Your Favorite (US) Book 1900-1904

varieties of religious experience

wrong James

i like it better

Santayana was American? Why the hell did I think he was British all this time.

wiki sez:

A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters

Clarity.

I thought the Varieties came out in 1905.

I've only read one of these books, and a few pages of one of the others. I own a few more, but I admit I'm unlikely to actually read "The Virginian" any time soon. So. I dunno. I like Oz well enough, but.

Sister Carrie pwns

Varieties is the only one of these I've finished. For some reason, I thought Shame of the Cities came out about ten years later than this.

i like dreiser & henry james about equally. i rate norris & wharton too but haven't read those works from the list

The Golden Bowl over Sister Carrie

I've read 7 of them. I voted for Varieties of Religious Experience. My runner-up would be People of the Abyss, which, although it is marred by having been tossed off in a hurry, effectively neutralizes any nostalgia one might summon for the 'golden' Edwardian period before WWI.

Oops, didn't see Souls of Black Folks on there, which I've also finished.

The Ambassadorsover Sister Carrie, but Mont-Saint-Michel & Chartres by James' old buddy Henry Adams is one of the strangest, loveliest books ever written.

The only one of those I've read is Sister Carrie, which I liked, but I'm not sure if it would be fair to vote.

The TR book is HI-larious: it's one of the better written proto-fascist texts.

WIZARD OF OZ, no contest.

if you think about it the first and last entries on this list have more in common than meets the eye

baum = midwestener exposes pretentions of phony political boss and drives him out of the city he holds dictatorial sway over
steffens = californian does same

call of the wild is the only one i've read on this list, but it was one of my favourite childhood books. pretty brutal for a children's story, and incredibly tragic, but i loved it. it gets my vote.

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henry adams ppl! represent!

I don't have any favorites among this list, but can I cast a vote AGAINST all three Jack London books? Hate that fucking guy. Sole reason I got a C for a quarter of 7th grade English is because I refused to read Call of the Wild.

um, i got a B- and i flicked a pen into the bitchy teacher's eye

/irrelevent

So, uh, Jaymc, why do you hate jack london so much?
Do you hate hardman arctic adventure?
"To Build A Fire" bum you out too hard?

the only jane addams i've read was the spirit of youth and the city streets but she wins for founding hull house.

I think I might hate Varieties of Religious Experience. Well, hate is too strong a word. But I think it might be useless.

Care to expand on that?

Well, for one thing, he only hones in on basically a single variety of religious experience. And then -- I dunno, I came to the book as someone who doesn't really get what "having a religious experience" is like except through metaphor, and the Varieties (or the half of it that I read until I got tired of it) didn't get me any closer to understanding it. And his constant disparaging (while claiming not to) of anyone who wasn't, basically, Protestant, got to be a bit grating after a while, but I could have put up with that if the book had been the least bit illuminating.

He does have a nice enough prose style, I guess.

I've mild cavils too, mostly structural: all that testimony is wearying to read. But the first and last third are wonderful.

Do you hate hardman arctic adventure?

Pretty much. I mean, this was over 15 years ago, but I seem to recall my objections having to do with the fact that it's like one guy out in the wild, with no one else to talk to, and not really doing anything interesting besides "surviving." I also have no special love for dogs. Btw, I wasn't really a fan of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, either.

(Although as a YA book, Hatchet went down a little more smoothly.)

I once wanted to write a comic short story where the James brothers (Henry & William) traded places with the James brothers (Frank & Jesse).

The Assassination of the Coward Henry James

http://media.twango.com/m1/large/0078/c6d2eb7051e249bab7c858c3935f7863.jpg

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Jack London is really fucking good

Like most worthwhile authors, Jack London is both fucking good and has traits like that make you want to beat him with a crutch.

he had that whole crazysexycool thing going on. with a heaping helping of crazy:

http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=10203&rendTypeId=4

http://www.orwell.ru/people/london/img/jl_l.jpg

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf5t1nb563/hi-res

Jack London- Call of the Wild (1903) 5

ok i only know jack london as the guy all my 6th grade classmates were into, this is totally wau wau wau to me

daring hat period:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/DutchCourage/frontispiece.jpg

"Jack London, Consumer of Daring Haberdashery"

http://london.sonoma.edu/Images/S0000008.jpg

Well I know who to call next time I need to see a bunch of undies pix of Jack London.

Scott has to hide these photos from his chidren.

i missed this! Ambassadors! i can't believe he wrote that + wings of the dove + golden bowl in the span of five minutes.

also, thank you to scott seward. i never knew jack london was hot!