Early Moderns
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises: The story of several expatriots, British and American, who meet in Paris after the disillusioning horror of the Great War (now known as World War I). Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley have had a romance which now seems impossible - perhaps due to her waywardness or his war injury. All the characters are "walking wounded" in the psychological sense. Written in Hemingways tightest journalistic style. What you see is what you get; but think about it. Fairly short.
William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury. The saga of the Compson family which is in the process of disintegrating as the after effects of being among the Southern aristocracy. The family composes - or decomposes - the remnants of a once "noble" plantation family whose nobility in the more modern South shows its true tattered fabric. The real strength of the family are the black members - formerly slaves and now "servents" - who had always lived in the real world knowing how to love and to perservere. I have 40 copies for load. Faulkner's complex style and the experimentation with multiple, serial points of view present the reader with a rich, varried look at the same family from four different corners of the house of Compson. Set as most of Faulkner's books in Oxford, Mississippi.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby. The American Dream here is defined - sex, love, riches, fame, danger - and chased by most of the characters but in particular by Jay Gatsby. The story takes place in upper crust Long Island and New York City during prohibition. The book contains, in my view, many of the best described incidents of modern American literature and at least the best ending of any book I have read. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is a mid-western, middle class observer who faithfully serves and describes the doings of Gatsby and his ultimate undoing as well. Of special interest are Fitzgerald's letters and comments to his editor during the writing/publishing process. The book was originally written as third person and later converted to a first person narrative.
