New subjects: suggestions

A note: This will imagine we stick with southern gothic writers. Does everyone want to do that?

Reading the same author over and over back to back can get boring, so I suggest what many of us have been suggesting before: Let's mix it up a bit. Maybe that will liven up the room? or maybe if my closer involvement like ENRIQUE has been suggesting so kindly (>:o) would have solved that.

Well, no soul took part in Soldiers' Pay (only really expected Martin, Mr. I-Wanna-Read-It-All!, to do that) or Flags in the Dust. Screw SP, let's just ignore that forever, but I guess we'll move Flags down(?). Maybe we should substitute every other novel with something fresh, non-Faulkner S.G. material, or just take breaks from reading when it appears no one is free to take part, swamped with other group reads.

So, any suggestions?

From my library, I got marked as strictly southern...

-Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road
-Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms & In Cold Blood
-Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel
-James Dickey's Deliverance
-Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
-Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, Child of God, Suttree, Blood Meridian, Border trilogy, No Country for Old Men and the Road*
-Carson McCuller's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories
-Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories and the Violent Bear it Away
-Walker Percy's the Moviegoer
-Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (hah!)
-John Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces
-Any Tennessee William play
-Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, the Web and the Rock, You Can't Go Home Again and the Hills Beyond

Just some ideas.

*I'm currently reading Blood Meridian, and that'd make a great read here at some point!

Crap, LT thinks I tried to add some HTML and cut this post way down in size. Give me time to edit it back up.

~~OK, fix'd.

I like this idea.

McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
James Agee's A Death in the Family, The Morning Watch
William Kennedy's Ironweed
Robert Penn Warren's All the Kings Men

ETA: Personally, I got really busy right after I finished As I Lay Dying and sort of fell off when the discussions popped up. I will be reading The Sound and the Fury though.

Might we slip something by Eudora Welty in somewhere/sometime?

I'm planning to read the Library of America editions of McCullers' Complete Novels and O'Connor's Collected Works this year, so I'm definitely in. I'll start with The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by McCullers, which I am planning to read this month. I've already read Wise Blood and A Good Man Is Hard to Find by O'Connor, and the next selection in this collection is her second novel, The Violent Bear it Away, which I'll read in August or September.

I'm definitely interested in All the King's Men, but I doubt that I'll be able to get to it this year.

The Library of America also has at least one compilation of books by Eudora Welty.

Does Pinckney Benedict count? He is awesome.

I like Welty, McCullers and O'Connor (and would like to continue with Faulkner).

I'd also recommend The Hard Blue Sky by Shirley Ann Grau--a novel about the folks on Grand Isle Louisiana, which has been getting a lot of press lately (the place, not the book).

i agree re Eudora, but she isn't really gothic. she's more mythic. But she's very wonderful. Losing Battles is my favorite. Highly recommended, particularly as a nice break from gothics.

Any interest in the Watson family trilogy by Peter Matthiessen: Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone? Or Elizabeth Spencer's The Voice at the Back Door? Or Barry Hannah, although he's not a favorite of mine, others here may like him.

I thought Ironweed was set around Albany, New York. Part of the Albany Trilogy. Not exactly Southern.

9 - Blah...yes, you are correct. I was confusing it with something else but now can't seem to remember what.

>I am SO BUSY and GUILTY about all the stuff I can't do. Currently missing a pool party, a martini night, and a "bike rave" so I can get a FORTY-PAGE BEHEMOTH of a paper on EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BULLSHIT written in time to photocopy the rhetoric readings for my theory group and read them on the way up to Whistler for my friend's stag. I am also dodging my dad's calls because he is mad that I'm not over on the island sailing with him on his holidays. And I have, like, a job, and a volunteer gig.

That said, my intention remain good, and I hope to join you again soon.

oh Hell, i joined this thang like a minute ago

Southern Gothic

Flannery O'Connor
Carson Mc Cullers

Has anyone considered The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake....not Gothic...definitely Southern

and what about Barry Hannah?

i love being a pest
;-}

12> Todd sent me that book, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake awhile back (thanks again, Todd!) - and what a read! What a talent gone way too quick. I was actually considering mentioning it, J., but I figured West Virginia was kind of borderline Southern, but I think he fits in with the other writers being mentioned.

Is Edna Ferber Southern?

>13 absurdeist: West Virginia may be borderline Southern, geographically...mentally, it's Deep South..all-the-way. For the most part........there are some smart folks, but you have to seek them out.

How about screen adaptations of Faulkner's works?

16> I think that would make a great thread, kswolff! And perhaps expand it to include film adaptations of any Sothern Gothic titles too?

Two recommendations for in-between reads that are not taxing, but extremely worthwhile: Finn by Jon Clinch, and I Got Somebody in Staunton by William Henry Lewis. The latter is a collection of short fiction.

Is Edna Ferber Southern?
And please stop talking over the top of me like I'm not here. LOL!~!
belva

>19 rainpebble: I don't know her, but Wikipedia puts her in the Midwest:)

Sooo,

are we just throwing out names, or putting together a proposed revised reading list, or???

Busy and guilty from #11 reverberates with me, but my intentions, too, are good, and I will try to take part in Faulkner, or McCarthy, or O'Connor....

Schedule, Todd???

>21 polutropos:

I wonder about this Group...every day, that I am brave enough to log-in..

Pour Moi:

William Faulkner: I read Absalom,Absalom...at the age of 14.... am still awed by the sheer force/poetry of the Language....throughout the years i have tried to read the others...these stand out: Light in August & The Sound and The Fury. Read years ago beofre i was "smart"...I'm afraid to read them now..or maybe, just, lazy

*throw this out to the masses*

William Gay, Charles Portis, Tom Franklin, and Larry Brown I believe could all be included.

22: Don't knock yourself down for wanting to reread them. I read As I Lay Dying in my high school years, and it confused the hell out of me. I would like to reread it again. I met confusion with Sanctuary as well, but I did enjoy If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem Deceptively straightforward, plot-wise.

I've dipped into passages of Absalom, Absalom, but I feel intimidated by it. The dense prose mocks me like passages of Finnegans Wake But I do want to read both.

I have been reading the Tennessee Williams Collected Stories, intro by Gore Vidal. I cannot say enough about these stories. They are so inventive. Williams gets you to see wonderful images with just a few words.

I think you will enjoy them a great deal.

Found Faulkner: a collection of critical essays, edited by Richard H. Brodhead A number of fascinating essays, including "Faulkner and the Avant-Garde" and "Repetition and Revenge."

>26 kswolff: Your link takes me to a collection edited by Robert Penn Warren, which is pretty good too.

27: Apparently there are two collections of critical essays about Faulkner in the series.