with large numbers of ppl. requires brevity. All great modern revolutions took place under slogans of less than eight words. All modern wars took place with slogans of even fewer = 2-4 MAX.

word up to carver, and I'm going to add titles, authors forgotten - Confederacy of the Dunces and Lord of the barnyard.

Robert Stone. I read his books, they don't seem like anything much, filed away, but they keep coming back and back on me, like flashbacks. Is this significant?

Yes . It means he writes well .