Someone on the tinychat gave this to me. How well does this cover essential American literature? What's it missing?
this is really honestly emberassing, disregard it completely op, i really don't mean to troll
They did it as a joke, these are all meme authors (although some of them definitely are important in american literature).
Just look into famous or acclaimed or canonical american writers, find a book that interests you and read it - if you find it too difficult move onto something that is easier and then return the previous work later. You don't need all these flowcharts to tell you exactly what to read, just use them as a way to find similar works to the ones you enjoy.
Isn't Infinite Jest post-pomo ?
post-homo?
>>8061760
Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, James Brahs, Crane, Twain, Dickinson, Whitman, Cather, Dreiser, West, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, Hem, Faulkner, Frost, Eliot, Welty, Mccullers, Penn Warren, Morrison, Salinger, Robinson, McCarthy, Updike, Bellow, Delillo, Pinecone
Why is white noise even in there lol
>>8061760
Those are good books but categorized bizzarely.
>>8061760
haha
>>8062234
Whittier, Longfellow, Poe, Bierce, Pound, Williams, Stevens, Aiken, Stein, Miller, Crane, Moore, Toomer, Ransom, Cheever, Mailer, Ellison, Barth, Styron, Mailer, Lowell, Berryman, Bishop, Malamud, Dickey, Yates
>>8061760
this made me laugh out loud.
good bait 8/10
as if i needed more reason to avoid the tinychat
>american
>literature
>>8061760
>seven books
>tour of American literature
Is this a tour for illiterate ants?
Meme me once shame on you, meme me twice, won't get memed again.
>>8062243
That's exactly what my problem with it is, there is absolutely no logical "flow" from one of those books to the next
what's the tc?
>>8061760
Gassposter here. As much as I love that Gass is on here, it's missing the vast majority of great American writers, like Melville, Wolfe, Hawthorne, Twain, McElroy, Hawkes, Barth, Theroux, Coover
and, most importantly--really the only completely unforgivable absence--William Gaddis.
>>8067140
As much as I like those writers, I wouldn't say that McElroy, Hawkes, or Theroux are anywhere near important enough for a brief survey of American lit. They're of secondary importance to a small subset of American lit.
>>8065381
They are all good books that get spammed on /lit/. Kind of like how ITAOTS has achieved meme-status on /mu/ despite being a solid album. They're really good but calling them "the greatest" or presenting them as all you need to get a handle on modern american literature is the troll in the image. If you haven't read them yet, you should. Stoner is probably one of the best books of all time.
>>8067159
I can see why you say that about
Theroux (though I still emphasize his importance), and, to a far lesser extent, I can see why you would say that about McElroy, but Hawkes is, in every way that Gaddis is, a great American writer, and is deserving of the same amount of adoration Gaddis gets as well.
Is The Tunnel that good of a book? I've never looked closely at it but I thought it was famous for bring autistically detailed and stuff because it took many years to write. Lately I've been seeing it on charts.
Is it a hard read?
>>8061760
>white noise
No.
Sound and the fury is so so good
>>8068878
Yes, it is good--very good, in fact, if it's your kind of thing. Chances are, though, you won't like it, because, yes, it is hard, and yes, it is very detailed; so, despite how much I love it--and I love it quite a lot--I wouldn't really recommend it unless you enjoy long, delightfully written, unhinged, plotless, difficult, vulgar, highly experimental novels.
>>8065985
>Song of Solomon
pls no
>>8061760
Here you go OP
I'm not very familiar with 19th century American literature. For the 20th century, however, I think you have to include Hemingway, Faulkner, Henry James, Cather, Wharton, Steinbeck, Lewis, Sinclair, Bellow, Roth, Pynchon, Gaddis, Heller, and Gass (I'm not very familiar with the second half of the 20th century).
>>8061760
Good European lit
>>8062234
Who the fuck is James Brahs
>>8062234
Oh you mean William & Henry, nm
>>8067140
>Wolfe
Hope you mean Thomas Wolfe
White Noise should be somewhere much earlier, and in it's current place should be The Recognitions, considering how much Gaddis influenced Wallace and the like.
