Since I'm a literary type guy, people often ask me what my favorite books are. Here's a list I recently produced for a class I'm taking. Enjoy; they are all gems.
A Sense of Place--
Travel Writing, Storytelling and the Journey: An Annotated Bibliography
Franzen, Jonathan. How to Be Alone: Essays. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Print.
Franzen’s
essay collection gives his distinctive voice a platform through which to launch his characteristic vitriol
regarding subjects ranging from
the state of the publishing industry, the fate of fiction, and the increasingly pervasive voice of technology,
to more personal subjects like Alzheimer’s
disease, aging and the role of fiction in coping with personal history.
The first essay in the collection, “My Father’s Brain” provides interesting background on his novel The Corrections, and is a truly great example of personal narrative. The essay is interlaced with factual research based information, but also
includes a lot of personal recounting of events
in the author’s life. The combination serves to create a piece that
is both informative and laden
with pathos.
Franzen has
been accused at various times of being an elitist because his work is sometimes seen as less than
“accessible.” Franzen’s high-minded approach has influenced my own style and given
me confidence in my conviction
that good fiction should always be experimental in some ways. In my
own writing, I am always trying to experiment with style and form. I firmly
believe that any writing that attempts something fresh and new is inherently successful, regardless of
whether it ends up being a critical success
or appealing to large audiences.
Pamuk, Orhan, and Maureen Freely. The Museum of
Innocence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2009. Print.
The
celebrated Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk undertakes a project of a qualitatively different order with this
ambitious novel. Set in the Istanbul of 1970 and spanning to the present, it
is the tale of Kemal and his young lover Fusun. The plotline is not remarkable among Turkish
dramas, and many critics
have remarked that Pamuk is engaging in parody in the collective clichés of a culture. However, the story of Kemal’s obsession is
told in such a fashion—through
the objects that Fusun touched—that the novel becomes a very unique thought experiment quite unlike anything else
in fiction. In addition, Pamuk has taken a bold new step and created a
physical museum in Istanbul where
visitors can see the scenes and objects from his novel displayed in picture boxes, blurring the line between
fiction and reality.
The Museum of Innocence has affected my
outlook and my work in the sense that I
want readers to wonder whether the characters I have created were real people. I want to take actual scenes from the world
and from the places I choose for
my settings to come to life in such a vibrant fashion that the reader will believe that what I have
written is non-fiction. Really I am a travel writer, an essayist and an artist
of creative nonfiction. However, in certain cases, fiction is better suited than
non-fiction to tell a particular tale with
brighter colors and more believable actors.
These are the rare cases where
fiction is more “real” than non-fiction.
I also admire the way Pamuk chose
a concept and carried that concept throughout his entire work. The idea
of telling a story through objects is singularly fascinating and imaginative. Pamuk has achieved the goal of using objects
to create a narrative and has
proven his ability not only to relay the story of one couple, but to define the history of an entire group
of people within a nation.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
New York, NY: Meridian, 1956. Print.
Campbell’s
work on archetypes is monumental. Many
writers have incorporated the stages of
the “Hero’s Journey” into their work, and although James Joyce was probably the first writer to understand that
all great heroic stories stem
from the same “monomyth,” Campbell’s work is the definitive explanation of this archetype. Campbell identifies the stages of the journey
that the hero of a work must undergo and
gives examples from classic mythology. Campbell’s plot structure is greatly useful
when considering the story
arch of a heroic journey.
The
fictionalized memoir I have been working on for this class (MCW 630: Seminar in Fiction) will employ some of
Campbell’s storytelling patterns. Regardless of whether or not the
“hero” of my work will follow the basic stages
of Campbell’s heroic journey is irrelevant to the overall meaning of this work in my writing. The element of Campbell’s work that is most germane to my writing is the simple
conclusion that a “hero” does not need to
be “fresh” in every way. The classic
archetype of the hero’s journey will always
form an appealing story, regardless of how many times this tale has been told.
Troost, J. Maarten. The Sex Lives of Cannibals:
Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific. New York:
Broadway, 2004. Print.
Troost’s
narrative is part adventure story, part travelogue, part memoir, and part comedy. He combines these elements skillfully to tell
the tale of a few years living in
Kiribati, a small series of islands all part of the same atoll. Troost’s
story starts when his wife accepts a position as a volunteer on Kiribati and he accompanies her as an amateur
journalist. His reporting is accurate, but rings with a sarcastic and
humorous tone. The book does not qualify as purely a travelogue because
it contains conventions of memoir and is
suffused with Troost’s characteristic editorializing on the affairs of the Kiribati natives.
The book
has had a profound affect on my travel writing and on the fictionalized memoir I am currently working
on. I admire the way that Troost was able to represent the facts in a
compelling manner, but also shed light
on cultural differences without “othering” or demeaning the anthropological identity of
Kiribati. Readers of my work should
undergo a learning experience that is
based in truth, but I hope to increase the readability
of my travel writing through the use of humor and personal narrative.
Eggers, Dave. What Is the What: The Autobiography of
Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel. San
Francisco: McSweeney's, 2006. Print.
Eggers’
account of Valentino Deng’s exodus from Sudan as part of the infamous group of Sudanese “Lost
Boys” bends genre as a biography written in
first person. Deng is a real person who
underwent weeks of interviews in order
to create this book alongside master writing craftsman, Eggers. However,
despite the factual nature of the events described, Eggers’ suffuses the work with vibrant description
until a glowing work of fiction emerges.
I admire the way that Eggers took
on the socially conscious subject matter and addressed
current and pressing world problems.
Eggers has
long been a literary hero of mine. I
hope to someday emulate his work
and write stories that take place within a cultural context that will be “foreign” to most American
readers. I am inspired by his ability to
write well, in an engaging
style, about problems that may not come to light otherwise. Eggers
is a champion of genre, having written memoir, fiction, biography, nonfiction, essays, criticism and even
children’s stories. I hope to be as versatile.
Hessler, Peter. River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze.
New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Print.
Hessler is
unsurpassed as the preeminent expert on modern China from the foreign perspective. He worked as a correspondent in Beijing for
many years and produced many great
works, but River Town is singular
among his many books. Hessler discusses China with both candor and
the compassion of a genuine “Sinophile.” He is sympathetic, but by no means an
apologist. River Town is his
account of his two years in the Peace Corps in Fuling, a town along the Yangtze River, which was (at the
time of his writing) beginning to disappear
under the rising waters of the river.
The controversial “Three Gorges
Dam” was expected to displace millions of people and destroy centuries old villages. Hessler writes in an elegiac style about a
disappearing people, a
vanishing culture.
Hessler’s
work is admirable and speaks to many of the sensations I have personally felt while living abroad. As Hessler starts to learn Mandarin, he attains a Chinese identity when he
is given a Chinese name—“Ho-Wei.” The disparity he feels between his
Chinese self and his American self reads like a version of “Borges and I” with the dual identity theme of
“author-self” and “self” taking shape
for the visitor to a foreign land. Hessler’s personal descriptions of the alienation and fascination of living in
a foreign land ring true to the style I
would like to create in my travel writing. When I lived in Taiwan, the students laughed at my
Chinese name, "Yue Han" (约翰) which consists of two characters--the first means
"promise" and the second means "writing."
It is a good name for a writer. The idea
of a “foreign self” and a “local self”
is an idea that I take from Hessler and regularly use in travel narratives.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse
5. London: Panther, 1970. Print.
No
writer has influenced me more completely than Kurt Vonnegut. My current work
revolves around shift in time and place.
Slaughterhouse 5 used a shift
in narrative point of view from first
person to third person, and includes many temporal
space and time shifts as the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, becomes “unstuck” in time after being abducted
by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.
No one has told a truer story
of war through a science fiction platform.
Vonnegut was a visionary and he
was not afraid to experiment. To read
and re-read this book in
particular will cause us to admire a work of true brilliance.
Greene, Graham. The Quiet
American. New York: Viking, 1956. Print.
Greene
was a travel writer and a fiction writer, but he was arguably the best at combining the genres. He knew Vietnam so well that he was able to
concoct a believable novel that was so
filled with a sense of place so as to be cited as actual history in discussions of the Vietnam
War. Greene knew the politics of
Indochina so well in 1955 that
his work almost predicted the events that would unfold there over the next 18 years.
Greene’s
work has been influential for me in creating a sense of place and in creating characters. The protagonist of this novel is a journalist
whose main character motivation stems
from the journalist’s creed of the “fairness doctrine.” He
reports the facts as they happen and does not intervene. It is with shame that he interferes with a CIA plot in Vietnam. By the end his character changes and he learns that sometimes it’s necessary to “pick
a side.” This template for character change over the course of a story is as
relevant now as it was then.
Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. New York: Viking, 1999.
Print.
Disgrace is
the story of a South African Literature Professor who is ousted from his University employment because of an
affair with a student. When he moves in with his estranged daughter
he is the victim of a home intrusion and
racially motivated violence. Coetzee
brilliantly creates a character that is so
violently ensconced in his rationale for racial and gender superiority that he fails to see the changes
occurring in his world of post-Apartheid South
Africa. Coetzee
does remarkable work with a character and the novel is filled with a sense of place.
Coetzee’s
use of literary allusions is something I wish to emulate. A well-read and
literate person is a compelling narrator because they are skillfully able to use and explain allusions throughout a
story and lend metaphorical resonance to
the novel. I also admire Coetzee’s
ability to present the nuances of
a complicated situation with ambiguity.
He crafts his narrative and his character
in a way that makes the work as a whole thoroughly debatable, and the work becomes a reflection of the reader,
not the author.
Chatwin, Bruce. What Am I Doing Here. New York,
NY, U.S.A.: Viking, 1989. Print.
Bruce
Chatwin is an icon in travel literature.
His unpretentious and humble scribblings,
compiled in this anthology, stand in marked contrast to the writings of genre-defining travel
writers like Paul Thoreaux. Chatwin’s account of being imprisoned and
tortured in Africa is among the most chilling
pieces of travel narrative I have ever read.
Chatwin is another
author who bends the form of the narrative into seldom seen thought experiments.
Many of his musings seem tangential if the purpose of a travel narrative is to create a sense of
place. Chatwin is the travel writer who underscored most fully
the idea that the travel piece can also
be personal.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor,
1997. Print.
Again,
Krakauer is an author who integrates personal narrative into his nonfiction reporting. The story of Chris McCandless, a histrionic
20- something who disappears into the
Alaskan taiga wilderness to die in an abandoned
van, is described alongside parables from Krakauer’s own wide- ranging climbing and exploration
experience. Krakauer also uses the
novels that McCandless reads
as a way to investigate the nuances of his troubled soul, making the book remarkably literary. As a life-long
English teacher, I have always looked
for connections between what I am able to write and the things I have read. I
believe that good writing will be interlaced with allusions. Some of
the most compelling pieces of literature are those that continually reference other literature. The way Krakauer uses the transcendentalist writers to explain the
actions of the young McCandless is a truly
brilliant stylistic device which functions well within this nonfiction book which has attained the status of “modern
classic” in the last 15 years.
DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York, NY: Viking,
1985. Print.
Ever since
I read his comical postmodern description of the most photographed barn in the world, I have been interested in DeLillo’s
work. This one book did more to help me
define my sense of humor in writing than any
other piece of fiction. Postmodern irony
can be the most effective way to approach
the changing realities of our age. This
novel concerns a professor of “Hitler
Studies” who is often overtaken by his fear of death. The novel concerns
itself with the interplay between plotline and digression, which I find interesting. Most of the tale is told through vignettes
that are entirely tangential, but
which contribute to theme and character, if not plot. In my own
writing I want to get away from plot-driven narratives and move toward creating a snapshot of an era or a place.
