Maybe there’s some reel to reel tapes in somebody’s garage.
I met him at a book signing when I was nine; he seemed like a nice guy, very comfortable in his own skin. I had a black eye that day, and he insisted on hearing the entire story of how I got it.
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“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” if you want to read about American Society before the Civil War, which to some extent the book’s help cause by exposing the evils of slavery, is a must read.
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Can’t believe you left out the actual Great American Novel.
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Lincoln is said to have greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe at the White House as “the little lady who started the war”.
I’m still inclined to go with Gravity’s Rainbow as the best novel by a U.S. American in the past 50 years, but I’m always open for suggestions.
And Latin American (past 50 years also), I’d probably go with The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño just as a sheer romp.
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Not OT at all. Gone with the Wind reflects circumstances and attitudes at the time of the Civil War, but also in 1937 when the book was published and became a best-seller. My mother was in high school in 1937.
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Two books I read almost seven decades ago, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain left their mark. They are still fresh and amazing.
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The Financier by Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser’s reputation for clunky writing is overblown, in my opinion. He was a great novelist who did not shy from taking on some of the most divisive issues of his time and showing the dark side of American capitalism. This book is still very timely, telling the story of an ambitious entrepreneur who gets caught up in political scandals and embezzlement.
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It’s really hard for me to imagine advocating that anybody read Gone With The Wind for any reason. It has about as much literary and social merit as Mein Kampf, except that GWTW’s message of racism and white supremacy is tarted up in the form of a Harlequin romance.
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Now I’m curious, too. How did you get the black eye?
Main Street, Elmer Gantry, and Babbit are all favorites of mine.
Sauk Center, Minnesota, knew that it was satirized by Lewis in Main Street.
Nevertheless, they put up a nice Sinclair Lewis museum.
We stopped there, one blazing hot July day, crossing the prairie of southern Minnesota and South Dakota.
It was a blessed relief to be in a cool, dark theater to see a slideshow presentation of his life.
The presentation began with a narrator intoning:
“Sinclair Lewis had an unhappy childhood.”
And I imagined a subtext- “Sauk Center was nice! It was that darned unhappy childhood that made him write that unhappy stuff!”
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I hope you will read fiction again sometime.
Playing pick up football. Trying to avoid getting tackled, I ran into the branch of a dogwood tree. In my defense, I’ll say that the fellows about to tackle me were larger, stronger and older and would have leveled me. I had great faith in my evasive talents, I just forgot to factor in the tree. 
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Shepherd had a following when he was a DJ with patter at WOR in NYC in approx 1954 (?). I forgot what he called them, but today we call them flash mobs. He would hold them in Manhattan early mornings. I think he commuted from Montclair, NJ.
I had older family members who were groupies of his.
Seinfield says he learned comedy from Shepherd.
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Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, the greatest novel that no one ever heard of…
Henry Green’s three great novels set during the Second World War: Caught (during the war), Loving (avoiding the war, and the most famous of these), and Back (returning from the war).
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, a novel in verse; I like the Babette Deutsch translation the best.
Guignol’s Band by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, blackest of black humor.
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa, sunnier humor and a great beach novel…
The Crock of Gold by James Stephens, a book that everyone loves. Or for the most anarchic of Irish humor, At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (aka Brian O’Nolan).
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Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion is THE great (Anti) American Novel. Addresses all of the 'Murican issues of expansion and conquest as well as issues particularly relevant today, such as freedom and responsibility in regard to family, community, and society in general. My favorite novel!
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I’ve got a copy of Loving/Living/Party Going that has been on my bucket list for too long.
Not American though … 
I thought I was cheating a bit when I mentioned Bolaño.
If I was going out of America I would have listed Under the Volcano also (and Celine).
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Became a good movie. ‘Tune In Tomorrow’
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Oh my god! I’m a book nerd! I never knew anyone else who had a nonfiction book system. Mine is topic based too. But history is my favorite because those books have a chronology based on when the events in the book took place and include some fiction as well. Slaughterhouse Five for instance, resides near the end of my WWII section. It’s as much to amuse me as to reveal my guests intellect…those who get it are keepers.
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I’m sorry, but I am so tired of the self-important chest beating about 80 year old books or 200 year old books or the views of someone who died 100 years ago. Good for you. You’re the cultural executioner who crucifies people who lived a century ago because their world view doesn’t match up to your enlightened specialness. Christ, grow up.
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