Remains of the Day is quite good, maybe relevant while some ideals are dying.
I really liked both of the books I've read by Orhan Pamuk, Snow and Museum of Innocence.
Our Mutual Friend is very good, so is Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Read Stoner last year based on my son's recommendation. Very well-written as you say. And aside from the specific distressing developments you mention (can we spoil in comments?) was utterly deflating* in the way that I generally find books that really ring true to be.
*Probably more a reflection of my nature and baseline despair at the world as I find it than anything inherent in the books.
Some recs that could arguably fit under the "high art lt" umbrella (plus two that don't).
Life: A User's Manual by Perec. Independent People (once again), but it clearly does not meet your suffering criteria (spoiler, I guess).
Just finished Adam Bede and found it quite enjoyable and insightful. Makes a good complement to Middlemarch. (May violate your criteria I realize after having written that (spoiler, spoiler, spoiler)--someone familiar with it can weigh in on whether it does or does not (spoil, spoil))
A bit enigmatic, but Herbert Read's The Green Child is a nice, enigmatic little read.
A more modern (1997) recommendation is Antrim's The Hundred Brothers which despite its unusual structure has a strong streak of conventional "guyness" that I reckon might appeal to you.
And continuing with the "guyness" theme (and definitely not high lart lit, but set in Chicago) Guys Like Us By Tom Lorenz (who I think is a complete unknown). Some would hate it, but probably hits the guilty humor mark for some like me.
And finally, speaking of "guys," Liz Phair's Horror Stories: A Memoir was a decent read. Also not high art lit, but also has Chicago connections.
Thanks. I think I'm fine with general suffering. Dousing the light in a kid's eye, less so.
Well IP is probably out then, as it has both general suffering and the specific variety in 4.last.
Oh if general suffering is OK, then Bolano's 2666
Independent People by Laxness
Adam Langer's Crossing California is set in Rogers park in the 80s, I liked it but I lived there so I would. If you enjoy the weird boundary between Afghanistan and Israel at California and Devon, you might like this book.
Jennifer Egan's
I don't quite know why I love Jennifer Egan so much, but I do.
I just recently stopped myself from repeated rereading of Dorothy Sayers. I'm not sure I want to find more books I like.
Did you get as far as the oral exam with Lomax's student? Such a great set piece, and a nice change of tone (if not theme) from the general dour fatalism--which I liked just fine, being a sucker for dour fatalism.
None of the good books I've read lately are cruelty-free to the youth. Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black? Nope. Fernanda Melchor, Hurricane Season? Hell no. John Crowley's Ka maybe passes, but I don't know if that's the genre you're looking for.
8: Have you read Manhattan Beach? It didn't thrill me. I loved A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Keep. I had mixed feelings about Look at Me.
I liked Visit from the Goon Squad, the interleaved characters and events making up the bundle of stories worked for me, and I enjoyed the chapter which was in powerpoint. I have not read her book about New York during and after WWII.
7. I listed a couple of books where suffering is prominent but not specifically kids losing hope-- I mean, we revisit Asta as young teen when she's pretty unhappy in Independent People, but she's not that little and defnitely not singled out. I hadn't read Stormcrow's IP comments before posting.
10 Have you ever tried Iris Murdoch or Walter Mosely?
Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym was a fun cruelty-free read.
I have not read her book about New York during and after WWII.
That's Manhattan Beach.
13.(7): I was thinking of the fate of the one son.
12: Actually, the only two I can remember reading off the top of my head are Goon Squad and The Keep. I feel like I at least started another one, but can't remember which one. So our experiences are consistent!
The Keep totally knocked me over.
Because I'm apparently a masochist, this post prompted me to start reading Stoner. I made it about 2/3rds of the way through; I don't know if I can make it any further, though. The Edith stuff, Lomax ... why can't people just talk to each other and work out their problems?!
The oral exam set piece was great, though, yeah.
I'd love to know what people here make of On Golden Hill.
20: I'm guessing you mean Golden Hill by Francis Spufford?
Thought it was amazing:
http://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/09/28/golden-hill-by-francis-spufford/
Echoing 6 about 2666 and also that parts of it are very brutal indeed, but there are worlds upon worlds in that book.
Can only halfway echo 1 about Pamuk; Snow is magnificent; I found The Museum of Innocence more of a slog. I would try The New Life or The White Castle instead. His memoirs and essays in Istanbul and Other Colors are very good. (Not so much The Naive and Sentimental Novelist.)
Ryszard Kapuszcinski doesn't involve much in the way of suffering kids, although at times history makes soldiers of quite young people. Try his trilogy on power The Emperor, Shah of Shahs and Another Day of Life. Each is quite short. Some of his earliest work from 1950s Poland finally made it into English as Nobody Leaves. Another usual starting point is The Soccer War.
You might not think that The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is high art, but it is, with shape and tone matching subject matter in a way rarely seen in non-fiction.
The Father of a Murderer by Alfred Andersch is semi-fiction about a day in the 1920s when Herr Himmler takes over the Greek lesson from one of his subordinate teachers.
Translated verse plays may be pushing the envelope of what you actually want to read in high art lit, but Schiller's famous ones are really very good. William Tell manages to make surprising the one thing that anyone knows about Swiss history; the Wallenstein trilogy opens with a surprisingly cinematic play and closes with a study in power, timing, and betrayal; The Maid of Orleans might be more pagan than one would think.
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. (Counterpoint in non-fiction Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale.)
Proof that high art can be hilarious: Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson.
Yes. I've got two copies and still can't remember the title
I'm a Pamuk fan -- I think my favorite is still the first book of his I read - My Name is Red.
For Bolano -- I would recommend The Savage Detectives before 2666 - you can see if Bolana works for you, before you get quite so immersed in suffering.
Am rereading Kesey's Sometimes A Great Notion and thinking hard about who in Wakonda, Oregon, would be Trump supporters if the story took place 55 years later. Most of the population, I think, including the union loggers, and maybe even Viv, the most balanced person in the book. Not Lee, the prodigal son, or Teddy the bartender.
I usually recommend By Night in Chile as a way into Bolaño: short, all his strengths are on display, and if you like it then you can take a crack at the long ones.
I should read those Schiller plays! They've been kicking around the house forever and I think lurid recommends Maria Stuart. I finally got around to Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre not long ago and that was a remarkable weird ride, but as I almost said above, it probably counts as another (highly complex and occult) case of cruelty to youth.
re: 22
You might not think that The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is high art, but it is, with shape and tone matching subject matter in a way rarely seen in non-fiction.
Hard agree. It's amazingly written and constructed.
If you're willing to go the Nobel-Prize-winning-Scandinavian route:
Knut Hamsun, Hunger
Henrik Pontoppidan, Lucky Per
Colin Whitehead's Pulitzer winners (Underground Railroad and The Nickle Boys) were both very good, but both featured cruelty to teens. I put Nickle Boys down for a couple of nights mid-read; I was angry and stewing at how much cruelty was barely changed from straight reporting. Both books have fascinating and sympathetic main characters trying to navigate the world.
Hard agree. It's amazingly written and constructed.
Yes. I read this on the recommendation of someone here (maybe you, ttaM) and it was fabulous.
20. I like Spufford, especially Red Plenty. It took me several tries of On Golden Hill before I finally achieved momentum and enjoyment. Without spoilerage, I found the ending too pat, though.
Apropos of the bomb, have any of you read the Ray Monk biography of Oppenheimer? It's on my medium-length reading list because of lifelong fascination and Monk's Wittgenstein bio being pretty good, but I haven't started it.
I read about 60% of The Making of the Atomic Bomb in high school, while applying to colleges, and certainly loved it then, even though I got bogged down and indefensibly never finished it. (I should!) I would probably have gone a lot more insane that fall if I hadn't had something so engrossing to read, tbh.
I think my tastes overlap very little with most people here, so I'm at a loss to think of anything especially worthy to recommend. Last two novels I read were Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga and Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, and those were both terrific-- although the latter has plenty of violence, most of it covered by the numerous jacket copy spoilers. (It's better than it sounds.)
Actually wait! I thought of a recommendation: In Hazard by Richard Hughes. Maybe you've read it already, ogged? That book rules and this would be a good year to read it.
Books from the past couple of months that I liked and would recommend:
- Jenny Offill, Weather - Don't read this if you didn't like Dept of Speculation, they're basically the same book. I loved both.
- Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give - YA, but the best YA I have read in years.
- Sam Anderson, Boom Town - This felt a little bit like if Susan Orleans was a sportswriter living in OKC. Really really fun.
- Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel - The plot's not interesting and I didn't care about any of the characters, but the writing held me absolutely spellbound.
34: Haven't read the Monk bio. I read American Prometheus , the Bird-Sherwin bio of Oppenheimer. Worthwhile but not revelatory.
34: I think 60% of the way through is not a surprising place to have stopped. The joy of discovery in the early sections has given way to the anxiety of exile and the hard slog of building Oak Ridge and Hanford plus the painstaking development and testing at Los Alamos. The tone of the book has likewise turned. You missed how it turns again as the war continues and the abrupt horror when the bomb is used.
re: 37
I think his discussion of Hiroshima and the aftermath is one of the most powerful parts of the book, and contrasts (deliberately) with the more heroic narrative of the bomb development.
re: 32
I think maybe ajay recommended it, too, and was the original reason I read it.
25.2: *Bolano*
Bolanx.
39: I did recommend it - glad to hear it went down so well with people. AIMHMHB my moment of greatest DHS anxiety was testing positive for explosive residue at LAX security and then realising that my carryon luggage held both "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes and "Afghan Guerrilla Tactics" by Lester Grau... I thought I would never see sunlight again.
We are watching the BBC "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" and it is spurring me to reread the book, which is excellent...
re: 40
I think the best part of the book is his 100 page or so recap of the history of 20th century physics between Rutherford and the lead up to the start of WWII. I'm fairly familiar with that period, and with the physics (as a lay person/philosopher of science, emphatically not in the way that a physicist or historian of physics would be), and still thought it was a great survey and conveyed the excitement and the constant change through that period.
What people liked about the Rhodes book is a good indicator of why it's so amazing: was it the explanations of physics, conveying the moral weight of human suffering, the daunting logistics and huge personalities of the bomb-making effort? There are so many disparate narratives, and they're all wonderfully done.
I read American Prometheus , the Bird-Sherwin bio of Oppenheimer. Worthwhile but not revelatory.
Read this a while back, and...meh. Wound up kind of hating the authors and Oppenheimer. The Monk might be a good tonic.
In Hazard by Richard Hughes
Ooh, this looks great.