Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America

[BridgeTheGap]

Great changes: a reading list - review of:
Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini

If "every force evolves a form," as writer Guy Davenport once said, then the evolution of America not only is reflected in our great books. It might be that America has evolved from the very forces of those books — that certain ones, such as Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Jack Kerouac's On the Road, have both caught the spirit of the times and, either in their era or later, changed our course.

Such is Jay Parini's premise in Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America. At a time when change is writ large in the American political landscape and in the American psyche, Parini offers an engaging and refreshing look at some of the formative textual moments in our history.

Inspired by a lecture he once attended by a British journalist on Twelve Books That Changed the World, Parini, a longtime English professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, set out to list "works that helped to create the intellectual and emotional contours of this country." His list, he says, is not of the "greatest" in American literature, but ones that "shifted consciousness in some public fashion, however subtly, or opened fresh possibilities for the ways Americans lived their lives."

Parini is known for tackling big subjects. His credits include the novel The Last Station: Tolstoy's Final Year; literary biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost and William Faulkner; and most recently, The Art of Teaching and Why Poetry Matters.

http://www.kentucky.com/692/story/610644.html

[bunkerbuster1]

1. This Parini guy called into AAR's "Politically Direct" last night

to have a friendly word with Gore Vidal, who was David Bender's guest.

That's my way of K&R-ing. Don't know Parini's work but he sounds like he's on top of things.

[rucky]

2. Here's the list:

Of Plymouth Plantation

The Federalist Papers

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Walden

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Souls of Black Folk

The Promised Land

How to Win Friends and Influence People

The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care

On the Road

The Feminine Mystique

[WCGreen]

3. I read four....

[niccolos_smile]

4. Cool...

I've read or own most of these. Not sure I'll ever be picking up 'How to Win Friends,' 'The Common Sense Book,' or 'The Feminine Mystique' though.

[Onceuponalife]

5. What, no Catcher in the Rye?

One of my favorite books and even now I get a huge grin on my face just flipping through it.

Can't argue with On The Road, though....