As promised in Part I, here's a list of a few books every man should read at some point in his life. But bonus points go on your eternal scorecard if you read all 12 of these within the next year, one a month:
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, Ernest Hemingway – To start off, most Hemingway would do. Maybe not TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT and a few of the early short stories leave a little to be desired but for the most part a man should be well-read in Hemingway. If you don’t know why then perhaps you should question your masculinity. This is about a grand romance blossoming in the woods of the Spanish Civil War, interspersed with rebel fighting and death. Of course, if you want something a bit shorter and tropical, the old standard is THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. Just remember what Hem said “The sea’s the sea, the fish is a fish, the man’s a man.” Don’t try and assign value that’s not there. Just see the truth.
RABBIT RUN, JohnUpdike – This book is about an average man who peaked as a high school basketball star and is now dealing with the soul-crushing defeat that is dropping your independence and free life to be a 9-to-5 schlub in a small town with a needy wife and a crying baby. This is the first in a 4 book series following Rabbit’s growth into becoming a rich and prosperous grandfather and every book gives you deeper insight to our roles as sons, lovers, husbands, fathers, philanderers, executives, and grandfathers. Updike won the Pulitzer for each of the last 2 in this series, RABBIT ISRICH and RABBIT AT REST the only time two books in a series have ever won individual Pulitzers.
TROPIC OF CANCER, Henry Miller – This is a man who wanted to be a writer all his life but found himself romping across New York, working shitty jobs for the paycheck while dealing with women who started out so sweet and then withered up with age and childbearing. At 40 he left it all, became a vagrant in Paris and wrote this book about love, regret, sex, and the struggle. This book is considered one of the great American classics even though it was banned for almost 30 years. It inspired Kerouac to write ON THE ROAD. It inspired countless postmodern writers.
FATHERS AND SONS,Ivan Turgenev – I have a thing for the 19th century Russians. The noble history of that proud, powerful nation all culminated in one century of class and political upheaval, starting with the war of 1812, coinciding with the liberation of the serfs, and ending with the Bolshevik revolution. For that reason are all the greatest Russians, from Pushkin to Gogol to Tolstoi and Dostoevskyfrom that brief window. There are a few others not as well-known but as good or better. One is Ivan Turgenev and in this brilliant novel we’re met by a strange situation. It’s the 60’s. A wealthy father, proud of the job he did defending his country in war, is shocked when his son comes home from college with a free-thinking anarchist claiming to be nihilists. They insult the man for being rich and materialistic while his brother claims the children frivolous and ingrates. Sound familiar? Thing is, this was during the 1860’s, in provincial Russia, instead of the 1960’s in suburban America. When it came out, the youth of Russia said it painted an unfair portrait of them and the grown-ups said the same about the portrait it painted of the fathers. Which is a guarantee that this is more realistic than either of them would’ve liked.
BLOOD MERIDIAN, Cormac McCarthy – Everybody knows him for NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THEROAD and a lot of kids read ALL THE PRETTY HORSES in high school but McCarthy’s best, most powerful, and most violent book is this grisly masterpiece. Cowboys are hired to scalp Mexican Indians and paid per scalp by the Mexican government. With a diabolic darkness and authoritative scenes ripped from the bible itself, there’s no wonder this is considered by most to be McCarthy’s masterpiece. It’s the closest thing you can come to Faulkner, another one of the greatest American writers, if you don’t have the endurance to slug through A LIGHT IN AUGUST (the reading of which is best likened to eating a 68-pound top-grade New York strip).
THE PEARL, John Steinbeck – Steinbeck is better-known for GRAPES OF WRATH and OF MICE AND MEN and EAST OF EDEN but THE PEARL, about the corruption that comes with a sudden windfall of wealth, from individual greed to the proliferation of weasels who come out of the woodwork to try and get their hands on it, this brilliant novel came out a long time before Biggie said “Mo money, mo problems.”
A TALE OF TWO CITIES,Charles Dickens – Ok, this one is pretty cliché but the sacrifice made at the end, as well as the lesson of what happens when people use good intentions to support hideous actions – which often makes a man into what he originally hated. Yeah, this is a classic, if you didn’t read this in school, read it now.
LESS THAN ZERO, BretEaston Ellis – Easton Ellis’ brilliant debut novel about the moral bankruptcy of the wealthy children of L.A. in the 80’s is a twisted, dark, frustrating and depraved plunge into high society. But this peek behind the gold curtain is far better than any reality show you could possibly watch. For the New York version, check out his novel AMERICAN PSYCHO, based on the idea which popped into Ellis’ mind one night at dinner with a Wall Street banker that this successful, well-dressed, plastic man was, in fact, a twisted serial killer. Much deeper and more graphic than the movie.
TALES OF THE SOUTHPACIFIC, James Michener – His shortest and probably best, Michener’s novel about the ins and outs of life in the Pacific theater of WWII not only spawned the career of one of America’s foremost geographical novelists, it also spawned a beloved Rogers and Hammerstein musical. It’s comic at times but unlike most war novels, doesn’t only focus on the war but on the life on the island, from forbidden love with native girls to the cons the local hucksters try to unload on these hungry soldiers.
HEART OF DARKNESS, Joseph Conrad – It was reborn by Coppola in Vietnam as the classic APOCALYPSE NOW and presents the offensive idea that inside all of us lives a blood-hungry savage no different from the jungle-loving animals the more sophisticated among us pretend to be superior to. A bit dense, a bit apocryphal, it points to today’s issues with imperialism and an African continent still in the thralls of savage warlords and violent rebellion (see Kony, Egypt, Libya…)
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’SNEST, Ken Kesey – It’s all about control in this novel, which Kesey researched by dropping acid while he worked in a crazy house. As we find ourselves increasingly hemmed in by harmless-seeming officials who claim they’re looking for order when really they’re clamoring for control (people constantly fighting to hold down our civil liberties by banning everything from middle fingers to gay marriage to public smoking to being able to walk through a neighborhood eating Skittles without being murdered), it’s important to know what the face of the devil looks like – Nurse Ratchet is alive and well and looking to take over your neighborhood.
LONESOME DOVE, LarryMcMurtry – This book started as a movie, was rejected and so came around as a book, won a Pulitzer, re-established the Western in America and ended up inspiring a sequel, a prequel, a miniseries starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee jones, a young vixenish Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Chris Cooper, even Steve Buscemi and the list goes on . . . And it even inspired a TV sequel separate from the book sequels. A better book about the end of the tough man as the bankers moved into the settled western territories doesn’t exist. A better story about true friendship, camaraderie, and brotherhood, as well as what it means to be a real man, is hard to find. As Wallace Stegner said, “The vein of melancholy in the North American mind may be owing to many causes but it is surely not weakened by the perception that the fulfillment of the American Dream means inevitably the death of the noble savagery and freedom of the wild.” Yup.
And of course, to round this list out, buy and read Steven John’s THREE A.M. Not only because it’s a good book and the man’s a good writer. But also because he’s one of the last of the real men, who brews his own beer, lays in his own sprinkler systems, climbs mountains, and occasionally goes gold prospecting.
I guarantee in reading these masterworks of masculinity, some of which will certainly make your brain work a little more than you may be accustomed, you’ll come out the other end a better man.
- Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment