A book that deserves to be rediscovered?

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

My nominee is The Magnificent Ambersons by Boothe Tarkinton. (A thread in the Lounge just asked what was the best Orson Welles movie and some of this is a repost of my answer there)

I recently read this book when my book club decided to do all Pulitzer prize winners and someone chose this. The issues raised in this book are:

The move from town center to suburbs
Real estate values
New technologies replacing old ones
Entrenched wealth vs new wealth
Stock hyperbole and lost fortunes from speculation
Safety in the workplace (Young Amberson blows up in the end in a mine explosion)

I was just amazed how relevant this book is to issues of our time.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. It's a brilliant book,

and the sad story about that movie is that it was taken out of Welles' hands when he was taking too long with the editing process - and, no doubt, being the royal pain in the ass that he always was, bless his soul - and was cut into something that broke his heart. No copy of the version Welles had in mind exists, according to movie lore.

I'd give anything - well, a large amount of cash, and maybe some quarts of frozen spaghetti sauce - to see Welles' version.

[islandmkl]

2. read Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" (1935)...

it is dated, of course, but seems to have picked the scenario for the past 8 years...

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

3. I've read Babbit and Main Street but missed this one.

So I will take your advice. 1935 was probably a very similar time in history to where we are right this second.

[Jane Austin]

8. I love the reach on that dog!

Also the ears and goofy expression. :)

[murielm99]

9. That's what I would have posted. You beat me.

I own that book, and I reread it a couple of years ago. The parallels to the * era are interesting.

[devilgrrl]

14. Dated? I had to keep reminding myself that it was written in 1935!

It was frighteningly familiar to the last 8 years :scared:

[JitterbugPerfume]

30. That is a wonderrful and scary as hell book

I also liked Kingsblood Royal . It was a real eye opener to the teen age me, and saved me from racial prejudice from that day onward.

[frazzled]

4. I actually reread it a few years ago ...

and I agree with your assessment of its interest with respect to technologies and urban and sociological change. I grew up in Indianapolis, where the novel is set, so it has always held an interest for me. The movie is one of my favorites.

I'll nominate another I recently read for only the first time: Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser. Fascinating portraits of Chicago and New York at the end of the 19th/beginning of 20th centuries, and interesting sociological perspectives. The movie (with Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones) kind of sucks, even though it's by William Wyler.

There are hundreds of novels deserving of rediscovery, or at least rediscovery by me! There are so many I've missed, and suddenly so little time to rediscover them.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

26. I read Sister Carrie when I was in high school.

And thought it was forgotten and that it should be read.

Dreiser was a pretty good writer. Sister Carrie was very realistic and Dreiser argued with his publishers.

Tonight on Turner Classic Movies they ran "A Place in the Sun" which was based on "An American Tragedy" by Dreiser, which was in turn based on the real-life murder of a factory girl (Grace Brown) by the owner's nephew, Chester Gillette, (she was pregnant) on Big Moose Lake in upstate New York about 1908.

Sister Carrie is definitely worth reading.

[villager]

5. Time to see the (alas, bowdlerized) Welles' film again. As for my titles of rediscovery:

California Bloodstock by Terry McDonnell

A criminally underrated magical realist look at the dark crazy truth of California's beginnings:

http://www.amazon.com/CALIFORNIA-BLOODSTOCK-Terry-Mcdonell/dp/0679721681





Fup, by Jim Dodge:

http://www.amazon.com/Fup-Jim-Dodge/dp/0933944047

[drmeow]

6. Also Grapes of Wrath, of course. n/t

[JitterbugPerfume]

31. Grapes of Wrath

is a life changing book, and the movie is a classic.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

7. Age of the Moguls

by Stewart Holbrook, published in the 40s. An examination of the evolution of the power player in American Capitalism, and the tremendous influence of the steel, railroad and lumber barons who made decisions before morning coffee that crashed markets that afternoon. Incorrigible bastards all, but Holbrook is careful to pay attention to their legacy, which we still enjoy today with our magnificent continent-spanning (albeit crumbling) infrastructure.

For a book from the 1940s chronicling events beginning in the 1800s, it is alarming how similar our current market woes appear to the sociopathic, solipsistic actions of a few bitter, determined old men.

[Lex]

10. "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" or "O Pioneers!"

Read them if you've missed them up to now.

[Rowdyboy]

11. John Kennedy Toole's brilliant piece "Confederacy of Dunces" is required reading....

for anyone interested in one of the funniest novels of the 20th century. The authors life story is a tragedy and he died unknown but his mother "believed" and the rest is history.

[JitterbugPerfume]

32. that book is hilarious

It is so sad that John Kennedy Toole didn't live to write more because he was brilliant.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. For children: The Princess and the Goblin

I loved it as a nine-year-old. I think it would appeal to the same audience as Harry Potter.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

13. Wow! That book was buried deep in my subconscious and you unearthed it.

I haven't thought of that book in years, but as a child I found it almost disturbing. It's not your run of the mill fairy tale type story - princess held captive by underground goblin miners. It was written in 1872 by George MacDonald and supposedly influenced Tolkien. I might have to do a reread. Thanks for bringing this one up.

[qwertyMike]

15. The Fan Man

by Kotzwinkle

or was it ever really lost?

[Sequoia]

16. "All The King's Men", by Robert Penn Warren

One of the best fiction I've read. Just happened to watch the movie my husband got from the library with Brodrek Crawford (Highway Patrol). I'd never seen the movie before and was impressed with how good it was.

[yellowdogintexas]

25. I love that book. The Broderick Crawford movie was outstanding, wasn't it?

I think he got an Oscar for that.

Penn Warren was born about 8 miles from my home. Alas I never got to meet him but I did know one of his nieces.

[japple]

17. David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident. It was published

in 1981 and I don't know many people who read it until I pestered them to death. It's one of my favorite books.

From amazon.com:

The legends say something happened in Chaneysville. The Chaneysville Incident is the powerful story of one man's obsession with discovering what that something was--a quest that takes the brilliant and bitter young black historian John Washington back through the secrets and buried evil of his heritage. Returning home to care for and then bury his father's closest friend and his own guardian, Old Jack Crawley, he comes upon the scant records of his family's proud and tragic history, which he drives himself to reconstruct and accept. This is the story of John's relationship with his family, the town, and the woman he loves; and also between the past and the present, between oppression and guilt, hate and violence, love and acceptance.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

18. Journal of the Plague Year by Dafoe

Mesmerizing. Just thought of it due to a post elsewhere. Now I'm looking though the bookshelves and can't find it. Damn!

[LWolf]

19. Good question.

I don't actually have a good suggestion. My brain went in two different directions, and neither were looking for titles of particular books.

I'd like our culture to "rediscover" intellect, love of literature, art, thinking, and reading. There are thousands upon thousands of great books just waiting for the individual or the whole culture that does so.

And a genre: poetry. The love of language, the discipline involved in crafting it, poetry as art, poetry as analysis and interpretation of the human condition. We need more poetry in our lives, and poetry from earlier times, to help connect us to those who have gone before.

I was browsing through my battered old paperback of Keats' collection yesterday, thinking that it's disintegrating, and I should get a new copy. Who has the patience to read, to feel, to hear, and to think about Keats in the modern world, other than I?

[Rob Gregory Browne]

20. Anything by the late, great Eugene Izzi. nt

[Fire Walk With Me]

21. "The Demolished Man" by Alfred Bester.

"Stand on Zanzibar" by John Brunner.

[saltpoint]

22. Reynolds Price's THE TONGUES OF ANGELS.

And Larry McMurtry's IN A NARROW GRAVE.

And Joan Didion's BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.

[superconnected]

23. Good choice on Magnificent Ambersons - I loved that book!

Turmoil - the second in the growth series was great too. Midlander - the third wasn't a masterpiece like the other two but was still good.

[japple]

24. Just thought of another one: Anne Tyler's SEARCHING FOR CALEB.

N/T

[raccoon]

27. Spoonhandle, by Ruth Moore. First published in 1946. It takes place in 1935

and deals with a small Maine coastal community being invaded by summer people.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

28. That sounds interesting. I have never heard of it.

Probably interesting to me as I have spent a fair amount of my life in New England coastal communities that have summer invasions of tourists. I'll have to try to find this book.

[JitterbugPerfume]

29. A Canticle for Liebowitz

by Walter Miller published in 1660

Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy first published 1891