Literary caleb72 Vote • June 2015

[sun surfer]

Help choose the June 2015 selection to read for the MR Literary Club! The poll will be open for three days and a discussion thread will begin shortly after a winner is chosen.

The vote is multiple choice. You may vote for as many or as few as you like. If you vote for the winner it is hoped that you will read the selection with the club and/or join in the discussion.

The rotating nominator (this month - caleb72) may not vote in the poll. In the event of a tie, there will be a one-day non-multiple-choice run-off poll where the rotating nominator again may not vote. If the run-off also ends in a tie then the tie will be resolved by the rotating nominator.


Select from the following 20th century works:


1901-1910: The Getting of Wisdom - Henry Handel Richardson

Spoiler:

The subject of this book is a young woman: an awkward, insecure, restless and 'knowing' child who learns that self-realisation depends on rebellion and escape, but that the latter will first demand at least the semblance of conformity. In telling lies, Laura learns both the astonishing allure of fiction and the social costs of stepping beyond the bounds of propriety, gender, class, and family ties.
The novel is only in part a fictionalised account of Richardson's school years at the Presbyterian Ladies College, Melbourne, where (unlike her fictional counterpart) she was not only academically successful but also an outstanding student of music. Unusual for stories of school-life, The Getting of Wisdom was clearly aimed at a mature readership able to understand irony and a critique of the colonial educational provision of its day, including a determination to preserve sexual ignorance in young women.

1911-1920: Sons and Lovers - D H Lawrence

Spoiler:

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

1921-1930: The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

Spoiler:

The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

1931-1940: Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Spoiler:

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs, all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations, where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his
distress...

Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.

1941-1950: Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Spoiler:

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

1951-1960: Rabbit, Run - John Updike

Spoiler:

Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.

1961-1970: Justine (The Alexandria Quartet #1) - Lawrence Durrell

Spoiler:

The time is the eve of the World War II. The place is Alexandria, an Egyptian city that once housed the world's greatest library and whose inhabitants are dedicated to knowledge. But for the obsessed characters in this mesmerizing novel, their pursuits lead only to bedrooms in which each seeks to know—and possess—the other. Since its publication in 1957, Justine has inspired an almost religious devotion among readers and critics alike.

1971-1980: If On a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino

Spoiler:

Italo Calvino's masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book's central character.
Based on a witty analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino, of course, are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another - an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age.

1981-1990: The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Spoiler:

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.

Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of women of color in the southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence.

1991-2000: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ - José Saramago

Spoiler:

A brilliant skeptic, José Saramago envisions the life of Jesus Christ and the story of his Passion as things of this earth: A child crying, the caress of a woman half asleep, the bleat of a goat, a prayer uttered in the grayish morning light. His idea of the Holy Family reflects the real complexities of any family, and—as only Saramago can—he imagines them with tinges of vision, dream, and omen. The result is a deft psychological portrait that moves between poetry and irony, spirituality and irreverence of a savior who is at once the Son of God and a young man. In this provocative, tender novel, the subject of wide critical discussion and wonder, Saramago questions the meaning of God, the foundations of the Church, and human existence itself.

[HomeInMyShoes]

There are two that are leading the way in my brain right now, but I'll sleep on it and see what my brain says tomorrow.

[Bookpossum]

I took the plunge on three, two of which I read a very long time ago but would enjoy revisiting now I'm older (well, a lot older!), and one (the Calvino) which I don't know at all but which sounds fascinating.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I've read: If On a Winter's Night a Traveller; Rabbit, Run; Brave New World; and The Sound and the Fury. I wouldn't mind giving any of them another read, especially the first half of The Sound and the Fury.

But, my vote is going to two haven't read.

[sun surfer]

I've read two and would like to read all the other eight. I have one or two closer to the top but am having a hard time deciding whether to vote for one or two or half or eight.

[caleb72]

I'd be very happy with any on the list.

I've already read a number of these. I've really been meaning to read Updike so that got my vote.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

I've already read a number of these. I've really been meaning to read Updike so that got my vote.

Ditto, so I voted for it too.

[HomeInMyShoes]

^It's about time you got around to reading that anyway.

I'd probably re-read that one. It was a good read.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

^It's about time you got around to reading that anyway.

I'd probably re-read that one. It was a good read.

You remembered my previous challenge... Quite right it's about time .

[HomeInMyShoes]

^I'm pretty sure there was something you had told me I should read, but hadn't yet. I've somehow conveniently forgotten that.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Only 22 hours to vote everyone!

[Bookworm_Girl]

Great list, Caleb. Thank you for volunteering!

[sun surfer]

It's a tie! I'll have the run-off poll up a little later.


ETA - The one-day run-off is up!