The outfits thing is a big deal. In the Martin Beck books it was unintentionally hilarious. You'd be reading about a meticulous murderer and he was wearing a denim suit.
You're Wrong About had a podcast episode about The Stepford Wives. It sounded fun.
You're Wrong About had a podcast episode about The Stepford Wives. It sounded fun.
You're Wrong About had a podcast episode about The Stepford Wives. It sounded fun.
Wow! I never thought that could happen to me.
What about Paul Fussell's Class? It's light and entertaining, but literally anthropology of midcentury America. Also, I think, kind of irritatingly self-congratulatory about how great people exactly like him are, but you can talk about that too.
He would have had a field day at a Trump rally, assuming no one murdered him.
6: Does he place academics in a special category that transcends class?
Yes. Academics and young women who wear shirts that let their nipples poke through.
I can't remember if he gives a third example.
I read parts of How to Win Friends and Influence People in 8th grade. As I recall, it was one of the only books in English in the school library (I was in Israel that year). I hated it so much! But I was vaguely aware that I was also hoping to find a way to my secret goal of being popular.
11: "Goal" isn't the right word -- substitute "fantasy".
Stepford wives is actually not that great, partly because the suspenseful twist we know the resolution of is a big part of the books structure. Maybe one of his others.
He has a character (flaky but likeable) mention Linda Goodman's book, that's the connection there.
The Exurbanites is in that same category of sort of joky social analysis as Class, although even lighter and jokier. Also in the same kind of vein is How To Do Things Right, although that's less social analysis and more personal.
I have a mild preference for things which are well-known enough that I can download them onto my kindle, but I'm in either way.
13.2: I had to look that book up. I've never read an astrology book before!
Find out what's really happening in your life and the lives of those around you. Is he really unstable beneath that placid exterior? Is she marrying you for your money alone? When should you give a wayward spouse the benefit of the doubt? How can you adjust your inner moods to your best advantage, knowing when to push and when to pull back, when to speak up and when to shut up? What is the best time to ask your boss for that raise, your girl for her heart and hand, your brother-in-law for a loan? Learn all this and much, much more from the world-famous astrologer who has helped millions divine their way to happiness, love, and profit by studying the sun signs. Amaze your friends and yourself with your insight into their most hidden characteristics. Be the best that you can possibly be with -- Sun Signs.
That sounds really useful!
Fussell's Class sounds great to me personally.
I think it's good insight into why right-leaning, non-urban America hates the coastal elites -- they think we think like Fussell about them.
Also I think I have a preference for fiction? It's just harder to motivate myself to read nonfiction when I snuggle into bed for the night.
18. sounds good, as do either of the books in 14. Has anyone read any of Erica Jong's books? Or Coffee Tea or Me (1967) ?
LB, I think I remember that you've mentioned that your mom worked as a flight attendant, maybe a polarizing option tp consider for you.
18. sounds good, as do either of the books in 14. Has anyone read any of Erica Jong's books? Or Coffee Tea or Me (1967) ?
LB, I think I remember that you've mentioned that your mom worked as a flight attendant, maybe a polarizing option tp consider for you.
Obviously, we need to have something that covers barbiturates and sex. So, Valley of the Dolls.
Whoops, Coffee Tea or Me is written by a dude who was not an airline employee. not a good idea.
She says "You don't read women authors do ya?"
At least that's what I think I hear her say
Well I say "How would you know, and what would it matter anyway?"
Well she says "Ya just don't seem like ya do"
I said "You're way wrong"
She says "Which ones have you read then?", I say "Read Erica Jong"
I read "Fear of Flying". The only thing I remember is the Zipless Fuck. And a supposed genius that was a failure at wiping his butt.
In maybe high school, I read the Erica Jong books in the wrong order. So I read the one where she leaves the second marriage (How to Save Your Own Life) before reading the one where she left the first marriage and meets the guy in the second marriage. I think they went over my head as to why a woman in the 70s would have been struggling with these issues.
24.2: Intelligence is not a in a single dimension.
22: That sounds like a good choice. I bet there's descriptions of clothes too!
backlisted podcast is an excellent resource for mid century fiction, serious to light, and their website lists alllllll the books they've discussed.
as i'm spending so much time in los angeles i've been reading books/watching movies set in our about it and have almost finished william goldman's adventures in the screen trade - not necessarily strictly mid century but definitely covers the period. also i suspect 50-50 non-fiction/fiction. we watched harper bc of my reading the book, wow isolated good bits in a dreadful movie. you spend ages waiting for lauren bacall to show up again please please please. we were sort of mesmerized into finishing it.
So the rules are, "American writing 1945-1975, focused on middle-to-upper social strata, perhaps preferably fiction?"
I've been curious to read Mary McCarthy's The Group but haven't gotten there yet.
I haven't read it, but would you count Eve's Hollywood as mid-century?
(Author previously recommended by Academic Lurker)
I started The Group, and I found the cultural context so odd that I couldn't get into it. (This may mean it fits the goal of the reading group.) It describes one of the women who decides she wants to be sexually active before marriage, so she starts sleeping with a guy, who has to explain to her what steps to take to avoid getting pregnant.
McCarthy's Groves of Academe is funny.
A few pages of Fussell's Class is enough for me to start rooting for violent revolution. I could actually see it being an effective tool of recruitment for the right...
31: That was what I liked about it!
The cool modern couple makes fun of their old-fashioned friends who insist on fresh produce instead of the cheaper and healthier canned vegetables.
Eve's Hollywood looks great.
The Group looks like it's worth reading, written in the sixties but set in the thirties apparently.
I haven't read Class - IMO an ideal discussion would include scope for appreciating what's still relevant/insightful as well as busting on what's aged badly or individually un=fortunate in the writer's perspective.
If Fussell is a judgemental WASP , maybe it won't be easy to express that he got something right.
From comments so far, Eve's Hollywood (opinionated insightful fiction set in a past recent enough that I can imagine understanding) sounds great to me.
32: Oh! So, the wrong kind of violent revolution?
I recently read Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana" in which they referred to "Spanish champaign." Silly midcentury people didn't know that champaign only comes from a special place in France.
36: Champaign only comes from Illinois and usually stays there.
From comments so far, Eve's Hollywood (opinionated insightful fiction set in a past recent enough that I can imagine understanding) sounds great to me.
And check out the cover, Moby! https://www.amazon.com/Eves-Hollywood-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590178904
I tried to rebrand malt liquor as "Urbana", but failed.
A.S.Byatt
Not american but right period and great clothes.
The quartet beginning with
Virgin Queen.
Oh, nice. Those were good, although very UK specific for an American.
I read The Group in college but don't remember any of it, and I also saw the movie in grad school and also don't remember any of that, except it had very old-fashioned (odd) pacing with songs that dragged and a long Going to a Nevada Ranch to get Divorced! scene, IIRC, which is sort of dropped in apropo to nothing and has nothing to do with the movie otherwise? Maybe I'm mashing together midcentury mishmash?
Eve's Hollywood looks great.
I whole-heartedly agree.
If you are looking to get a window into past attitudes, perhaps choose a book based on a contemporary indicia of success. Like a NYT bestseller from a particular year. Not the fact that its reputation persists (which likely skews the selection).
Something like:
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
Hawaii by James Michener
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
Franny and Zooey by Salinger
Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
Those sound suspiciously like literature.
have a strong aversion to eve babitz, v personal & idiosyncratic. read a recent article re her in the lrb that confirmed for me that she's a firm nope. positive article btw & my aversion not much shared! at any rate i was completely unsurprised to learn she's an enthusiastic maga-er.
46: I was confident that you would have an opinion on her.
I'm interested that you have a strong aversion, and that would make me more cautious about her.
"The Agony and the Ecstacy" is like YA-novel level writing. I read a Katherine Anne Porter short story, "Wandering Judas", which was really good.
35: Sometimes any revolution will do...
40: The Frederica quartet? I read them all years ago and I suspect that almost everyone here would hate them, some more than others. They're such baroquely, multifariously hateable books. I have such ambivalence about Byatt. She's a brilliant person and tremendously gifted writer who has nonetheless not written a single book that, in my opinion, didn't have serious flaws. The Virgin in the Garden was my favorite of the quartet, since it seemed written in a spirit of barely-suppressed bloodcurdling loathing for humanity. Still Life was objectively the best novel of the four, but it didn't have as much fire and sharpness to it (opinions may differ here). Babel Tower was fueled by grotesquerie and just hard to read. The final book sucked enough that it would be embarrassing to admit that I remember what it was called. Anyway I never do book clubs because I got no filter.
I bought Byatt's "Possession". I never read it, because that seemed a clear step too far.
Yeah, Possession was probably the most epic struggle between talent and flaws. I was almost angry when I finished it, because it could have been so great.
If you all pick something hard and I end up giving up, you'll have only yourselves to blame.
It's only partially their fault. Possession is 9/10ths of the flaw.
48: I like the Elvis Costello cover.
Holy shit. I just realized that scofflaw is literally just scoff-law. I've always pronounced it sco-flaw. I was about to make a sco-flaw joke when it dawned on me that I'd just be reverting to the original form of the pun in 54.
"Hick" is a play off of a famous book about a whale by Herman Melville.
Ironically, Moby's username is actually a reference to 60s jam rock band "Moby Grape".
which spawned the obvious porno, Maybe Grope.
I'm not going to check that, because I would be so disappointed if it turned out you were lying.
If you people are serious about Valley of the Dolls, I am totally in.
I'd also be up for Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, but that probably wouldn't be nearly as much fun. Greene was a convert to the Church of Rome, and that conversion experience was basically Catholic guilt on steroids.
Is there a novelization of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls?
I knew someone who complained to her boyfriend that he didn't read enough. So he read the novelization of "Cliffhanger". If nothing else, it was a masterful piece of trolling.
I think maybe I did read it, but maybe just the sex parts.
I don't want to be buried in a sex doll cemetery.
Sex Doll Sematary. A new collaboration between Stephen King and Chuck Tingle.
I'd be up for either VotD or The Group. I read The Group as a teenager, because my mother had been horrified by the sex scene in it.
If it doesn't have to be American, I'd recommend as mid-century fiction Elizabeth Jane Howard: The Long View, or Something in Disguise. They might be disqualified as literature, though.
Vote?
a) The Group
b) Eve's Hollywood
c) Valley of the Dolls
all have a few positive mentions above.
since we're less likely to have detailed exchanges about points raised in the books, I think less need for absolute consensus. That is, as long as there's enough centripetal tendency from at least several people choosing the same book, if people read different books and talk about them that could well work. (I started to type cohere but then realized where I was). That said, Eve's Hollywood sounds great to me, more so if the writer is flawed. Reading in September, discussion sometime in Oct?
I would be in for any of those. I absolutely loved The Group, and while I've read VotD I don't remember it much. I would be happy to read Eve's Hollywood.
B or C for me. But A is not a dealbreaker.