<p>FS, What was difficult to me about 100 years Solitude was simply keeping the geneology straight! (Menendez, Montez, Melendez, Mendez, c’mon!!!) The writing is accessible and inviting, agreed.</p>
<p>A John Barth warm up: Lost in the Funhouse</p>
<p>spoonyj: </p>
<p>You and my husband should do a book club. He loves all of those writers. I have never been able to crack Cormac McCarthy myself. Rounding out my husband’s list would be Ellmore Leonard (for fun) and Colleeen McCullough (Rome series).</p>
<p>Walt Whitman’s Leaves Of Grass is a dense and rewarding work that would be a little challenging for the poetry averse but is quite accessible for poetry lovers. </p>
<p>I experienced a sustained feeling of elation as I read it… an hours-long emotional orgasm.</p>
<p>Borges’ short stories were much harder to navigate than “100 Years of Solitude” , but Marquez’s book is such a delicious juicy read. I guess I thought about “meaningful” more than “difficult” . That said, Hesse was hard and Joyce is STILL hard. :-)</p>
<p>Spoonyj, thanks for moving “Blood Meridian” to the top of my “to read” list with that description! Sounds like my kind of book. And I’d almost forgotten “The Sportswriter” was on that same list until you mentioned it. So agree with you on “Moby Dick”; I had left it off my first post in the interest of brevity. One of the things I love about it is the humor which I think most readers find surprising. My nominee for The Great American Novel.</p>
<p>Dmd77, when I lived in Denver years ago, there was a group that performed an annual “Ulysses” marathon read-aloud that was very popular. </p>
<p>SBmom, I also love “Leaves of Grass.” A personal favorite: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, for just the sort of feeling you described so well.</p>
<p>Mudder, if you love Melville, you’ll love Blood Meridian! People often compare McCarthy to Faulkner because he’s from the South and his sentences can grow long a la Absalom Absalom. But in terms of temperament and vision, McCarthy seems more Melville’s heir than Faulkner’s, and, in fact, McCarthy is a huge admirer of Moby Dick. One other cool literary connection: The other main character in Blood Meridian is “the kid,” a 14-year-old whose journey into the wilds of the Southwest begins in the 1840s around the vicinity, I think, of Nacgodoches, Louisiana (sp?). This is roughly the time and the latitude (or meridian!) where Huck’s journey ends, and this has led some readers to see the novel as a kind of sequel to Huck Finn, with the kid’s adventures a version of what might have happened to Huck after he lit out for the territories. The kid’s personality doesn’t resemble Huck’s, but given the brutality and violence of Twain’s social vision, the connection to Blood Meridian is an interesting one to think about. But I’m getting a little excited here (and a little professorial, too). Sorry. Enjoy.</p>
<p>Well, since Walden has already been mentioned, I’ll enthusiastically add Emerson’s Nature. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. :)</p>
<p>Anything by Woolf is good, but I am particularly fond of A Room of One’s Own.</p>
<p>If you like Plato, I recommend *Gorgias<a href=“what%20is%20the%20nature%20of%20rhetoric?”>/i</a>, *Protagoras<a href=“can%20virtue%20be%20taught?”>/i</a>, *Euthyphro<a href=“what%20is%20piety?”>/i</a>, *Phaedrus<a href=“what%20is%20the%20nature%20of%20love?”>/i</a>, and The Republic. Herodotus is good for amusement- read his Histories.</p>
<p>Finally, anything by Foucault is good, but he can be headache-inducing. I was particularly interested in his idea of technologies of the self.</p>
<p>We need a book club. I only know one other person who has read “Witness.” Professor Jeffery Hart, who I admire above all other literary geniuses, has a very high opinion of Chambers magnum opus.</p>
<p>I love that part, as well as The Body Electric. I marvel at the sensibility of this man who is so incredibly modern and so expansive and ahead of his time.</p>
<p>Do you like Wallace Stevens?</p>
<p>BTW Pynchon is the original David Foster Wallace…</p>
<p>Funny you should ask about Stevens! We chose a reading of “The Snow Man” for the memorial service of a close relative, a nonpracticing Jew but a Jew nonetheless. I believe she, as a poetry lover, would have been pleased.</p>
<p>Spoonyj, I’m hooked. Yeah, I’m a closet Twain/Huck enthusiast too. Aside: I don’t know about Louisiana, but I’ve been to a Nacogdoches in east Texas–(probably not coincidentally) a town steeped in Indian legend, Texas republican history, and home today to Stephen F. Austin (“The Father of Texas”) State University. Oh… and I think CC is (thankfully) one place you don’t have to worry about sounding too “professorial.” :)</p>
<p>
That surprises me, FountainSiren. Those of a Boomer persuasion (myself included) with even only a passing acquaintance with the old Firing Line learned of at least three things from Buckley: 1) The Brandenburg Concertos; 2) Malcolm Muggeridge and the ongoing Christian debate about grace v. acts on the path to salvation; and 3) HissChambers. I would think, out of curiosity if nothing else, many read “Witness.”</p>
<p>Warblersrule86, I hope, thanks to you and others on this thread, that perhaps some young readers will be inspired to sample the transcendentalists if they haven’t already. Emerson in particular can be (should be?) ingested in small doses. Circles…</p>
<p>I agree, as a testament to the terrible time this book is in the class of it’s own. But i dont consider it great LITERATURE. In my opinion his crowning achievements were “In First Circle” and( personal favorite) " The Cancer Ward" .</p>
<p>“Firing Line,” is, alas, a generation passed. I don’t know of a single student who has read Chamber’s great book. Have you read it yourself? If so, what was your opinion of the writing? I found its style and content sophisticated and elegant and, given that, vulnerable and human in unexpected and enigmatic ways.</p>
<p>Very moving, very dark & deep and somehow, inexplicably, so full of transcendent hope and wisdom.</p>
I guess I thought about “meaningful” more than “difficult” . That said, Hesse was hard and Joyce is STILL hard. :-)</p>