Reading Rat

What to read, 1926 on

\/ 1901-1925

Annotations: to (rating) - (etexts) - (study guides) - (references) - (criticism) - (note) - (comment)

Mid and late 20th Century

If "well-read" means "not missing anything," then nobody has a chance. If "well-read" means "making a genuine effort to explore thoughtfully," then yes, we can all be well-read. --Linda Holmes

After The Fall: 1989, Twenty Years On

Marjane SATRAPI (b. 1969) Wikipedia entry

The Complete Persepolis (2007: Persepolis, 2004 translatiion of Persepolis I, 2000, and Persepolis II, 2001; and Persepolis II, 2004 translation of Persepolis 3, 2002, and Persepolis 4, 2003)
the revolution and the war are depicted through the eyes of a child who sees the world in black-and-white terms... . --Grant L. Voth

1968: Scarcity and Decade Analysis

J. K. ROWLING (Joanne Rowling, b. 1965) Wikipedia entry post

Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 2007) John Granger review | Harold Bloom review [pdf]
It is Harry's beautiful courage, I think, that makes this series unique. --Charles Van Doren

Jeanette WINTERSON (b. 1959) Official site post

The Passion (1997)

At some unmarked point during the last twenty years we imperceptibly moved out of the Modern Age and into a new, as yet nameless, era. --Peter F. Drucker, Landmarks of Tomorrow (1957)

Tony KUSHNER (b. 1956) post

Angels in America (1991, 1992) Donald Lyons review

Michael POLLAN (b. 1955) Official site

The Botany of Desire (2001)
It is about the concept of what he calls co-evolution, in this case between mankind and four plants--apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. --Charles Van Doren

The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006) Blake Hurst review
What we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world, and he warns that modern agribiz is a destructive, precarious agricultural system that has wrought havoc on the diet, nutrition, and well-being of Americans as well as the inhabitants of the other developed countries of the Earth. --Charles Van Doren

DAI Sijie (b. 1954) Wikipedia entry

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2001 Ina Rilke translation; Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise, 2000)
For them, the experience of reading was emotional and intellectual but vicarious. How could they know that the Little Seamstress would act on the basis of what she had learned? --Grant L. Voth

David GROSSMAN (b. 1954) The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature post

See Under: Love (1989)

Kevin HART (b. 1954) Poetry International Web | two poems post

Peniel and Other Poems (1991)

Carl HIAASEN (b. 1953) Wikipedia entry

Tourist Season (1986)
It's a wild and wooly tale involving all Hiaasen's 'regular' characters: shady businessmen, corrupt politicians, dumb blondes, sunburned tourists, and apathetic retirees. --Charles Van Doren

Strip Tease (1993)

Lucky You (1997)

Thylias MOSS (b. 1954) Academy of American Poets | two poems

Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems (1993)

Rita DOVE (b. 1952) Academy of American Poets Home Page post

Selected Poems (1993)

Sven BIRKERTS (b. 1951) Wikipedia entry | Agni contributor

The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry (1989)

also

An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th Century Literature (1987)

Paul MULDOON (b. 1951) Official site

Selected Poems (1986)

also

Doug ESTELL, Michele L. SATCHWELL, and Patricia S. WRIGHT

Reading Lists for College-bound Students (1993)

Edward HIRSCH (b. 1950)

Earthly Measures (1994)

Gloria NAYLOR (b. 1950)

The Women of Brewster Place (1982)

Literature & Culture of the American 1950s

James WILCOX (b. 1949) Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project

Modern Baptists (1983)

Denis JOHNSON (b. 1949)

Angels (1983)

Fiskadoro (1985)

Jesus' Son (1992)

Henning MANKELL (b. 1948) Wikipedia entry

Kurt Wallander mysteries (Faceless Killers, 1997 Steven T. Murray translation of Mordare utan ansikte, 1991, and following)
it will not take you long to apprehend Wallander's consciousness of the changes that are occurring in Swedish society, until recently so apparently immune to the social ills we ourselves... know so well. These feelings are accentuated in the succeeding books... --Charles Van Doren

Ian McEWAN (b. 1948) Wikipedia entry

On Chesil Beach (2007)
The setting of 1962 is crucial: Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting stand at the waning of the Victorian world and just before the sexual revolution. Their doomed sexual congress will resonate with larger historical tones. --Emily Allen

also

Michael DIRDA (b. 1948) Wikipedia entry

Caring For Your Books (1990)

Classics for Pleasure (2007)

Reviews Washington Post

Browsings weblog The American Scholar

Mark HELPRIN (b. 1947) Wikipedia entry

Winter's Tale (1983)
a fantastic story of early twentieth-century life in New York City. --Charles Van Doren

A Soldier of the Great War (1995)
His experiences in the war are told by Alessandro, now an old man, to a young man with whom he is forced to walk for fifty miles to their destinations, which in the case of the young man is love and in that of the old man, death. --Charles Van Doren

David MAMET (b. 1947) Secret Names The David Mamet Society post

American Buffalo (1975)

Speed-the-Plow (1988)

Salman RUSHDIE (b. 1947) post

Midnight's Children (1981)

Michael DIBDIN (1947-2007) Wikipedia entry

Aurelio Zen series (Ratking, 1988-End Games, 2007)
His first book, Ratking, opens in Rome but ends in Venice, and the other novels range all over the Italian landscape as Zen anti-heroically confronts the Mafia and bravely tries to stand against it, always without success. --Charles Van Doren

People by 1945 could no longer be sure of the direction in which history took them. But they could still be sure that there was a direction; and they could, if they wished, select among a variety of theories that described their destination. After 1945, they could ever less often be sure even that any direction to human affairs existed at all, that they were not totally adrift in a meaningless universe. --Oscar Handlin

Pere GIMFERRER (b. 1945) Plurilingual Anthology of Catalan Poetry

Selected Poems

J. D. McCLATCHY (b. 1945)

The Rest of the Way (1992)

Simon SCHAMA (b. 1945) post

Citizens (1989)

Adam ZAGAJEWSKI (b. 1945) post

Tremor (1985)

August WILSON (1945-2005) Perspectives in American Literature

Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984)

Fences (1985)

The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consquence. --Cyril Connelly, The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Douglas CRASE (b. 1944)

The Revisionist (1981)

Alice WALKER (b. 1944)

The Color Purple (1982)

Peter CAREY (b. 1943) Peter Carey Books

Illywhacker (1985)

Oscar and Lucinda (1988)

Alfred CORN (b. 1943)

A Call in the Midst of the Crowd (1978)

Sam SHEPARD (b. 1943)

Seven Plays (1984)

Reinaldo ARENAS (1943-1990) post

Hallucinations: The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando (El mundo alucinante 1966)

Donna LEON (b. 1942) Wikipedia entry

Brunetti novels (Death at La Fenice, 1992, and following)
delves deeper and deeper into the corrupt underbelly of Venice, that glorious 'little jewel' built on an island that is slowly but surely sinking into the sea. --Charles Van Doren

John CROWLEY (b. 1942)

Little, Big (1981)

Aegypt (1987; The Solitudes 2007)

Love and Sleep (1994)

Peter HANDKE (b. 1942)

Slow Homecoming (1974)

Stephen HAWKING (b. 1942) Wikipedia entry | Official web site John Preskill review | post

A Brief History of Time (1988)

John IRVING (b. 1942) BookReporter | Times Topics | The New York Times Joan Smith essay | Suzanne Herel interview

The World According to Garp (1978)

The Hotel New Hampshire (1981)

Mahmoud DARWISH (1942-2008) Academy of American Poets Wikipedia entry post

The Music of Human Flesh (al-Nasheed al-jasadi 1980)

Alan FURST (b. 1941) Wikipedia entry

Night Soldiers novels (Night Soldiers, 1988, and following)
revitalized the entire genre of spy novels. --Charles Van Doren

Roberto CALASSO (b. 1941) Wikipedia entry

The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (1993 Tim Parks translation; Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia 1988)
in my opinion and that of many others is the finest book ever written about the Greek myths. --Charles Van Doren

James McCOURT (b. 1941)

Time Remaining (1993)

Paul THEROUX (b. 1941) Fan site

The Mosquito Coast (1981)

J. M. COETZEE (John Maxwell Coetzee b. 1940) post

Foe (1986)

Disgrace (1999)
As his [protagonist David Lurie's] position and privilege are withdrawn from him, he is confronted by horrors, but also by the beauty found in small acts of mercy and repentance. --Arnold Weinstein

Elizabeth Costello (2003)

Thomas M. DISCH (1940-2008) Endzone post

On Wings of Song (1979)

David RABE (b. 1940)

Streamers (1976)

Edmund WHITE (b. 1940) Official site

Forgetting Elena (1973)

Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)

Joseph BRODSKY (1940-1996) Selected poems post
his thinking appears to be guided more by the quest for a startling apothegm than by a concern for scrupulous accuracy--this is one of the inevitable consequences of the aphoristic style. But his seriousness is such that even our disagreements force our thought in unexpected directions. --Sven Birkerts

A Part of Speech: Poems (1977)

So Forth (1996)

Ayi K. ARMAH (b. 1939) Petri Liukkonen biography

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968)

Margaret ATWOOD (b. 1939) Official site post

Surfacing (1972)

The Handmaid's Tale (1985)

Seamus HEANEY (b. 1939) Internet Poetry Archive post
But every age must have a great poet, whether he truly exists or not, and Seamus Heaney is apparently the man appointed for the job. --Joseph Epstein,

Field Work (1979)

Station Island (1984)

Selected Poems 1969-1987 (1990)

also

North (1975)
Fine poet from Northern Ireland talks about realities in a serious tone; his talent has strong roots; his poems will outlast their grim inspiration. --Raphael and McLeish

Amos OZ (b. 1939)

A Perfect Peace (1982)

Michael THELWELL (b. 1939)

The Harder They Come (1980)

Les A. MURRAY (b. 1938)

The Rabbiter's Bounty: Collected Poems (1991)

Wa Thiong'o NGUGI (b. 1938)

A Grain of Wheat (1992)

Joyce Carol OATES (b. 1938) New York Review of Books post

Them (1969)

also

Philip WARD (b. 1938)

See RAMON

A Lifetime's Reading (1983) Table of Contents

Ishmael REED (b. 1938)

Mumbo Jumbo (1972)

Charles SIMIC (b. 1938) Veran Matic interview

Selected Poems: 1963-2003 (2004)

Raymond CARVER (1938-1988) Frank Kermode review

Where I'm Calling From (1988)

David HOCKNEY (b. 1937) Authorized website

David Hockney (1979)

Robert STONE (b. 1937)

Dog Soldiers (1974)

A Flag for Sunrise (1981)

Thomas PYNCHON (b. 1937) post

V. (1963)
The search for V, a puzzle slowly fitted together by a series of brilliant episodic flashbacks, provides the unifying device of the novel--a framework encompassing a considerable panorama of history and character. --George Plimpton

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
I struggled through a mishmash of pretentious symbolism and concluded that it was a load of nonsense. --Colin McArdle

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
the ambition to produce a single compendious sacred writing... --Mary McCarthy

Tom STOPPARD (b. 1937) post

Travesties (1974)
Considers wittily what might have happened if Lenin, Joyce and the Dadaist poet Tzara (all living in Zurich simultaneously during World War I) had met each other. --Raphael and McLeish

Severo SARDUY (1937-1993)

Maitreya (1978)

Don DELILLO (b. 1936) Don DeLillo Society

Running Dog (1978)

White Noise (1985)

Libra (1988)

Mao II (1991)

Lars GUSTAFSSON (b. 1936)

Selected Poems

Vaclav HAVEL (1936-2011) RFE/RL obituary | post

The Garden Party (1969; Zahradni Slavnost 1963)

Memorandum (Vyrozumeni 1967)

Largo Desolato (1984)

Daryl HINE (b. 1936)

Selected Poems

Dahlia RAVIKOVITCH (1936-2005)

A Dress of Fire (1978)

Jonathan D. SPENCE (b. 1936)

The Death of Woman Wang (1978)

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1984)

Mario VARGAS LLOSA (b. 1936) Official site post

The War at the End of the World (1984; La guerra del fin del mundo)

Avraham B. YEHOSHUA (b. 1936) Jewish Virtual Library

A Late Divorce (Gerushim Meuharim 1982)

Georges PEREC (1936-1982)

Life, A User's Manual (1978)

James APPLEWHITE (b. 1935) Road Down Home | My Uncle's Parsonage | Southern Voices

River Writing: An Eno Journal (1988)

John Pepper CLARK-BEKEDEREMO (b. 1935)

Casualties: Poems 1966-68 (1970)

Thomas KENEALLY (b. 1935)

Schindler's List (Schindler's Ark 1982)

The Playmaker (1987)

Danilo KIS (1935-1989)

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (Grobnica za Borisa Davidovica: sedam poglavlja jedne zajednicke povesti 1976)

David LODGE (b. 1935)

Changing Places (1975)

Small World (1984)

Larry McMURTRY (b. 1935) Wikipedia entry

Lonesome Dove (1985)
The story is mainly about two men, 'Gus' McCrae and Woodrow F. Call, both of them retired Texas Rangers, who with the help of several others are driving a herd of cattle north from Texas to Montana. --Charles Van Doren

Antonio PORTA (1935-1989)

Kisses from Another Dream (1988)

Daniel QUINN (b. 1935) Wikipedia entry

Ishmael (1992)
Why does inequality and the inevitable poverty that accompanies it exist, and how did they come into being? As a very young man, Quinn discovered a very simple answer to the question--namely that sometime in the not too distant past, some of the people on Earth locked up all the food and charged all the rest a fee if they wanted to eat it. --Charles Van Doren

Charles WRIGHT (b. 1935) Academy of American Poets post

The World of the Ten Thousand Things (1990)

Jay WRIGHT (b. 1935) Academy of American Poets

Dimensions of History (1976)

The Double Invention of Komo (1980)

Elaine's Book (1986)

Selected Poems (1987)

Boleros (1991)

J. G. FARRELL (1935-1979)

The Siege of Krishnapur (1973)

Edward BOND (b. 1934)

Saved (1965)

The Fool (1975)

David MALOUF (b. 1934)

An Imaginary Life (1978)

Wole SOYINKA (Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka b. 1934) post

A Dance of the Forest (1963)

The Interpreters (1965)

Death of the King's Horsemen (1976)
Based on the true story of the jarring conflict between old ways and new, between tribal mores and the imposed ways of the British resident, in southern Nigeria at the end of World War II. --Raphael and McLeish

Mark STRAND (b. 1934)

Selected Poems (1980)

The Continuous Life (1990)

Dark Harbour (1993)

Yaakov SHABTAI (1934-1981)

Past Continuous (1985; Zikhron Devarim)
Shifting adeptly between daily life in modern Tel Aviv and the nerve-pattern intricacies of the remembered past, the novel renounces customary kinds of structure. No character or indicent is given special status. We feel, as a result, that we have walked in upon an epic family reuntion. --Sven Birkerts

also

Good Reading
It remains the best one-volume advisor for serious, academic reading. --Steven Gilbar

(22nd edition 1985) Edited by Arthur Waldhorn, Olga S. Weber, Arthur Zeiger

(23rd edition 1990) Edited by Arthur Waldhorn, Olga S. Weber, Arthur Zeiger Four reading lists

Reiner KUNZE (b. 1933)

Poems

Stories

The Lovely Years (Die Wunderbaren Jahre 1976)
an oblique prose work about adolescents at school, at home, and on holiday... --Philip Ward

Cormac McCARTHY (Charles McCarthy b. 1933) Wikipedia entry

Child of God (1974)

Suttree (1979)

Blood Meridian (1985)

The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses (1992); The Crossing (1994); Cities of the Plain (1998)
The trilogy is an extraordinary achievement and constitutes one of the finest literary achievements of the twentieth century. --Charles Van Doren

The Road (2006)
a novel about a father and son who are riding eastward after a nuclear holocaust has destroyed all of the world they inhabit. --Charles Van Doren

Joe ORTON (1933-1967)

The Complete Plays

Philip ROTH (b. 1933) Times Topics post

Goodbye, Columbus (1959) Irving Howe review
'Goodbye, Columbus' is a fine novella (published with stories)... . --Raphael and McLeish

Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
Portnoy's Complaint is a 'confessional'--set pieces of irresistibly comic anguish by the conscietious masturbator, Portnoy. --Raphael and McLeish

My Life as a Man (1974)

Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue (1985)

The Counterlife (1986)

Patrimony (1990)

Operation Shylock (1993)

Oxford English Dictionary (1933) post

Nichita STANESCU (1933-1983) Romania - Encyclopedic Survey

The Still Unborn About the Dead (1975)

Robert COOVER (b. 1932)

Spanking the Maid (1982)

Athol FUGARD (b. 1932) Fan site

A Lesson from Aloes (1981)

Allen GROSSMAN (b. 1932)

The Ether Dome and Other Poems: New and Selected (1979-1990) (1991) Words Taken to Heart

Geoffrey HILL (b. 1932) Epiphany at Hurcott | In Ipsley Church Lane 1 | Before senility | Citations I

Selected Poems (2006)

V. S. NAIPAUL (b. 1932) post

A House for Mr. Biswas (1961)

A Bend in the River (1979)
Independence has been won, civil war concluded. 'The Big Man', president for life, rules by rhetoric, guile, sorcery and a strong helping of terror. --Irving Howe

Aharon APPELFELD (b. 1932) Bibliography at Inst. Trans. Hebrew Lit. Hillel Halkin review

Badenheim 1939 (1980; Badenheim Ir Nofesh 1979)

The Immortal Bartfuss (1988)

John UPDIKE (1932-2009) Wikipedia entry | Times Topics | The New York Review of Books | The New Yorker post

Rabbit, Run (1961)
John Updike's choice of Rabbit Angstrom, in 'Rabbit, Run', was inspired, one of those happy, instinctive accidents than so often shape a literary career. For Rabbit, though a contemporary of the young writer--born, like him, in the early 1930s, and a product, so to speak, of the same world (the area around Reading, Pa.)--was a 'beautiful brainless guy' whose career (as a high school basketball star in a provincial setting) peaked at age 18; in his own wife's view, he was, before their early, hasty marriage, 'already drifting downhill.' --Joyce Carol Oates

Rabbit Redux (1971)

Rabbit is Rich (1981)

The Witches of Eastwick (1984) James Wolcott review

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

also

Seven Stanzas at Easter (1960) Paying Attention to the Sky

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu (The New Yorker October 22, 1960) Baseball Almanac

Christopher OKIGBO (1932-1967) Petri Liukkonen biography

Labyrinths, with Path of Thunder (1971)

Sylvia PLATH (1932-1963) post
Sylvia Plath -- interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality. --Alvy Singer, Annie Hall (1977)

Poems

The Bell Jar by "Victoria Lucas" (1966)

Walter ABISH (b. 1931) Wikipedia entry | David Levine Gallery

Alphabetical Africa (1974)

How German Is It (Wie deutsch ist es 1980)

I Am the Dust Under Your Feet (Conjunctions 10, 1987)

Eclipse Fever (1993)

E. L. DOCTOROW (b. 1931) Bio at N.Y. State Writers Inst. John Leonard review essay

The Book of Daniel (1971)

Ragtime (1975)
It incorporates the fictions and realities of the era of ragtime while it rags our fictions about it. --George Stade

World's Fair (1985)

Juan GOYTISOLO (b. 1931) Maya Jaggi essay

Space in Motion (1987)

John le CARRE (David John Moore Cornwell b. 1931) post

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963)
at his best, he is grippingly good: in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold he created a true mirror of our distracted times... --Raphael and McLeish

Jay MACPHERSON (1931-2004) Canadian Women Poets

Poems Twice Told: The boatman and Welcoming disaster (1981)

Toni MORRISON (Chloe Ardelia Wofford, b. 1931) Wikipedia entry | Times Topics post | Eleanor Birne review
embodies the African-American voice; her books see the American reality from the viewpoint of someone who is in some ways an outsider and in others the center of things. --Charles Van Doren

Sula (1973)

Song of Solomon (1977)
'Song of Solomon' isn't , however, cast in the basically realistic mode of most family novels. --Reynolds Price

Beloved (1987)

Jazz (1992)

Alice MUNRO (b. 1931) Wikipedia entry | Times Topics post

Dance of the Happy Shades (1968)
...Munro’s special territory is the inner lives of women in dreary little towns where nothing much seems to happen. --Grant L. Voth

Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You (1974)

also

Frederic RAPHAEL (b. 1931) and Kenneth McLEISH (1940-1997)

The List of Books (1981)
Arranged in forty-four categories, the lists, despite a decidedly Oxbridge tang, are often illuminating and often infuriating. --Steven Gilbar

Tomas TRANSTROMER (b. 1931)

Selected Poems Morning Birds

Sebastien JAPRISOT (Jean-Baptiste Rossi, 1931-2003) Wikipedia entry

The Sleeping Car Murders (1963 Francis Price translation; Compartiment tueurs 1962)
Attempts are made to discover other occupants in the compartment besides the murdered woman. But these attempts lead nowhere, because whenever a fellow passenger is found, he or she too is dead. --Charles Van Doren

A Very Long Engagement (1993 Linda Coverdale translation; Un long dimanche de fiancailles 1991)
She is wealthy but crippled by polio; he is poor and a soldier in the Great War. --Charles Van Doren

Donald BARTHELME (1931-1989) Times Topics | Donald Barthelme at Jessamyn

The Dead Father (1975)

Forty Stories (1987)

Thomas BERNHARD (1931-1989) Eric Ormsby essay | Stephen Mitchelmore essay
is an existence without meaning or goal--he does not doubt that this is its true character--bearable or not? --Sven Birkerts

Woodcutters, (1988; Holzfällen: Eine Erregung 1984)

Chinua ACHEBE (b. 1930) Times Topics post

Things Fall Apart (1958)
Wry African view of comedy and scandal of independence in a Nigeria at once debauched by its one-time masters and thrust, by their departure, into a parody of their vanities. --Raphael and McLeish

No Longer at Ease (1960)

Arrow of God (1964)

ADUNIS (Ali Ahmad Said, b. 1930) bio

Selected Poems Academy of American Poets

John ARDEN (1930-2012) bio at Artsworld

Plays

John BARTH (b. 1930) fan site by David Louis Edelman

The End of the Road (1958)
Best, early work of later logorrhoid; campus life with the blinds rolled up; scabrous tenderness illuminates characteristic 1950s American milieu. --Raphael and McLeish

The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

Tidewater Tales (1987)

Once upon a Time: A Floating Opera (1994)

Harold BLOOM (b. 1930) post

The Western Canon (1994)

Harold BRODKEY (1930-1996) Robot Wisdom

Stories in an Almost Classical Mode (1988)

Yoram KANIUK (b. 1930) Fan site

His Daughter (1987)

Slavomir MROZEK (b. 1930)

Tango (1964)

The Ugupu Bird (1968)

Edna O'BRIEN (b. 1930) Bio at N.Y. State Writers Inst. | Petri Liukkonen biography
Consider the characters of Edna O'Brien, May Queens whose May Days are always rainy. --Rebecca West

A Fanatic Heart (1985)

Harold PINTER (1930-2008) Official site | Times Topics | Nobel Prize post
They have the shape and feel of well-made plays in which every effect has a cause and every action produces a reaction. But the things they describe--violence, terror, disintegration--are usually dark and irrational. --Fintan O'Toole

The Homecoming (1964)

The Dumb Waiter (1966)
Here comes another incomprehensible order from above. --Kenneth L. Jost

The Room (1966)

The Caretaker (1967)
Pinter removes the metaphysical element from Beckett's Waiting for Godot (in which the two main characters are tramps) and endows his own central character, a Welsh tramp battening to anyone who will listen, with a speech pattern alternating between the the pathetic and the prosaic. --Philip Ward

Gary SNYDER (b. 1930) Academy of American Poets David Kirby review

No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)

Derek WALCOTT (b. 1930) Nobel Prize | Times Topics Adam Kirsch essay

Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958)

Collected Poems (1986)

Omeros (1990)
It is this everyman's Homer, and not the comfortable court poet some people imagine Homer to have been, who inspires Derek Walcott's epic poem, and who records the past events that determine the lives of the people he describes--including that of Mr. Walcott himself and, ultimately, of all of us. --Mary Lefkowitz

Nathan ZACH (b. 1930)

Selected Poems

Jacques DERRIDA (1930-2004) Wikipedia entry Adam Shatz review

On Grammatology (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak translation 1976; De la grammatologie 1967)

Stanley ELKIN (1930-1995) AllRefer entry

The Living End (1979)

Dan PAGIS (1930-1986) Audrey Shore essay

Selected Poems

Hans Magnus ENZENSBERGER (b. 1929) Bloodaxe Books

Poems for People Who Don't Read Poems (Michael Hamburger and Jerome Rothenberg translation 1968; Gedichte. Die Entstehung eines Gedichts, 1962)

Alvin FEINMAN (1929-2008)

Poems

John HOLLANDER (b. 1929) Wikipedia entry | Academy of American Poets

Reflections on Espionage (1976)

Selected Poetry (1993)

Tesserae and Other Poems (1993)

Richard HOWARD (b. 1929) N.Y. State Writers Inst. biography William H. Pritchard review | Brad Leithauser review | Adam Travis review

Untitled Subjects (1969)

Findings (1971)

Milan KUNDERA (b. 1929) Fan site post

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelna lehkost byti 1984)
When he [Tomas] was supposed by his hospital colleagues to be thinking of signing a retraction in order to keep his job they turned up their noses at him. Now that he's been declassed for maintaining his integrity, he's become an untouchable. --E. L. Doctorow

Ursula K. LE GUIN (b. 1929) Official site

The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
Le Guin has a poetic sensibility; this study of a world called 'Winter' and the sexual life of its inhabitants is a stunning creation. --Raphael and McLeish

Emmanuel LE ROY LADURIE (b. 1929) Library of Congress biography

The Territory of the Historian (1979)

John MONTAGUE (b. 1929) N.Y. State Writers Inst. biography

Selected Poems

E. O. WILSON (b. 1929) Steven Pinker interview | Eugene Goodheart essay [pdf]

Sociobiology (1975) Tom Bethell essay
Darwin put humanity in its proper place in the animal kingdom. Wilson put human society there, too. --Michael Lind

Christa WOLF (b. 1929)

Cassandra (1984)

Guillermo CABRERA Infante (1929-2005) Associated Press obituary | Gazarian Gautrier interview | David Levine caricature

View of Dawn in the Tropics (Vista del amanecer en el tropico 1964)

Three Trapped Tigers (Tres Tristes Tigres 1967)

Edward ALBEE (b. 1928)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961–1962)
Raucously witty, agonized dissection of campus marriage; a bravura piece for bravura actors. --Raphael and McLeish

Noam CHOMSKY (b. 1928) post
... among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic and the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the [Iraq] war... . --Osama bin Laden [pdf]

Syntactic Structures (1957)

Irving FELDMAN (b. 1928) Poetry Daily

New and Selected Poems (1979)

Carlos FUENTES (1928-2012) Debra A. Castillo interview

A Change of Skin (1968)

Terra nostra (1975)

Donald HALL (b. 1928) post

The One Day (1988)

Old and New Poems (1990)

Ferenc JUHASZ (b. 1928) Wikipedia entry

Selected Poems (1970)

William KENNEDY (b. 1928) N.Y. State Writers Inst. biography

Ironweed (1983)

Thomas KINSELLA (b. 1928) A Small Anthology of Poems

Peppercanister Poems: 1972-1978 (1979)

Philip LEVINE (b. 1928) Internet Poetry Archive Terrence Rafferty review

Selected Poems (1984)

Cynthia OZICK (b. 1928) Complete Review John Leonard review

The Messiah of Stockholm (1987)

Envy, or Yiddish in America (1989)

Robert PIRSIG (b. 1928) Bohemian Ink

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

William TREVOR (b. 1928) Contemporary Writers
Having removed himself from his native Ireland, he can write about its imagined people with the same clarity of distance that he commands over his London and provincial characters. His short stories are considerable works of art, but it is probably in his novels that he reaches the highest peak of achivement so far. --Philip Ward

The Love Department (1970)

The Children of Dynmouth (1980)

Collected Stories (1992)
deadly bullets, all of them, piercing some sensitive area of common experience. --Bernard Bailyn

James D. WATSON (b. 1928) post

The Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965)

The Double Helix (1968) Resource Page
An eminently readable book about the unraveling of DNA, one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century. --The Intercollegiate Review

also

A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (April 2, 1953, with F. H. C. Crick) Nature

also

Martin SEYMOUR-SMITH (1928-1998)

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written (1998) Table of Contents

Philip K. DICK (1928-1982) The Online Books Page Wikipedia entry

The Man in the High Castle (1962)
touches on nearly all of Dick's major themes but follows a relatively clear plot line, which is surprising since it was written with the divinatory help of the I Ching. --Michael Dirda

John ASHBERY (b. 1927) Times Topics | N.Y. State Writers Inst. biography
...Ashbery used to work with comparative deliberateness. ... But when the vast possibilities implicit in randomness became apparent to him, Ashbery soon left convention behind. --John Malcolm Brinnin

The Double Dream of Spring (1970)

Houseboat Days (1977)

Selected Poems (1985)

Flow Chart (1991)

Hotel Lautreamont (1992)

And the Stars Were Shining (1994)

Gabriel GARCIA Marquez (b. 1927) The Guardian: Authors | Times Topics Michael Wood review | Perry Anderson review | Francisco Goldman essay | Silvana Paternostro essay

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) Ilan Stavans review
The narrative is a magician's trick in which memory and prophecy, illusion and reality are mixed and often made to look the same. --Robert Kiely

Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

Gunter GRASS (b. 1927) post

The Tin Drum (1959) Bold Type (October 1999)
Inventive, patchy disquisition (as if by a German Lawrence Sterne) on the Hitlerian legacy as seen by an 'autobiographical' dwarf. --Raphael and McLeish
Grass's hero, Oskar, begins as the misbegotten child of the Nazi era and ends--what could be more modern?--as a jazz musician in a mental hospital. --Frederick Morton

The Flounder (1978)

Ruth Prawer JHABVALA (b. 1927) Petri Liukkonen biography

Heat and Dust (1975)

Galway KINNELL (b. 1927)

Selected Poems (1982)

W. S. MERWIN (b. 1927) Bold Type (June 2002) Peter Davison essay

Selected Poems (1988)

James WRIGHT (b. 1927) Academy of American Poets

Above the River: The Complete Poems (1992)

Guy DAVENPORT (1927-2005) Bernard Hoepffner interview

Tatlin! Six Stories (1974)

Laszlo NAGY (1927-2005)

Love of the Scorching Wind (1973)

David ATTENBOROUGH (b. 1926)

Life on Earth (1979)
Outstanding illustrations; lively, lucid text expounds the origins and development of all forms of life. --Raphael and McLeish

John BERGER (b. 1926) Wikipedia entry

Ways of Seeing (1972)
According to Berger, practically every painting was an advertisement for something, usually the wealth of the person--man or woman--who commissioned it. --Charles Van Doren

About Looking (1980)
another extraordinary book. It is mostly about photography. --Charles Van Doren

James SALTER (b. 1926)

Light Years (1975)

Solo Faces (1979)

also

Charles VAN DOREN (b. 1926)

How to Read a Book (Revised and Updated Edition 1972, with Mortimer J. Adler) Video Appendix A: A recommended reading list

Great Treasury of Western Thought (1977 editor, with Mortimer J. Adler) Contents [pdf]

The Joy of Reading (1985)

The Joy of Reading (2008)

John FOWLES (1926-2005) Bob Goosmann fan site Saray Lyall obituary | Ian Sansom review essay

The Magus (2nd Ed., 1977)
In some mysterious way, Conchis, the Magus or magician who inhabits, or, better, infuses, the Greek island where Nicholas goes to teach in a boys' school, becomes the instructor-ally that Alison needs, so that Nicholas finally learns something. Not everything; not enough, perhaps. --Charles Van Doren
Convoluted games on a mesmeric Greek island: tries to provide 'an experience beyond the literary' and certainly dishes up a rich and stimulating brew. --Raphael and McLeish

David SHAHAR (1926-1997) Babelguides

The Palace of Shattered Vessels: Summer in the Street of the Prophets (1985; Kayitz Be-Derech Ha-Nevi'im, 1969); A Voyage to Ur of the Chaldees (1985; Ha-Masah Le-Ur Kasdim, 1971); The Day of the Countess (1986; Yom Ha-Rozenet, 1976); Nin-Gal (1996; Ningal, 1983); Day of the Ghosts (1996; Yom Ha-Refaim, 1986); A Tammuz Night`s Dream (1996; Halom Leyl Tammuz, 1988); Nights of Lutetia (1991; Leylot Lutezia); On Candles and Winds (1996; Al Ner Ve Al Ruah, 1994)

A. R. AMMONS (Archie Randolph Ammons, 1926-2001) Academy of American Poets

Collected Poems: 1951-1971 (1972)

Sphere: The Form of a Motion (1974)

Selected Longer Poems (1980)

Elizabeth JENNINGS (1926-2001) Plagiarist Poetry Archive

Selected Poems (1979)

James MERRILL (1926-1995) Len Krisak review

The Changing Light at Sandower (1982)

From the First Nine: Poems 1946-1972 (1982)

Ingeborg BACHMANN (1926-1973) Poem Hunter Petri Liukkonen biography

In the Storm of Roses: Selected Poems (translated and edited by Mark Anderson, 1986)

Frank O'HARA (1926-1966) Wikipedia entry | Academy of American Poets post

Selected Poems (2004)

\/ 1901-1925

Revised December 26, 2012.

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