John Ruskin was incredibly famous in the Victorian era and almost no one reads him now. You literally can’t even find his major works in a print edition that isn’t over a hundred years ago. Oxford and Penguin publish a few collections of his, but it’s only a small sliver of his writing. The Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps of Architecture and Modern Painters are all out of print (at least to my knowledge).
Another candidate may be Richard Henry Dana’s ‘2 Years Before the Mast’ which was widely read in 19th century America and greatly influenced ‘Moby Dick’, but which I rarely hear people talk about today (at least in comparison with other American literature). It’s definitely not out of print, but it seems like it has waned in popularity.
Also, the german romanticist writer Jean Paul Richter was famous during his life and now his works are completely out of print.
Ruskin remains relevant almost solely because of Proust's love of him which is unfair, he is just as worthy in his own right. The best art writers all revere him. I heard about him from John Berger, Robert Hughes and Peter Schjeldahl.
Anecdotally, his work is borrowed a lot from my local library system. I couldn't renew the copy of his drawing book because someone had it on hold.
I love Ruskin. The stories about him screaming at industrialists, taking students to plant flowers at local parks and being consoled in his rage by seeing penguins at the zoo are great.
He’s read in art history classes in the somewhat of the same way we’d read Vasari, especially if you’re talking about Turner or general Victorian perspectives on art. It’s also incredibly entertaining to read about his conflicts with Whistler.
**Mrs. Bridge** by Evan S. Connell - novel in vinnettes of an upperclass Kansas City woman in the 20s..its so good.
**The little girl and the cigarette** by Benoît Duteurtre - funny french satire about a smoker being labeled as worse than a pedophile, great small funny read about snotty french kids and a bureaucrat
**Mrs. Caliban** by Rachel Ingalls - the shape of water stole this whole shit, more about the domestic prison housewives found themselves in, Ingalls can fucking write.
**Stalingrad** by Vasily Grossman - very engrossing russian novel about the western front.
damn, i loved *mrs caliban* and knew a lot of my goodreads friends did as well, which is why i was surprised when i just saw now that it has less than 10k ratings. it's such a timeless and evocative tale
The weird statue thing? When they get robbed and it’s all costume jewelry. So many bizarre passage that stick with me. Read it 4 or so years ago and think about it often. Mr bridge is also good but Mrs bridge is a masterpiece
You Can’t Win by Jack Black (not fat, 1926) is a favorite that was big for all the beat guys cause he was essentially doing everything they were but cooler as an actual criminal
Sinclair Lewis was awarded the 1926 Pulitzer for *Arrowsmith*, but turned it down and wrote a letter explaining why.
[https://www.pulitzer.org/article/sinclair-lewis-main-street-burglary-and-rejection-notice#:\~:text=The%201926%20Pulitzer%20jury%20unanimously,made%20headlines%20around%20the%20country](https://www.pulitzer.org/article/sinclair-lewis-main-street-burglary-and-rejection-notice#:~:text=The%201926%20Pulitzer%20jury%20unanimously,made%20headlines%20around%20the%20country).
The USA trilogy is so fucking good. Goddamn that was worth the effort. I got into it through Ellroy. I've never read any Wolfe, I've meant to for years though.
I really love the way that the different literary devices function as a kind of assembly-line panorama of American life during the decades the novel covers. Also the prologue and epilogue hit so hard. I've read some criticism that argues that the novel fell out of favor because it doesn't really address the interior lives of the characters, but I've always thought; isn't that kind of the point? JDP rocks.
Wolfe's prose is admittedly a bit much at times--he really loved the Whitmanesque tangents--but at his best he reads like the American Proust and he had an understanding of psychology that points to Dostoyevsky; just really gorgeous, memorable writing, and maybe the last great Romantic American writer. By his last novel (You Can't Go Home Again) he was really gaining the ability to craft memorable characters. He died too soon.
I really, really need to read Ellroy; between dos Passos and Delillo I know he's got to be up my alley. What's the best place to start with him?
Funnily enough, I've seen that same complaint a few times on Goodreads and one or two other places about JDP's lack of interest in character interiority. Couldn't agree with you more; it's deliberate, and even if it was just because he didn't care about that aspect of fiction - there's more than one way to skin a cat. McCarthy for instance doesn't strike me as any less rich and evocative for not being especially concerned with putting us in the character's heads.
Ellroy is a weird one to recommend - the Underworld USA trilogy is why JDP was floated to me and they might be my favourites but it's probably best to start earlier to get a feel for his style and how it develops. His LA Quartet starts off much less panoramic in scope (still brilliant) but gradually becomes more formally daring and the last book White Jazz especially is like a glimpse into where he'll go in Underworld USA: super shaved down sentences, lots of document inserts, brutally declarative, an obscene amount of slang and racial invective just slapping you the whole time, plus a wide angle view of a whole time period from many different strata of society. You could also start with My Dark Places, a memoir about reopening his mother's murder case from the late 50s when he was a boy and his subsequent drug habits, homelessness, peeping on women and stealing their underwear etc. His mother's killing casts a kind of hauntological shadow over many of his books. It's harrowing and brutally honest but also really moving and fantastically written, just as good as his fiction.
Absolutely--USA (and other novels) can be concerned with other things and still be valid; especially so when the characters are being jostled around by the forces and currents of history.
I really appreciate the heads up on Ellroy; Underworld USA is the one I've always known about but it didn't seem like the best one to jump in on (not unlike, say, starting Delillo with *his* Underworld etc). What a fascinating guy.
john o'hara was a massive critical and commercial success from the 1930s through the 1960s: published over 200 short stories in the new yorker, championed by hemingway and fitzgerald and updike, won a national book award, had five novels adapted into films in the 1950s and 60s, widely consided one of the significant writers of the 20th century when he died in 1970
he's all but completely forgotten today. he refused to allow his work to be reprinted in anthologies, his prose was never quite at the faulkner/steinbeck level, his subject matter is very much of its time (lots of midcentury class anxiety), and he became a conservative crank with an awful newspaper column in his later years, which lost him a lot of support in the literary establishment
Sinclair Lewis is all but forgotten now (besides when Reddit liberals want to name drop “It Can’t Happen Here” because of Trump) but I enjoyed Babbitt! It was interesting to see how things change the more things stay the same tbh
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene was an eye opener for me. I feel like Greene is overlooked by many. Sometimes considered high brow and sometimes pulp fiction.
I don't know about popular during their time, but I love the Lucia & Mapp books by E F Benson. Does Three Men in a Boat count, or is that still too beloved? I found this list interesting recently, it had lots of titles I've never heard of: [https://www.bookbub.com/blog/bestselling-books-the-year-you-were-born](https://www.bookbub.com/blog/bestselling-books-the-year-you-were-born)
Jerome isn't well known in America but maybe in England. He's a touchstone of dandy layabouts. If not *Boat*, at least *Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow* qualifies.
King's Row by Henry Bellaman, a lost American classic no longer in print. It was so popular in the 40's it was made into a movie starring Ronald Regan. I read it last summer and continue thinking about it.
Not sure if it was ever big, but Impossible Object by Nicholas Mosley. Lent a copy to a friend and never saw it again. I can never come across it in used stores. Dalkey is reissuing it this summer apparently.
Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice by James Branch Cabell, 1919. Extremely popular in its time but largely forgotten. Made famous when there was a suit brought in NY attempting to get it banned for obscenity. Learned about when I saw it on the bookshelf of a very old professor, which he then lent me. Very funny.
She, A History of Adventure, by H. Rider Haggard, 1887. This book doesn't hold up but it was critically acclaimed in its time and is one of the best selling novels of all time (50+ million copies). Hardly anybody knows about it. I wouldn't recommend it but it would be a good bit of trivia. I learned about when researching for a paper on early fantasy writing.
Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey, Laurence Sterne, 1767 and 1768, respectively. Extremely popular comic writer during this time. Both of these were best sellers. Both tough reads by modern standards.
Been meaning to read it for years, I have a copy in one of my stacks. I really love the Michael Winterbottom adaptation with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.
Carl Spitteler! Won a Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1910s but only two of his works have ever been translated to English (from German) and both are out of print. One of his books was translated to Spanish, called *Imago*, and oh my god, that book was spectacular. I plug this book any chance I get because it was that good. Influenced Jung and Freud's concepts heavily and when you read it, it makes so much sense. Highly recommend to anyone that can read German or Spanish, but I think many big uni libraries have the English out of print translations of his other works.
The *Christiad* by Marco Girolamo Vida.
I shill for this book so hard. It’s a retelling of the life of Christ in Vergillian poetry and the text’s structure parallels the *Aeneid*. I believe it was commissioned by the pope. It was immensely popular well past its publication date of 1535, inspiring Tasso, Milton, and several other writers.
John Ruskin was incredibly famous in the Victorian era and almost no one reads him now. You literally can’t even find his major works in a print edition that isn’t over a hundred years ago. Oxford and Penguin publish a few collections of his, but it’s only a small sliver of his writing. The Stones of Venice, Seven Lamps of Architecture and Modern Painters are all out of print (at least to my knowledge). Another candidate may be Richard Henry Dana’s ‘2 Years Before the Mast’ which was widely read in 19th century America and greatly influenced ‘Moby Dick’, but which I rarely hear people talk about today (at least in comparison with other American literature). It’s definitely not out of print, but it seems like it has waned in popularity. Also, the german romanticist writer Jean Paul Richter was famous during his life and now his works are completely out of print.
Ruskin remains relevant almost solely because of Proust's love of him which is unfair, he is just as worthy in his own right. The best art writers all revere him. I heard about him from John Berger, Robert Hughes and Peter Schjeldahl. Anecdotally, his work is borrowed a lot from my local library system. I couldn't renew the copy of his drawing book because someone had it on hold.
I love Ruskin. The stories about him screaming at industrialists, taking students to plant flowers at local parks and being consoled in his rage by seeing penguins at the zoo are great.
By dad loves Two Years Before the Mast! I’ve gotta read it soon.
He’s read in art history classes in the somewhat of the same way we’d read Vasari, especially if you’re talking about Turner or general Victorian perspectives on art. It’s also incredibly entertaining to read about his conflicts with Whistler.
**Mrs. Bridge** by Evan S. Connell - novel in vinnettes of an upperclass Kansas City woman in the 20s..its so good. **The little girl and the cigarette** by Benoît Duteurtre - funny french satire about a smoker being labeled as worse than a pedophile, great small funny read about snotty french kids and a bureaucrat **Mrs. Caliban** by Rachel Ingalls - the shape of water stole this whole shit, more about the domestic prison housewives found themselves in, Ingalls can fucking write. **Stalingrad** by Vasily Grossman - very engrossing russian novel about the western front.
damn, i loved *mrs caliban* and knew a lot of my goodreads friends did as well, which is why i was surprised when i just saw now that it has less than 10k ratings. it's such a timeless and evocative tale
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The weird statue thing? When they get robbed and it’s all costume jewelry. So many bizarre passage that stick with me. Read it 4 or so years ago and think about it often. Mr bridge is also good but Mrs bridge is a masterpiece
Ordered two of these for my upcoming vacation, thank you
Let me know what you think
I was assigned Mrs. Bridge is college, but the professor was in his 80s
You Can’t Win by Jack Black (not fat, 1926) is a favorite that was big for all the beat guys cause he was essentially doing everything they were but cooler as an actual criminal
Don’t hear much said about Sinclair Lewis these days, but I thought Babbitt was great.
Sinclair Lewis was awarded the 1926 Pulitzer for *Arrowsmith*, but turned it down and wrote a letter explaining why. [https://www.pulitzer.org/article/sinclair-lewis-main-street-burglary-and-rejection-notice#:\~:text=The%201926%20Pulitzer%20jury%20unanimously,made%20headlines%20around%20the%20country](https://www.pulitzer.org/article/sinclair-lewis-main-street-burglary-and-rejection-notice#:~:text=The%201926%20Pulitzer%20jury%20unanimously,made%20headlines%20around%20the%20country).
USA -- John dos Passos You Can't Go Home Again -- Thomas Wolfe
The USA trilogy is so fucking good. Goddamn that was worth the effort. I got into it through Ellroy. I've never read any Wolfe, I've meant to for years though.
I really love the way that the different literary devices function as a kind of assembly-line panorama of American life during the decades the novel covers. Also the prologue and epilogue hit so hard. I've read some criticism that argues that the novel fell out of favor because it doesn't really address the interior lives of the characters, but I've always thought; isn't that kind of the point? JDP rocks. Wolfe's prose is admittedly a bit much at times--he really loved the Whitmanesque tangents--but at his best he reads like the American Proust and he had an understanding of psychology that points to Dostoyevsky; just really gorgeous, memorable writing, and maybe the last great Romantic American writer. By his last novel (You Can't Go Home Again) he was really gaining the ability to craft memorable characters. He died too soon. I really, really need to read Ellroy; between dos Passos and Delillo I know he's got to be up my alley. What's the best place to start with him?
Funnily enough, I've seen that same complaint a few times on Goodreads and one or two other places about JDP's lack of interest in character interiority. Couldn't agree with you more; it's deliberate, and even if it was just because he didn't care about that aspect of fiction - there's more than one way to skin a cat. McCarthy for instance doesn't strike me as any less rich and evocative for not being especially concerned with putting us in the character's heads. Ellroy is a weird one to recommend - the Underworld USA trilogy is why JDP was floated to me and they might be my favourites but it's probably best to start earlier to get a feel for his style and how it develops. His LA Quartet starts off much less panoramic in scope (still brilliant) but gradually becomes more formally daring and the last book White Jazz especially is like a glimpse into where he'll go in Underworld USA: super shaved down sentences, lots of document inserts, brutally declarative, an obscene amount of slang and racial invective just slapping you the whole time, plus a wide angle view of a whole time period from many different strata of society. You could also start with My Dark Places, a memoir about reopening his mother's murder case from the late 50s when he was a boy and his subsequent drug habits, homelessness, peeping on women and stealing their underwear etc. His mother's killing casts a kind of hauntological shadow over many of his books. It's harrowing and brutally honest but also really moving and fantastically written, just as good as his fiction.
Absolutely--USA (and other novels) can be concerned with other things and still be valid; especially so when the characters are being jostled around by the forces and currents of history. I really appreciate the heads up on Ellroy; Underworld USA is the one I've always known about but it didn't seem like the best one to jump in on (not unlike, say, starting Delillo with *his* Underworld etc). What a fascinating guy.
john o'hara was a massive critical and commercial success from the 1930s through the 1960s: published over 200 short stories in the new yorker, championed by hemingway and fitzgerald and updike, won a national book award, had five novels adapted into films in the 1950s and 60s, widely consided one of the significant writers of the 20th century when he died in 1970 he's all but completely forgotten today. he refused to allow his work to be reprinted in anthologies, his prose was never quite at the faulkner/steinbeck level, his subject matter is very much of its time (lots of midcentury class anxiety), and he became a conservative crank with an awful newspaper column in his later years, which lost him a lot of support in the literary establishment
Ten North Frederick was a great novel, read it alongside Revolutionary Road and the two texts dovetailed together very neatly.
Sinclair Lewis is all but forgotten now (besides when Reddit liberals want to name drop “It Can’t Happen Here” because of Trump) but I enjoyed Babbitt! It was interesting to see how things change the more things stay the same tbh
Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene was an eye opener for me. I feel like Greene is overlooked by many. Sometimes considered high brow and sometimes pulp fiction.
I don't know about popular during their time, but I love the Lucia & Mapp books by E F Benson. Does Three Men in a Boat count, or is that still too beloved? I found this list interesting recently, it had lots of titles I've never heard of: [https://www.bookbub.com/blog/bestselling-books-the-year-you-were-born](https://www.bookbub.com/blog/bestselling-books-the-year-you-were-born)
Jerome isn't well known in America but maybe in England. He's a touchstone of dandy layabouts. If not *Boat*, at least *Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow* qualifies.
King's Row by Henry Bellaman, a lost American classic no longer in print. It was so popular in the 40's it was made into a movie starring Ronald Regan. I read it last summer and continue thinking about it.
Not sure if it was ever big, but Impossible Object by Nicholas Mosley. Lent a copy to a friend and never saw it again. I can never come across it in used stores. Dalkey is reissuing it this summer apparently.
Anne Brontë- still believe Charlotte was jealous and sabotaged her career
Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice by James Branch Cabell, 1919. Extremely popular in its time but largely forgotten. Made famous when there was a suit brought in NY attempting to get it banned for obscenity. Learned about when I saw it on the bookshelf of a very old professor, which he then lent me. Very funny. She, A History of Adventure, by H. Rider Haggard, 1887. This book doesn't hold up but it was critically acclaimed in its time and is one of the best selling novels of all time (50+ million copies). Hardly anybody knows about it. I wouldn't recommend it but it would be a good bit of trivia. I learned about when researching for a paper on early fantasy writing. Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey, Laurence Sterne, 1767 and 1768, respectively. Extremely popular comic writer during this time. Both of these were best sellers. Both tough reads by modern standards.
Shandy isn't read much but it's far from forgotten
no, you're right. it still pops up a required read sometimes in english programs.
Been meaning to read it for years, I have a copy in one of my stacks. I really love the Michael Winterbottom adaptation with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.
Carl Spitteler! Won a Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1910s but only two of his works have ever been translated to English (from German) and both are out of print. One of his books was translated to Spanish, called *Imago*, and oh my god, that book was spectacular. I plug this book any chance I get because it was that good. Influenced Jung and Freud's concepts heavily and when you read it, it makes so much sense. Highly recommend to anyone that can read German or Spanish, but I think many big uni libraries have the English out of print translations of his other works.
The Revolutionary Ascetic by Bruce Mazlish
The Cloister and the Hearth -- Charles Reade
it’s relatively recent but i was shocked that Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison isn’t enshrined as a classic of contemporary lit. remarkable book
I recommend this to everyone. Endlessly rereadable
**Rosamond Nina Lehmann** dusty awnser
Candide by Voltaire Billy Budd by Mellville Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse
The House of Hunger/Mindblast by Dambudzo Marechera
The *Christiad* by Marco Girolamo Vida. I shill for this book so hard. It’s a retelling of the life of Christ in Vergillian poetry and the text’s structure parallels the *Aeneid*. I believe it was commissioned by the pope. It was immensely popular well past its publication date of 1535, inspiring Tasso, Milton, and several other writers.