Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

First posted 6/16/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton

First Publication: 1920 Category: novel Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: “The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s twelfth novel, initially serialized in four parts in the Pictorial Review magazine in 1920, and later released by D. Appleton and Company as a book in New York and in London. It…[was] the first novel written by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.” AZ “The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s.” AZ It is a “masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.” BN “This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life – or mercilessly destroy it.” BN Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon BN Barnes & Noble

James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man published 100 years ago

First posted 7/4/2020; last updated 7/5/2020.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce

First Publication: December 29, 1916 Category: semi-autobiographical modernist novel Sales: ?

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: “Widely regarded as the greatest stylist of twentieth-century English literature, James Joyce deserves the term ‘revolutionary.’ His literary experiments in form and structure, language and content, signaled the modernist movement and continue to influence writers today.” BN “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the semi-autobiographical portrayal of James Joyce’s early upbringing as an Irish Catholic in late 19th century and early 20th century Dublin.” AZ “The novel was originally planned as a 63-chapter autobiographical novel in a realistic style entitled ‘Stephen Hero’ however Joyce reworked the novel into five condensed chapters, dispensing with the strict realism which he originally planned in favor of the use of free indirect speech, a narrative style which allows the reader to peer into the developing mind of the protagonist.” AZ “Young Stephen Dedalus yearns to be an artist, but first must struggle against the forces of church, school, and society, which fetter his imagination and stifle his soul.” BN His life “is depicted from its various stages starting in childhood and moving through early adulthood. The language of the novel changes throughout the book to correspond with the artistic development of Stephen Dedalus as he ages and matures.” AZ “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a masterful depiction of the process of self-discovery and rebellion against authority that is indicative of youth, one which would establish Joyce as a central figure of the modernist literary movement.” AZ Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon BN Barnes & Noble

Jack Kerouac's On the Road published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/11/2020; updated 7/5/2020.

On the Road Jack Kerouac

First Publication: September 5, 1957 Category: Beat Generation semi-autobiographical novel Sales: 3 million

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: This is “the defining novel” LC “of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use.” WK It features “many key figures in the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.” WK “On the Road has achieved a mythic status in part because it portrays the restless energy and desire for freedom that makes people take off to see the world.” LCThis “is a semiautobiographical tale of a bohemian cross-country adventure” LC between two friends on “a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naiveté and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz, On the Road is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.” AZ It “has influenced artists such as Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, and Hunter S. Thompson and films such as Easy Rider.” LC “The idea for On the Road…was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951.” WK “When the book was originally released, The New York Times hailed it as ‘the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as ‘beat,’ and whose principal avatar he is.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon LC Library of Congress (2012). “Books That Shaped America” WK Wikipedia

In July 2018, I became the organizer of the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the Book Club tab here or Meetup for more information. This is our April 2020 book.

William Golding's Lord of the Flies published 50 years ago today

First posted 6/15/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

Lord of the Flies William Golding

First Publication: September 17, 1954 Category: young adult fiction/allegory Sales: ?

Accolades:

About the Book: “Before The Hunger Games there was Lord of the Flies,” BN “one of the greatest books ever written for young adults and an unforgettable classic for readers of any age.” AZ “Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse,” BN this “novel by Nobel Prize–winning British author William Golding” WK “has established itself as a true classic” BN which ”remains as provocative today as when it was first published.” BN “Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature.” BN “At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far removed from reality as the hope of being rescued.” AZ The book then becomes a “startling, brutal portrait of human nature” AZ as it focuses in on the boys’ “disastrous attempt to govern themselves.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon BN Barnes & Noble WK Wikipedia

James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain published 50 years ago today

First posted 1/4/2021.

Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin

First Publication: May 18, 1953 Category: semi-autobiographical novel Sales: ?

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book: “In one of the greatest American classics,” AZ James Baldwin unfurls a story “with lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate.” AZ James “Baldwin said of his first novel, ‘Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else.’” AZ The semi-autobiographical story focuses on teenager John Grimes in Harlem in the 1930s and the “discovery of the terms of his identity. Baldwin’s rendering of his protagonist’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.” AZ The novel reveals back stories of John’s parents, including his “violent, religious fanatic stepfather” WK and the “role of the Pentecostal Church in the lives of African-Americans as a negative source of repression and moral hypocrisy and also as a positive source of inspiration and community.” WK “The rhythm and language of the story draw heavily on the language of the Bible…Many of the passages use the patterns of repetition identified by scholars such as Robert Alter and others as being characteristic of Biblical poetry.” WK Resources and Related Links: AZ Amazon WK Wikipedia

In July 2018, I became the organizer of the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the Book Club tab here or Meetup for more information. This is our February 2021 book.