Minor Masterpieces: Overlooked Novels

[BurtWorm]

Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith is pretty close to being a perfect book. You don't know what the hell is going to happen, you just know pretty much it's going to be bad. In a word, it's about a twisted marriage in which the husband, a snobby small press book publisher and pillar of a small Berkshire town, allows his embittered wife to have regular affairs to keep the marriage alive. It begins just as the protagonist is becoming sick of the arrangement and he "confesses" to his wife's latest lover that he killed one of her previous ones. That confession is phoney, but it puts him in a killing mood.

PS: your turn

[punpirate]

1. My nomination for that category is:

Accordian Crimes by E. Annie Proulx. Everyone went wild about The Shipping News, but this book is quirky, sardonic and funny in odd, odd ways, and was sort of left in the wake of her most popular book. It is a series of long vignettes tied together by possession (and dispossession) of a particular hand-made Italian accordian over the course of perhaps a hundred years.

[Michael Harrington]

2. Another one...

Union Dues by John Sayles. I urge anyone who likes John's films to get their hands on a copy of this book. It's about a kid in the 60's who leaves West Virginia and goes north, falling in with the student protest movement there.

It's honest and utterly unflinching. His home life, and that of his father and brother, is described pitch perfectly. His depictions of the various milieus is dead on. That a guy from New Jersey understands the West Virginia vibe the way he does (and he demonstrated that again in Matewan), is really fascinating to me.

[BurtWorm]

3. Welcome, Michael Harrington!

Is that your name or your hero's name? (Or both?)

:toast:

[Michael Harrington]

37. We might have been related...way back.

Fellow Irishman and a huge influence on my world view. I was lucky enough to meet him after a lecture in March of '87. A good man, sorely missed in this world.

[BurtWorm]

45. True. A great good man, sorely missed.

[newyawker99]

4. Hi Michael Harrington!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Room101]

38. Michael Harrington ...........

Union Dues by John Sayles. Duly noted

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must always undergo the fatigue of supporting it" -Thomas Paine

I look forward to your fatigue :hippie:

[MissMillie]

5. A Prayer for Own Meaney

by John Irving.... great stuff

[GCP]

12. That's the one I was going to nominate

I cried buckets at the end, then turned around and re-read the whole book again, straight away.
It's still my favorite novel of all time.

[Aristus]

6. 'The Seed and The Sower' by Sir Laurence Van Der Post.

The inspiration for the Nagisa Oshima film "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence"

It's a quietly beautiful, powerful and wrenching three-part novel. It features the most important thing about any war novel. Not battles, or weapons, or strategies, but people and the way they relate to one another, for good or ill, or occasionally, both.

I've got a first edition of the book. It's one of my prized posessions.

[ixion]

7. God Knows, by Joseph Heller

I personally think this was his best.

[jafap]

34. I think his "Picture This" is under-rated

When he died the press mentioned Catch-22 and "Something Happened" the latter I thought was just awful.
I made it about halfway through "God Knows" before I decided I had better stop. I could not be sure of its Biblical accuracy and since I was at that time frequently arguing with Fundamentalists I did not want to quote from God Knows and have it be non-biblical.

[bif]

8. "Fugitive Pieces" by Ann Michaels

Beautifully written masterpiece. I don't know why this book doesn't get more attention. It's one of my all-time favorite books.

[Boudicea]

15. Hats off to you bif, that was a tough read for me

I liked the characters immensely, but her writing style totally put me off. I know she's a poet, but she couldn't seem to write a complete sentence.

[bif]

16. To be honest with you

I don't reccommend it to everyone.

[FlashHarry]

9. 'English Passengers' by Matthew Kneale

Short-listed for the Booker prize a couple of years ago. I keep proselytizing for this book, because I found it so enthralling.

It's the sweeping story of a protestant minister in 19th century England who believes he's discovered the Garden of Eden in Tasmania. It also recounts the systematic extermination of the aboriginal Tasmanian peoples. It's funny, sad and provocative. Give it a try; you won't be disappointed.

[BurtWorm]

10. That does sound interesting.

Thanks!

[Character Assassin]

11. Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. Simply nothing else like it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345321383/qid=1066321293/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-2354108-0504807

Set in a 'China that never was'.

[bbernardini]

13. "Flan" by Stephen Tunney

Better known as Dogbowl, one of the original members of King Missile (Dog Fly Religion). A book about a guy who wakes up to find that his room is on fire. He escapes with his fish (Ginger Kang Kang) to find an apocalyptic nightmare world (although we never find out why). Bizarre stuff.

[mitchum]

14. "Ladies Man" by Richard Price...

I've met so many writers who love this novel (with good reason)

"The Miraculous Day of Amelia Gomez" by John Rechy. A lot of Rechey's later novels are damn near unreadable, but this is a beautiful book.

"The Damnation of Theron Ware" by Harold Frederick. A little known 19th century masterpiece. Bonus points to Frederick for saying, "Henry James spent his time licking the floorboards of every third rate hostess in Europe"

"The Sacrilege of Alan Kent" by Erskine Caldwell. Wm. Faulkner wasn't the first southern author to realise the possibilities of modernism.

"A Feast of Snakes" by Harry Crews. Read this modern cracker gothic (or I'll beat you half to death in a drunken rage)

[bif]

17. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald

Very subtle but very beautiful.

[BurtWorm]

19. Very intimidating

His books don't look user friendly. Are they friendlier than they look?

[bif]

21. Well, they're not for everyone

There's almost no plot. It's just this guy reminiscing about his chihldhood. He was part of the program that shipped Jewish kids out of Germany and Easter Europe before WWII. He was raised by a Welsh couple. He talks about his travels in Europe later on in life and he goes back to Prague where he was born to find out about his parents. It's pretty slow moving but fascinating. I'm slowly making my way through "Rings of Saturn." It's about a guy walking around East Anglia. Full of historical asides.

The tragedy is this guy didn't ztart writing until he was around 40, wrote 4 books, and then was killed recently in a car accident. I reccommended Austerlitz to my sister-in-law and she loved it.

[punpirate]

30. I'm close to finishing [i]Rings of Saturn[/i]...

... and it's an interesting read. The Guardian has a well-written obituary on him here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,619971,00.html

[Bridget Burke]

18. "Now Playing at Canterbury" by Vance Bourjaily

It's about the production of a modern opera to inaugurate the new performing arts hall at a midwestern state university, early in the '70's. Characters include faculty, students, townies & visiting artists. They interact in a variety of ways while putting on the show.

Oh, & each chapter features one of the characters telling a story. The style & tone of each tale varies as much as the stories a group of pilgrims told each other one spring on their way to Canterbury.

Very rich & heartbreaking at the end. It's out of print but available 2nd hand.

[elcondor]

20. Hemingway's Chair by Michael Palin

It got great reviews and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, but whenever I mention it, no one knows what i'm talking about.

The book is about Martin Sproale--an employee at a small-town post office in England. He's obsessed with Ernest Hemingway (who basically replaced Martin's deceased father as a parent-figure). After a smarmy, younger man is made post-master and begins to modernize the post office, Martin begins to crack up a bit and goes on a crusade to save the post office as he knew it. My description doesn't do the book justice--suffice to say I highly recommend it for a weekend afternoon read! :D

[qwertyMike]

22. Awesome Book

Good choice!

[Boudicea]

23. Michael Palin of Monty Python?

[Snow]

24. "A Soldier in the Great War", Mark Helprin

and damn near anything else by Mark Helprin as well. Maybe this guy gets recognition for being a tremendous writer somewhere, but I sure haven't seen it......

[mobuto]

25. A very good novel

but I don't think its too obscure. Hell, I've read it.

;-)

[Snow]

29. Huh! This explains why he's not so widely recognized...

http://home.att.net/~Storytellers/mhelprin.html

turns out he's a right-winger, if an eloquent one. ~sigh~. I still love his writing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

26. "An Instance of the Fingerpost" by Iain Pears

A 17th century Oxford don dies mysteriously, and his maid is hanged for murdering him. That is the basic story, but as told by four different narrators, it evolves into a fascinating and slyly humorous portrait of daily and intellectual and political life in seventeenh-century England.

Each narrator not only gives his own view of the story but also reveals new facts or opinions about the previous narrator. In the end, we have some answers, but even more questions.

Who was the maid--really? Which narrator is really mad? Is there a rational explanation for the events? Which narrative is closest to the truth?

Also, if you have religious inclinations, I would recommend Susan Howatch's series of Anglican novels about an interrelated set of characters. Each book focuses on a different character and his or her struggles with personal crises and spiritual and philosophical quandries. The first in the series takes place in the 1930s and is called Glittering Images, and I would recommend starting there. There are six books in all, and they take the characters into the late 1960s. Howatch started out as a "family saga" writer, and that strain is still visible in her Anglican novels, but there's a lot of thought-provoking material in there.

[Cocoa]

27. Talking it over, by Julian Barnes

I'm not sure if it is overlooked, but there were tons and tons of copies of it in the bargain bin, $1 for the hardcover, so I assume it didn't do so well.

I bought it at the last minute, for a bus ride, expected it to be crap, but it was a huge surprise, one of my favorite books.

[bif]

28. A Fan's Notes

By Exley along with the two sequels.

[VOX]

40. "Pages from a Cold Island" and "Last Notes from Home"...

Brilliant, witty, self-effacing in the extreme, biting.

Exley didn't write much, but the words he did put to paper are brilliant.

Thanks for mentioning good old Fred Exley.

[BurtWorm]

43. A Fan's Notes is the only Exley I've read

and I have to agree, it was brilliant. His sneaky little trip with the repressed family to a Giants game is one of the wildest pieces of comedy I've ever read!

[tishaLA]

31. Typee or Pierre by Melville.

and any of Charles Brockden Brown's gothic fiction (especially Ormond). Washington Square by Henry James. Meridian by Alice Walker.

[ironflange]

32. "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood

Sadly poignant story of an old woman and her secret.

[Seneca]

33. Sometimes A Great Notion

Kesey's major masterpiece is 'Cuckoo' of course, but don't overlook this gem.

[librechik]

35. Flight from the Enchanter, by Iris Murdoch

perfection

[ursacorwin]

36. blood games

by chelsea quinn yarbro.

an incredible novel of ancient rome, in the time of the ceasars and corruption and hypocrisy. so many interesting parallels to...well, other times. violence, sex, and a little supernatural fun just for kicks. a great read.

(start one of these and you're hooked for life; she's up to 18)

[BurtWorm]

44. My favorite Murdoch books are The Sea, The Sea

and A Fairly Honorable Defeat. I read both years ago. They're both due for a rereading.

[MSchreader]

39. Out of the Night, by Jan Valtin

One of my favorites.

Martin

[GAspnes]

41. Slow Dancing on Dinosaur Bones

by Lana Witt Binding

Rich characterization and black humor with a thick Southern accent distinguish Witt's irresistible debut novel. Tom Jett, freshly equipped with a degree in philosophy, has left California for the open road. After three months of traveling, his Toyota breaks down outside Pick, Ky., a three-street mountain town that is being bought up by the Conroy Coal Company. Gilman Lee, Pick's premier mechanic, bootlegger, lover and musician, offers to put Tom up in a rundown cabin; in exchange, Tom is to keep a lookout for Conroy Coal augers trying to burrow under Gilman's land in search of new deposits. But Gilman hasn't told Tom that he keeps the skeleton of his best friend, Zack-upright in a chair, cigarette in hand-in the old smokehouse near the cabin. The odd nature of the town becomes clearest to Tom, however, when he spots Gemma Collet sitting naked in a nearby creek, covering herself with mud. Gemma, he learns, has ``been mad ever since she turned white''-i.e., contracted vitilego-at age 18. Gemma and Tom's romance makes cautious progress until Rosalie Wilson, Gilman's great lost love, returns from Florida, on the run from her rich but homicidal lover.

[Karmadillo]

42. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

The movie wasn't so great, but the book is well worth reading. Here's a review from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374525188/qid=1066392450/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-8003579-9673724?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

AN AMERICAN CLASSIC, October 26, 2002
Reviewer: samatarsof
A tale of loss and longing set in the lakeside town of Fingerbone, Housekeeping is the story of a pair of sisters born into a tragic, quirky family. Their father drowns, their mother commits suicide, and they are passed into the care of their grandmother. After her death, and a short spell with a couple virgin great-aunts, their aunt Sylvie arrives. Sylvie is a vagrant, a person for whom life is lived from conversation to conversation, from parkbench to train station. She reveres the ephemeral, and is uneasy with keeping house and abiding by the unspoken rules of the town of Fingerbone. She is also one of the great characters in American fiction. Slowly Ruth, the awkward sister, falls under Sylvie's spell, while Lucille rebels and tries to enter normality. This is a beautiful book, an unsung American classic, told in prose as limpid as meltwater. You will want to read it again and again, pulling it closer to your heart.