I'm looking for a book with the magical, melancholic aesthetics of Days of Heaven or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford although more on the comfortable side so no Blood Meridian please.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Stoner by John Williams is exactly what you're looking for. I'd also recommend Faulkner, particularly his short stories. Get the collected version and you can just thumb through and you'll find what you're seeking.
"My Antonia", Willa Cather - especially when Jim and Antonia watch the thunderstorm:
" All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. The harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in the house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heat lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gaunt frame of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was a beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cut grain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and when the dishes were washed, Antonia and I climbed up on the slanting roof of the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud and metallic, like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke in great zigzags across the heavens, making everything stand out and come close to us for a moment. Half the sky was chequered with black thunderheads, but all the west was luminous and clear: in the lightning flashes it looked like deep blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on it; and the mottled part of the sky was like marble pavement, like the quay of some splendid seacoast city, doomed to destruction. Great warm splashes of rain fell on our upturned faces. One black cloud, no bigger than a little boat, drifted out into the clear space unattended, and kept moving westward. All about us we could hear the felty beat of the raindrops on the soft dust of the farmyard. Grandmother came to the door and said it was late, and we would get wet out there."
>>8185508
Train Dreams was great. D Johnson is hit or miss for me. Tree of Smoke rambled on too long with little insight or catharsis. i read Jesus Son once every other year or so. Angels was great, too. couldn't finish Nobody Move as i thought it was just bad. haven't read his latest, The Laughing Monsters yet, but the reviews weren't kind.
>>8185508
Thisss OP. Reading it gave me a very Malicky, metaphysical impression
Thanks, guys. Always a pleasure receiving so many recommendations.
East of Eden maybe?
Parts of it have that quasi biblical/agricultural/Ecclesiastes/Eden/mythic thing that Days of Heaven at least seemed to be tapping into
