Some Favorite Books
Novels
by Jane Austen
I reread this book last summer and found it more compelling than any spellbinder -- because Austen presents her characters with such scrupulous care, I felt as deeply invested in their futures as if they were my family and me.
by Emily Bronte
Besides creating a romance as poignant and tragic as Romeo and Juliet's, and setting and maintaining a mood so impressive it's been imitated ever since, Bronte gave life to a whole cast of characters as true to human nature and as sympathetic as any in literature.
Death
Comes for the Archbishop
by Willa Cather
A novel so authentic subtly dramatic, it reads like a masterpiece of non-fiction biography. A story of priests come from France to frontier New Mexico, anyone interested in the American west, native Americans, Christianity, goodness or courage, should read it twice.
The
Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoyevski
If a richer novel exists, I have yet to read it. In 19th century Russia, a family, four brothers and their father, feud over women and money. Between Ivan the skeptic, Alyosha the saint, Dmitri the passionate, Smerdyakov the conniving coward, and Fyodor the dissolute lecher, they reveal the complexity of human nature -- whoever reads closely will find him or herself in each of them. And as a bonus, Dostoyevski gives a trial scene that should make Grisham and Turow bleed with envy.
Crime
and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoyevski
During the 1900s, an idea became popular among artists and philosophers -- that some gifted people shouldn't be constrained by the morals and rules that necessarily keep lesser people in check. Nietsche glorified this idea with his Superman, and Hitler picked it up and ran with it. Dostoyevski's, in this inspired masterpiece of crime, suspense and redemption, puts the Superman to the test.
Our
Man in Havana
by Graham Greene
The novel from which John LeCarre snatched the plot for THE TAILOR OF PANAMA. British intelligence enlists a vacuum cleaner salesman to spy on his wealthy and connected customers. As he's paid according to what he produces, and he hopes to allow his daughter the life she desires, he gives them plenty, far too much.
The
Power and the Glory
by Graham Greene
In Southern Mexico during the later years of the revolution, a Catholic priest runs from the law which would give him the choice of renouncing his faith or execution. This man, called the Whiskey Priest, as he sometimes craves liquor, may be as honest a portrait of a courageous but flawed human as exists in literature.
The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene
Set in WWII London, this short but huge novel exposes the human heart with its sensual, emotional and spiritual longings. Far beyond what most Christian writers are willing to risk, Greene tells the hard truth of people approaching God and the mysteries of faith. Greene's Christianity isn't easy or clean, but it's honest.
No
Man is an Island
by Thomas Merton
My family was shattered, my kids 600 miles away. All I could write were deadly stories, and teaching was a mind-numbing chore. Then I picked up this book by a Trappist monk and began to understand and practice the healing art of solitude. It's a series of meditations, full of mystical wisdom and psychological truth.
The
Seven Story Mountain
by Thomas Merton
Merton's autobiography reveals a boy raised by bohemian agnostics who grows into a man of extreme faith, lured at first by the beauty of churches in France, then by his reaction to WWII, then by poetry and mystical literature. He studies, suffers, doubts, runs, collapses, and finally renounces everything that would cheapen his devotion to God. Besides, he's a fine poet, a superb writer.
Franny
and Zooey
by J.D. Salinger
Here Salinger pursues themes and questions he began chasing in CATCHER IN THE RYE and takes the pursuit to deeper levels when a college girl, youngest child of the brainy Glass family, drops out of college and attempts to give up on life and people. Before she can face the world, she needs to know who we are, who the phonies are, and who Christ is.
by B. Traven
If you haven’t seen the movie, with Bogart and Walter Houston, check it out, but don’t let it take the place of the book. In addition to the adventure of three ex-patriot vagabonds on a hunt for gold, Traven offers scenes, digressions and observations -- about the church, the government and the Mexican people -- a movie wouldn’t dare attempt.
The
Death Ship
by B. Traven
An American sailor loses his passport and finds himself without a country or an ally. The only ship that will take him on as a crew member is a freighter manned by criminals and the destitute, the expendable -- because the ship’s intended destination is the floor of the Atlantic.
Traven’s anarchist passions, his keen observations about national sovereignty and the travesty that borders make of our world, and his dark humor give substance to a chilling adventure story.
Government
by B. Traven
This one’s the first book of Traven’s jungle novels, which ought to be read by anybody interested in Chiapas, where the Zapatista rebellion is still happening. In Traven’s eras, the early 20th century, the state was a medieval place where coffee barons impressed the Maya into laboring on their fincas.
Traven exposes the exploitation of the Maya, thereby giving a background on which to view the current struggle.
The
Grifters
by Jim Thompson
Thompson's most famous novel, on account of the movie. It's a masterpiece of noir realism. The characters are both chilling and loveable, and the way he writes about con games makes you feel as if you're the victim of one.
The
Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
I guess this was the book that convinced some reviewers that Jim Thompson had to be a psychopath or he couldn't have written so credibly about one.
To correct that misconception -- on several occasions, I've spoken to Thompson's daughter about him, and heard that he was a sane and gentle man.
A Memoir, A Poem,
and A Collection of Stories
by J.D. Dolan
Southern Californians ought to promote J.D. Dolan's memoir "Phoenix." The settings expose the fallacies in myths of palm- shaded mansions, freeways and ticky tacky suburbs dominating our state's geography, and the characters depose images of ditzy surf bums, mall rats and movie stars.
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, J.D. Dolan idolized his much older brother John, who taught him to love fast cars and motorcycles. A true breed of Southern Californian, John's passion and vocation is motors. "He liked fast cars not just because they were fast but also because they were well made. He liked to make things right, to work with his hands until he'd made something perfect, for example, a perfectly tuned engine."
When John relocates to the desert, he works at Southern California Edison's Mohave Generating Station, and along the Colorado River, he takes his last rides, on a speeding jet ski. Fiction might kill him with a crash on the river, but the truth provided superior irony. It's the generating station that fails him--not any machine for which he is responsible, but one that runs, and ought to be maintained by, the city he left behind.
The kid brother is a different breed of Southern Californian. J.D. knows nothing about motors except how to use them. "I am a driver. I drive to relax, and to think, and to feel the pleasure of setting out on the road and living between two worlds: where I'm going and where I've been. Driving always renews my faith in destinations."
J.D.'s story contrasts with his brother's. While John attempts to plant roots, marries and opens a business rebuilding motors, the kid chases the high life in L.A. and on tour as a roadie for rock artists, and the rift between their ideals and generations severs their bond. Though the brothers are only a decade apart, they belong to different eras. James Dean might've played the big brother, Jim Morrison the kid. When J.D. escapes from the Hollywood scene, he puts a continent between himself and the family, performing a variation on the family's motif of punishing each other with silence.
The tragic flaw of the Dolan men is their readiness to use silence as a weapon. All through the years, the father attacks one or another of his children with silence. The brothers spend five years estranged, silent toward each other until the tragedy, which carries all the surviving Dolans into the heat the book's title implies.
"Phoenix," with its connotations of desert and fiery heat, becomes a metaphor that focuses and enlarges the story. Even before he moves to the desert, John is compelled to go there and drive, like surfers are drawn to the beach. And when heat, in the desert, finally kills him, it physically reunites the family. Heat is what inspires J.D. Dolan, a spare and straightforward writer, to turn profusely descriptive. "The parking lot of the Maricopa County Medical Center is all heat and light. The sunlight comes down on you like a great soft weight, comes reflecting at you sideways off every car, comes up at you from the gummy asphalt--you can feel its heat through the soles of your shoes--while everything in the distance is a shimmering liquid . . . ."
While John is dying, a reader may hope the family teamwork will refresh their bond. But it only illuminates their differences and proves the author's dedication to honesty--he clearly doesn't use the story to vindicate himself or to applaud his family. Rather, he bashes the two middle sisters for their silly optimism and himself for his selfish needs.
We Southern Californians may see ourselves in the brothers' devotion to machines, the escape from suburbs to the desert, the lure of Hollywood's music scenes, or the fractured families gone so many different ways in this place where we find so many different ways to go.
Let's recommend "Phoenix" to our detractors in San Francisco, Portland, New York and Wichita.
by Flannery O'Connor
If reading O'Connor's stories doesn't tweak your world view, I suspect you're beyond tweaking. Her characters are at once so weird and so true, she makes me think I must walk around in a haze that prevents me from seeing as sharply as she does.
Besides, she went to Iowa, like I did.
by Christina Rosetti
At the moment, (3:50 p.m. on the eighteenth of October 2000) this is tied with THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER as my favorite long poem. It make me cringe, drool, cheer, sigh and finally in relief. It turns me into a glutton for words.
On Writing and Other Vital Stuff
On
Writing Short Stories
Edited by Tom Bailey and
Francine Prose
A collection of stories and essays that introduces most of what a short story writer needs to know. Andre Dubus, Joyce Carol Oates, the editors and other insightful craftspeople give the knowledge that informs their work, along with stories so that readers are aware of from whom they are learning.
Feeling
Good
David D. Burns, MD
Here's a way people can lift themselves out of depression. It's a lay textbook on cognitive therapy, with effective exercises. Cognitive therapy maintains that our thoughts precede and cause our feelings. Consequently, to change our feelings, we simply need to locate the flaws in our thinking and teach ourselves to think differently. After recommending the book to at least a dozen people and hearing from all of them that they found valuable knowledge and life-skills, I'm sure that anybody who leans toward negativity ought to read it.
Writing
for Story
by Jon Franklin
I discovered this book while teaching a creative non-fiction class at the University of Arizona. John Anderson recommended it to me. Since then I've read it a half dozen times and used it in fiction classes. If studied and taken to heart, it's advice could turn a person's writing from a frustrating avocation into a prosperous career.
In
the Palm of Your Hand
by Steve Kowit
Steve is a great teacher, in person, and he has translated his enthusiasm for poetry onto the page. The book is a primer on contemporary poetry, clear and wise, that convinces its readers to write at least a few poems and in the process learn to apply the poet's arsenal of skills to whatever else they decide to write.
Mere
Christianity
by C.S. Lewis
Here's another potentially life-changing book. If you think Christianity is only for the stupid and/or superstitious, please read this one. Lewis was gifted with logical brilliance and imagination, a 20th century Leonardo.
The
Road Less Traveled
by M.Scott Peck
While suffering through a divorce, having dropped thirty pounds below my best weight and survived a couple months on about three hours daily sleep, I happened upon this book, which has since spared me a mountain of torment by disillusioning me of a lie I had used as a guiding principle. The lie, that reality could be altered by our perception, I had picked up during the '60. Peck convinced me that emotional and spiritual health requires a firm dedication to the truth, no matter how it burns.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert Pirsig
I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa when I first read this crazy book. Not only did it's story grip me, but it's thesis -- that the concept of quality is a reflection of a concrete reality, and that our lives can deepen and expand through the pursuit of quality -- changed my approach toward most everything, so that process became as rewarding as result.
Elements
of Style
by William Strunk, Jr. and
E.B. White
Worth reading again and again, both for its specific advice and the attitudes towards language it promotes.
On
Writing Well
by William Zinsser
About nine-tenths of what writers need to know about their craft they can find
in this one. The first part of the book is applicable to every kind of
prose, and the second part specifies the qualities of excellent non-fiction of
various types.