Best American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?

If you are talking about Great Non-Fiction, Mr. Nation, I think I can recommend a book which I am certain will be read in twenty and thirty years by a large number of people. It is "The Blank Slate" by Dr. Stephen Pinker, who was a Professor of Psychology at MIT and is now at Harvard.

The reason the book is so outstanding and will leave a mark in the field is that it explains why the modern world has denied human nature. Indeed, the subtitle of the book is"The Modern Denial of Human Nature"

Obsession? I read that some people on these threads think that Beloved is a great book. I am convinced that the praise of such a book and other books like it have done great harm to the USA. Morison is such a race carder that she has written a great lie. Her book has, in its preface, the statement- Six Million Deaths--
That is a huge crock but has convinced many in the USA that our country has systematically murdered Millions of Blacks when that is not the case.

If my attempt to show that the book is a vicious lie is an obsession, I'll take the charge!!!

Joe -- While I have accused (with justification) several posters here of being immature and shallow, I would never accuse you of that.

There are things we have to read in self-defense. I am serious: there are some things that you just need to know about because you go to parties or talk with folks at work and the matter being discussed has reached a sufficient level of either controversy or interest or both, mandating that you acquaint yourself with it.

This thing may be monumental or the mode of the day, but you have to know it.

As for reading light stuff, well, I have to confess that, in the main, I can not do it. There have been some times when a friend made a persuasive argument (on the way home from defending his dissertation, a friend listened to Anne Rice on NPR and said he felt, "Interview with the Vampire," was the perfect vacation for a mind that had just written and defended a 300 page research work in psychology. He particularly was taken -- its the psychologist in him -- with Rice's comment that, "We are all vampires." So, I read the book. And will never read any Rice again.) that led me to something waaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy oooooofffffffffffff myyyyy regular course.

Generally, however, I can not read non-literary stuff. Just doesn't work for me.

But, I do relish comedy. There is nothing like a Letterman top ten list or a Craig Ferguson stream-of-conscious monolog to make an horrific day less tragic.

PlainOldme ... All true. Especially the comedy part, I read you were a fan of Who's Line is it Anyway?. Of course you are. There is nothing more fascinating than watching comedy being born and the facial expressions are the same as if they were actually giving birth.

I have never read a word of Anne Rice nor of Stephen King, both excellent purveyors of creepy stuff so I hear, but none of that appeals to me at all.

Speaking of vacations for the mind, it's on vacation when I do the most of my bottom feeding. I read the books that someone left behind in the laundry room, really awful things that can only be read as you drowse on a beach chair, not potboilers -they would hold your interest- more like time fillers, something to do between spotting the flights of pelicans or the splashs of the dolphins while you wait for sunset to arrive. I can't provide any titles, I don't remember a word of any to them.

(Not true. Someone left Widow for a Year (godawful), and maybe the same person left Wally Lamb's This Much I know is True (I liked it.) Oh, and I left the Lindberg book in hopes some rock-ribbed Floridian would read it and be redeemed.

Joe(haven't heard of any)Nation

PlainOldme ... All true. Especially the comedy part, I read you were a fan of Who's Line is it Anyway?. Of course you are. There is nothing more fascinating than watching comedy being born and the facial expressions are the same as if they were actually giving birth.

I have never read a word of Anne Rice nor of Stephen King, both excellent purveyors of creepy stuff so I hear, but none of that appeals to me at all.

Speaking of vacations for the mind, it's on vacation when I do the most of my bottom feeding. I read the books that someone left behind in the laundry room, really awful things that can only be read as you drowse on a beach chair, not potboilers -they would hold your interest- more like time fillers, something to do between spotting the flights of pelicans or the splashs of the dolphins while you wait for sunset to arrive. I can't provide any titles, I don't remember a word of any to them.

(Not true. Someone left Widow for a Year (godawful), and maybe the same person left Wally Lamb's This Much I know is True (I liked it.) Oh, and I left the Lindberg book in hopes some rock-ribbed Floridian would read it and be redeemed.

Joe(haven't heard of any)Nation

Why do you double post, Joe Nation?

Joe Nation, why do you double post?

Joe -- I loved Whose Line is it Anyway? Is it still on? I thought it was off the air. I have two sons, 25 and 21, who introduce me to a lot of stuff like that. It's nice to keep in touch.

I've read only one Rice and one King book.

"Interview with the Vampire" was ok as a one time plunge, but, when I tried to read the sequel, I just couldn't get past the first four or five pages. It was rather ridiculous. My friend did get through the first three Vampire books after his dissertation but jokes that it was an anomoly, brought on by finishing his doctorate.

The King book -- The Green Mile -- was at the insistence of my older son after I had seen the movie of the same name. He had bought the several volumes as they were originally released, in serial. Without the supernatural -- if that is the right word -- element (I'm actually a Medievalist, so what King does really isn't supernatural to me), the book is actually well written when you consider character development and style. That said, I have no desire to read another.

Based on seeing a few movies developed from King novels -- Shawshank, the one with Jack Nicholson as the writer holed up in an old ski resort; and, I think, the two with Cathy Bates -- I think someone could write a respectable college level paper on Stephen King and Life as Prison or the imprisonment theme in Stephen King.

A friend of mine formerly worked at the Barnes and Noble in the department store shopping district in Boston and said that King came in about once every four to six weeks with his wife and kids and bought "tons of books." Obviously, he and his family are voracious readers.

Plainoldme wrote:



Shhhhh! Keep that to yourself. I can't find a link for it, but somewhere in the weekly myriad of magazines I read, during the time of the Dan Brown Stole My Book trial in London, I read a comment from King about reading novels or not reading novels.

He said he did not.

Wait, now I remember, he said he never reads anything that is sent to him. People are nuts. They send him their unpublished novels as if he will read and edit the work for them. He said he always sends such things back by return mail, unopened -- here's what I was remembering-- in order to avoid later charges that he stole an idea or a character from some other author. I would suppose that would spill over into published material as well, but maybe he's willing to take his chances.

What a world.

I didn't quite understand what you meant by
Are you referring to the presence of spirits, hoo-doos, goblins and other evil forces of nature? and his dragging them forward in time to confront we unsuspecting moderns? (Remember I don't know what King does, I have seen Shawshank, but that seemed to me to be a pretty straight forward right smart tale.)

By the way, I live about a stone and a half's throw from The Cloisters.
If you are ever in New York City you will have to have a drink at the Pan with Frank and me and then a complete tour.

Two other things:

one, here in New York, Time Warner Cable has a gazillon channels, everything is running, you only have to search to find Mannix-the early years or anything else produced in the past fifty years. So you can still see Who's Line is it? and all of the Monty Pythons, all of the Fawlty Towers and so on. It's a culture trap.

Two, it is always good to have younger muses, like your sons, point things out to us. In my case, it's my ageless wife who works for a leading fashion designer. MTV and the like are always oozing out of her laptop, thankgod for headphones, but without her tutelage I would see nothing of what interests the 20-somethings of this world and I would be a lot less hip, er, with it, er, cool, er, whatever.

Joe( I know, you've already been to the Cloisters, but not after having drinks at the Pan. )Nation

Glad to see you've returned from vacation, Bernard.

Thank You , Miller. I try to provide good suggestions for reading on this site but when I look at the choices made by most, I think I have indavertently wandered into the Children's Section of the Library.'


If anyone should read great books it would be the people who are skilled enough to write cogently on these sites.

However, as you may be aware, Mr. Miller,the American Educational System has produced only morons who read Danielle Steele and/or Stephen King.

If you want to try a good experiment, make it a point to attempt to catch the titles of the books that people are reading on trains, at the beach, etc.

You will find that they are reading brainless junk like "The DaVinci Chronicles" and/or propagandistic race-carding like "Beloved"

American Teachers have failed thier students. When I attended High School , we were assigned the Illiad and the Odyssey. As seniors, we re-enacted, in class, the best play ever written- Hamlet.

Now the spineless teachers assign Judy Blume!!!

We did too! We had a blast! Our English teacher, Mr. McHale, was great. He was prematurely gray and we called him The Silver Fox.

Wow! Near that wonderful park? I love The Cloisters....

The invitation is open to you too, d.

Diane and I went to the Cloisters on my last day in NYC, in '04. Would have been swell to meet you guys. Dagnabbit, anyway. (I didn't post I was going there and was sort of heavily booked for meeting people, but still...)
With any luck, there'll be a next time.

eoe wrote:

We did too! We had a blast! Our English teacher, Mr. McHale, was great. He was prematurely gray and we called him The Silver Fox.


And, eoe, I am sure that was far far more enjoyable than the garbage on TV lately. You know, of course, that, unfortunately, culture is degraded so that more books, movies, etc. can be sold.

The most ominous sign occurred years ago when someone decided to put out a comic book entitled Classic Comics.

In my opinion, musch of the literature of the day falls under that heading!!! Comic book writing!!!

Can't comment to any length -- computer probs.

Joe -- I once went to NYC just to visit the Cloisters. The tapestries were taken away to be cleaned! Need to go again.

Did anyone look into the www.caderbooks.com/bestintro.html? Lots of fun.

Did.

'tis.

Joe

One of the best things about New York City is that it's a walking city. Very easy for one ( with good shoes!) to walk miles and never be bored. Have to watch out for muggers and molestors, however .

Miller -- There is nothing like walking in a big city. I have been to NYC a handful of times and always walked about it. Each visit was short, one to three days, but walking actually helps you make the most of it.

Have also enjoyed walking about Paris, San Francisco and Helsinki.

JoeNation -- I have been thinking about being a Medievalist (have a degree in Celtic Studies from Harvard, which was then a branch of the Medievalist group there) and what is different about King.

As I have only read The Green Mile, it is difficult for me to write about his writing. Certainly, John Coffee's 'ability' was unexplained, which means, from the stand point of style, the novel is more like science fiction than the class of 'macabre' writing that most people would put King in. However, if you really think about King, he is a descendant of Egdar Allen Poe. This morning, I was thinking of his story of the man married to a beautiful woman with one flaw, a small, hand-shaped mole, which turned out to be the source of her being.