His best known book is a shrill, vituperate, uncompromising, honest, prophetic jeremiad. But Generation of Vipers (1942) is largely forgotten today except for its short screed damning a certain type of middle aged club ("a solid term") woman whom he famously called, "Mom," For five decades he was a hugely popular writer of fiction and non fiction on subjects ranging from deep sea fishing to psychology to the physics of nuclear weaponry to ecology. His writings in science fiction were pioneering. He is the writer who has had the most influence on my world view.
Philip Gordon Wylie was born May 12, 1902, in North Beverly, Massachusetts, and died October 25, 1971, in Miami, Florida, his home since the late 1930s. He began writing as a teen and never stopped. A complete bibliography of his writings is virtually impossible to compile because, as a free lancer, he wrote about nearly anything for almost anybody. Two biographies exist: Philip Wylie: The Man and His Work, by Robert Howard Barshay; Philip Wylie, by Truman Frederick Keefer. Both provide selected bibliographies.
Wylie's legions of critics scoffed at his "pulp fiction," which he could churn out at the incredible rate of a novel a weekend, but it paid the bills. Best of that genre was his Crunch and Des stories, technically accurate yarns about deep sea fishing off Florida which ran in the Saturday Evening Post before being assembled into books. He scorned those critics that he called the Liberal Intellectual Establishment (LIE), whom he first encountered during the initial years of The New Yorker. They repaid him with an enduring silence. His serious work was seldom reviewed in the reigning critical publications they controlled, except to pan it.
Wylie was no doctrinaire conservative, however. He scorned the business first conservatives of his day -- and the junk they persuaded us to buy -- in no less apocalyptic words than he used to excoriate the Marxist enthused liberals. What he would have made of today's Tea Party ignoramuses can only be dreamed of. He was too much the iconoclast to even cling to the psychoanalytic theories he espoused. For Philip Wylie thought always as a scientist does. His views were always tentative, ready to be trumped instantly by new facts. The years between the plausible fiction of Gladiator to the mature philosophy of The Magic Animal show steady growth in the depth and breadth of the man in tandem with the proliferation of science and its methods in the world.
Wylie's best (In order of publication):
Gladiator (1930, Fiction)
Who has not dreamed of bringing overwhelming physical strength to bear on the wrongs of the day, whether caused by society's bullies or world hunger. Wylie's Hugo Danner was such a man. A decade before Superman debuted in the comics of the day, Wylie gave Danner all the attributes of the Man of Steel. Despite the similarities, Superman's creators say Gladiator did not influence them, but many reviewers and critics aren't sure.
Unlike Superman, Danner came to realize that all of the world's ills would not yield to overwhelming physical strength. And that his "gift" precluded him from both a normal life and happiness within his world. He appeals to the only higher power than himself and at the end is granted a releaving thunder bolt.
Where did his strength come from? His father, a chemist, experimented with the mechanisms of life in his home lab, his only refuge from a dour, fanatically religious wife. In his enthusiasm for the potential of his lab results, he asserts his "rights" one more time with the indifferent but yielding lady and then drugs and injects her. Hugo is on his way.
Finley Wren: His Notions and Opinions (1934, Fiction)
Not a conventionally plotted novel, but a fictional narrative as told episodically to "Phil Wylie" by Finley Wren over a weekend of slightly drunken, occasionally libidinous, slyly philosophical, goings on with sundry friends and acquaintances of Finley. It begins in mid conversation and ends in mid sentence.
Phil and Finley meet by accident in a speak easy, hit it off and Finley declares, "I am going to tell you the story of my life." We are first introduced to Gordon Wren, Finley's father and a doctor, a rather malignant character, cold, even cruel, and logically illogical in most matters -- a professional facade.
We next learn of a bastardy case which the under age girl successfully pins on Finley, who indeed among others has known her biblically, but not not when fatherhood could have resulted in this particular child. It was a time when all involved, even tangentially, with births out of wedlock were punished, including the child. This episode channels a similar incident in Wylie's life.
After his false conviction for fathering a child with a child, Finley ships out as the lounge pianist aboard a cruise ship to Europe. A twenty-four hour romance with an older woman leads him to his advertising career and happy wedlock with the lady's daughter. Hope. He is quite a success financially in this career, and happy until Hope dies in his arms after a fire. Here Wylie paints a vivid and tragic scene.
Finley writes fables as a relief from his day job. They are strewn haphazardly throughout the book. The best of a brilliant breed is the saga of the 1,000 mile man who takes a pit stop just off New York City from a journey among the stars -- an occasion for imaginative pandemonium. We will meet this literary device again in Opus 21.
Devastated and lonely after Hope's death, Finley meets and marries Helen, a superficially dazzling bitch on wheels from the smart set of New York in the 1920's. Helen destroys everyone and everything she touches, especially Terry, her prior husband. It had been Finley's turn just two days before he and Phil had met.
Finley tells much of his story at the Dwyers home on Long Island, where multiple experiments in human relations are afoot. Finley has been a frequent guest for weekends with other sundry people, who accept Phil as okay because they all like and admire Finley.
That's enough. Summarizing the book isn't working. The sweep and brilliance of Philip Wylie's prose infuses the bare bones of the narrative, and imputes his characters, with life. In this example Finley is talking:
When the air becomes hazy and the sun warm at an abnormal period in the solstices, it is difficult to maintain a certain realism about yourself and your life. Such a day recalls others. I remember an afternoon long ago in New York. It was January. But by some necromancy the thermometer rose abruptly to seventy-two. Hope and I got on a bus without coats and hats. We rode to a place where neither of us had ever been and we had tea at a restaurant we had never seen. It was two stories high and filled with curios. I'm reasonably sure that it existed in space and time only that one day. The proprietor looked Irish but he spent most of the time were there reading a book printed in Japanese. The upper region of the place contained innumerable canaries which sang incessantly -- even though we never saw any of them.
Though a stylistic experiment conducted early in a young writer's life, Finley Wren is considered by some to be Wylie's best novel. Many of the literary conceits and philosophical views for which he became famous are embryos herein.
Generation of Vipers (1942, Non Fiction)
This most famous of Wylie's works is a series of splenetic essays scribbled in haste and biblical rage.
The title is from Matthew 12 34:
"33. Either make the tree good and his fruit good;or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.
"34. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."
"Vipers . . .was written -- I should say it was dashed off -- between the twelfth of May and the fourth of July in 1942. That was the year after Pearl Harbor . . . but the period of "phony war" prevailed in Europe, action in the Pacific had hardly begun and the American people were apathetic. I had come home to Miami Beach after a stretch in "government war information"--ill, discouraged and frustrated. This book represented private catharsis, a catalogue of what I felt to be wrong morally, spiritually and intellectually with my fellow citizens." (From the 1955 annotated edition.)
The philosophical heart of Vipers is found in the psychoanalytic theories of Carl Gustav Jung, with whom Wylie studied and corresponded over a period of years. With Jung, he contended that the yin and yang of archetyptical memories of primitive humans suffused our mental states at both the conscious and unconscious levels. In simple summary, we instinctively feel and call it thinking. We believe and defend opposing myths. There are the few exceptions, but today's mentalities are still mired in the hunter gatherer eras.
From this base he attacked the myopia of doctors (half of the physical symptoms that present themselves have an undiagnosed mental origin), the perversion of the Cinderella myth (virtue seeking virtue for its own reward vs seduction of the prince for dominance and gain), the sanitizing of American history ("No teacher, for the past generation, has greeted her roomful of fresh young morning faces with the words: 'It is almost inevitable that a goodly proportion of you will die for your country; arrange your thinking to suit that fact.'"), and other of our icons: the church, the military, doctors ("With a few notable distinctions, the medicos have merely bellowed wrathfully at progress, and there is in the sound of their voices too much of the tone of a baby bereaved of its candy."), businessmen, statesmen, professors, Congressmen, the common man ("'God,' the saying might also read, ' must hate the common people because he made them so common.'"), sexual attitudes and of course, "Mom."
"Mom, however, is a great little guy. Pulling pants onto her by these words, let us look at mom.
"She is a middle-aged puffin with an eye like a hawk that has just seen a rabbit twitch far below. She is about twenty-five pounds over weight, with no sprint, but sharp heels and a hard backhand. . . In a thousand of her there is not sex appeal enough to budge a hermit ten paces off a rock ledge. . . If a man kisses her with any earnestness, it is time for mom to feel for her pocketbook, and this occasionally does happen."
No wonder that Wylie is considered the greatest misogynist of our times. That he was talking about one variant of the species, and that he loved women in general and certain women in particular, did not spare him the wrath of a great many women desperately striving for independence and equality.
Eventually he talked of Jesus, the "Man on the Cross."
"The one great positive idea which Christ repeatedly tried to express, was the thought that no individual human being could know himself unless his inner honesty was complete. . . The light to which he so often made reference, was the light of truth -- inner truth. . . .
"Christ asked only that you set truth first ahead of all other fealties, and that you examine yourself, not your brother, with its light. Whenever the door of hell opens, the voice you hear is your own. Darkness congeals around us where we stand and it is too late to put a nickel on the drum."
Finally, in a concluding chapter, he lifts the veil on what could be if we but only embrace the twin virtues of a passion for democracy and a fealty to free expression of man's inner truth honestly arrived at.
Night Unto Night (1944, Fiction)
An Essay on Morals (1947, Non Fiction)
Opus 21 (1949, Fiction)
The Disappearance (1951, Fiction)
The Answer (1955, Fiction)
The Magic Animal (1968, Non Fiction)
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Thoughts of Julie Harris (1925 - 2013)
Ken Burn's The Civil War replayed this week on public television. Many of the famous voices who spoke for his still images of that conflict were hauntingly familiar -- none more than Julie Harris as the southern diarist Mary Chestnut.
Julie Harris has died recently, a fact respectfully noted in all the serious media. This is as it should be for she was a great actor. My memory of her, helped by on line research, is surprisingly concentrated in the 1950's, though her career only ended with her death this year. I missed a lot, but what I saw (to channel Spencer Tracy on Katherine Hepburn) was "cherse."
Her debut was as Frankie in Carson McCullers' Member of the Wedding with co-stars Ethel Waters and Brandon deWilde. This fine trio first played Broadway in 1952, and recorded it on film as well. I saw it in 1953 at a special free showing offered by my employer. I was a new college graduate that year breaking into journalism as a tyro reporter for the Daily Oklahoman. The Oklahoman was no better a newspaper than it had to be, but I am grateful at least for that lovely, out of character, gift.
The Frankie character was that of a lonely lass of 12, which I am amazed to learn sixty years later was played by Harris at 25. Frankie fantasized about a wedding in the family, convincing herself that she would be happily welcomed to accompany them on their honeymoon. Harris made you ache for Frankie's inevitable, casual rejection by the departing couple.
That same year Harris starred in the wildly different role of Sally Bowles on Broadway, and later (1955) on film, in I Am A Camera, based on Christopher Isherwood's Good-bye to Berlin, a memoir of Germany primed for the Nazi era. Harris played the vivaciously amoral Sally as if she had learned to party in the womb. Her film co-star was British actor Lawrence Harvey, as her willing chump. Isherwood's musings were also transmuted into the musical Cabaret!.
Next was her turn opposite the incomparable James Dean in the film classic East of Eden. She shifted almost imperceptibly from the intended of Dean's insufferable brother, beloved by Dean's father, played masterfully by Raymond Massie, to the side of Dean, who has been rejected by his God-fearing father as spawn of a wayward wife plying the old trade in town. Jo Van Fleet. in cameo as the mother, and Burl Ives, as the local sheriff, complete a stellar cast that act a taut script picked from John Steinbeck's sprawling novel..
My last remembered encounter was perhaps her best for me. It was a Hallmark reprise on television of Jean
Anouilh's 1952 play The Lark, with Harris as Joan of Arc. She won a Tony for the play, which I never saw, but then I never saw her in person on the stage where she lived and dominated. Her record of eleven Tony nomination and five awards is unequaled.
I know I saw her one other time, but memory fails. She had a supporting role in an excellent but unheralded 1967 film, Reflections in a Golden Eye, based squarely and uncompromisingly by director John Huston on Garson McCuller's dark novel of sexual conduct on an army base. Marlon Brando as the latent homosexual officer and Elizabeth Taylor as his sneering dominating wife (cavorting in the bushes with Brian Keith) displayed such scenery chewing fire power that Harris as Keith's neglected wife (who can blame him?) faded away.
Julie Harris also won three Emmy's and was nominated once for an Oscar (Frankie!). In later years she was all over television but not for me. My aversion for the tube's offerings is such that, except for PBS, I seldom turn it on. Her life and career is extensively reprised by Wikipedia and a host of other sites known to Google. I would have most liked to see her as Emily Dickinson in The Bell of Amherst and as Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.
Julie Harris has died recently, a fact respectfully noted in all the serious media. This is as it should be for she was a great actor. My memory of her, helped by on line research, is surprisingly concentrated in the 1950's, though her career only ended with her death this year. I missed a lot, but what I saw (to channel Spencer Tracy on Katherine Hepburn) was "cherse."
Her debut was as Frankie in Carson McCullers' Member of the Wedding with co-stars Ethel Waters and Brandon deWilde. This fine trio first played Broadway in 1952, and recorded it on film as well. I saw it in 1953 at a special free showing offered by my employer. I was a new college graduate that year breaking into journalism as a tyro reporter for the Daily Oklahoman. The Oklahoman was no better a newspaper than it had to be, but I am grateful at least for that lovely, out of character, gift.
The Frankie character was that of a lonely lass of 12, which I am amazed to learn sixty years later was played by Harris at 25. Frankie fantasized about a wedding in the family, convincing herself that she would be happily welcomed to accompany them on their honeymoon. Harris made you ache for Frankie's inevitable, casual rejection by the departing couple.
That same year Harris starred in the wildly different role of Sally Bowles on Broadway, and later (1955) on film, in I Am A Camera, based on Christopher Isherwood's Good-bye to Berlin, a memoir of Germany primed for the Nazi era. Harris played the vivaciously amoral Sally as if she had learned to party in the womb. Her film co-star was British actor Lawrence Harvey, as her willing chump. Isherwood's musings were also transmuted into the musical Cabaret!.
Next was her turn opposite the incomparable James Dean in the film classic East of Eden. She shifted almost imperceptibly from the intended of Dean's insufferable brother, beloved by Dean's father, played masterfully by Raymond Massie, to the side of Dean, who has been rejected by his God-fearing father as spawn of a wayward wife plying the old trade in town. Jo Van Fleet. in cameo as the mother, and Burl Ives, as the local sheriff, complete a stellar cast that act a taut script picked from John Steinbeck's sprawling novel..
My last remembered encounter was perhaps her best for me. It was a Hallmark reprise on television of Jean
Anouilh's 1952 play The Lark, with Harris as Joan of Arc. She won a Tony for the play, which I never saw, but then I never saw her in person on the stage where she lived and dominated. Her record of eleven Tony nomination and five awards is unequaled.
I know I saw her one other time, but memory fails. She had a supporting role in an excellent but unheralded 1967 film, Reflections in a Golden Eye, based squarely and uncompromisingly by director John Huston on Garson McCuller's dark novel of sexual conduct on an army base. Marlon Brando as the latent homosexual officer and Elizabeth Taylor as his sneering dominating wife (cavorting in the bushes with Brian Keith) displayed such scenery chewing fire power that Harris as Keith's neglected wife (who can blame him?) faded away.
Julie Harris also won three Emmy's and was nominated once for an Oscar (Frankie!). In later years she was all over television but not for me. My aversion for the tube's offerings is such that, except for PBS, I seldom turn it on. Her life and career is extensively reprised by Wikipedia and a host of other sites known to Google. I would have most liked to see her as Emily Dickinson in The Bell of Amherst and as Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Authors and Books In My Life
A Work In progress . . .
Childhood
I cannot remember when books were not an important part of my life. My mother read to me while I could not read for myself. Three or four of us neighborhood kids would cluster around on the floor by her rocking chair in our living room and listen to the adventures of the Hardy Boys et al and to classics like The Secret Garden and (Mother's favorite) Anne of Green Gables. (One of the rocking chair cluster of kids was Ann-next-door, but not with an "e" and I had the red hair.)
Best of all: tales of the Land of OZ. Mother owned about thirty of these treasures in their original hard copy (Which, alas, were destroyed in a fire years later) by their originator, L(yman). Frank Baum, and his successor, Ruth Plumly Simpson.
I was not one of those who entered kindergarten fully able to read, but by the end of the first grade I was the avid bibliophile I remain to this day. Mother was proud of me and my new skill, but you couldn't tell by her usual reaction to my new obsession. "Get your nose out of that book and go outside and play! It's summer!" she would nag.
Our house was small, and because I could read any place and in any posture, I was always in her way. So I would leave with my book of the moment. I had a favorite tree with a branch just right for stretching out without holding on. I would spend hours there, absorbed, shaded and hidden by the foliage. Often I now would read for myself books that Mother had read to us in years past.
My first favorite author was L. Frank Baum. Next was Hugh Lofting and his Doctor Doolittle tales which I found in the library of a family friend. Then I became enamored of the Tarzan books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which I discovered in our family bookcase. Tarzan taught me the lore and lure of the jungle and how to read with a dictionary. Mother helped with that. "You will remember better if you look it up yourself. We had an ancient tattered Funk & Wagnells dictionary, but, no, she never once ordered me to "Get out your Funk 'n Wagnells!" Mother was a lady, and you had damn well better know it.
Tarzan led inexorably to the true animal adventure stories of Osa and Martin Johnson, including her classic, "I Married Adventure." I remember waiting for the bus home after checking it out from the Tulsa Public Library. An elderly man spotting the title. asked, "Why do you want to read that book about getting married? You're too young to get married!" All I could do was stutter. Perhaps to him marriage was the ultimate adventure.
Tulsa's public library was the first place I learned to get to on my own by bus. A classic Carnegie edifice, it always ran a summer reading program for the school aged to help them retain skills learned the previous year. You signed up and got a paper form with room for thirty books. Fill one out and you could get another plus a certificate of your accomplishment.. All books counted except comics. I earned three certificates one summer. I remember these favorite books by favored authors:
L. Frank Baum The Wizard of OZ; The Scarecrow of OZ; Ozma of OZ; The Lost King of OZ
Victor Appleton Tom Swift and His Airship
(Ed Stratemeyer)
Hugh Lofting Doctor Doolittle
W. M. Reed The Earth for Sam; The Stars for Sam
Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes; The Beasts of Tarzan; Tarzan and the Golden Lion
Steven W. Meader T-Model Tommy
Joseph A. Altsheler The Riflemen of Ohio
Albert PaysonTerhune Lad, A Dog
Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Felix Salten Bambi
A D Howden-Smith Porto Bello Gold
R. L. Stevenson Treasure Island; Kidnapped
Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book; Just So Stories
Rand McNally (pub) World Atlas: Ideal Edition; Atlas of the United States
Osa Johnson I Married Adventure
Alfred Ollivant Bob, Son of Battle
Adolescence
These were the fallow years for reading as I discovered other goals and pastimes worth pursuing, mostly sports: golf, basketball, baseball, football, girl watching. I was best at basketball and golf, but was only instinctively adept at one on that list. But when the hormones were still I often turned to a book. My parents belonged to the Book-of-the-Month club, which insured a steady stream of new volumes. They occasionally let me pick bonus books, which is how I acquired and dutifully read the The Complete Short Stories of O'Henry, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
Just before the war, Pocket Books made their debut as the first popular paper backs. Still in my library are two such: Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. They survive from among the many forgotten ones my parents bought during those years of shortage and rationing.
Occasionally less exalted literature occupied my attention. "How's Amber?" my grandmother asked slyly. I can't remember just where I got a copy of Kathleen Windsor's Forever Amber in my 13th year. Nor do I remember the book's historical themes such as the fire of London and an outbreak of the plague. I do remember the "good parts" which were a text book example of how to sleep your way to the top in 15th century England, as well as an educational experience any early teen would relish. It was banned in Boston, proscribed by the Catholic church and bowdlerized by Hollywood's Hays Office. You could love Amber for the enemies she made.
After Amber I became absorbed in a sea adventure tale by Garland Roark, Wake of the Red Witch, set in the islands of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Some of his passages amidst the islands were purple indeed. Lotsa native girls and slipping sarongs.
Other less salacious authors became favorites as well. Maybe Amber led me to the revisionist historical novels of Kenneth Roberts -- with help from my mother. Northwest Passage, still in my library, bears her signature and the date 1946. So, too, does Lydia Bailey, only with my name in her handwriting. Roberts' books kindled a passion for American history still burning.
Non fiction didn't really grab me at first. The dumbed down history books for children bear some blame. One that did grab, and is still in my library, which I might have read just before adolescence is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Published as No. 23 by Pocket Books, its flyleaf faintly shows my name in Mother's hand writing dated 1939. My first American history book was was cribbed from Mother. Her signature and date of 1944 on the flyleaf shows when The Beards' Basic History of the United States was first in our home. By Charles A. and Mary R. Beard.
Certain books are remembered as most significant. The first of these was my father's doing. A shy, quiet upright man with ambitions to heights he was unable to reach, he was also a slow halting reader. He stuck mostly to literature that would help him advance his business career. One of these was the father of all self help books, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. I was shy and awkward, too, and here was a way out of my social backwater. I read and studied it and tried to put its precepts into practice. Modest success came in my final year of high school -- I think.
College
My early college years were a period of adjustment. There is little time for reading other than text books when you are pledging a fraternity, learning to drink beer and working overtime on the college daily paper. I also attended some classes. The only textbook of significance that I remember was Paul Samuelson's Economics. I enjoyed my first brush with the dismal science, and have been its avid student ever since. I also remember two semesters of statistics, but not the names of the texts or their authors. Perversely, what most others found deadly dull, I found fascinating and insightful.
My reading changed radically in my final two years when I fell in with a group of bohemians (and out with my fraternity brothers) who were reading literature and debating politics from perspectives new to me. Two books figured prominently in my transformation. The first was Public Opinion, a Walter Lippmann study circa 1922 about the "pictures in our heads" that formed opinions held by the public and how it was cooked and fed to us by the quaintly primitive media of the day.. I was persuaded to read it by a friendly journalism professor, but never wrote to thank him. I have continued to read Walter's works ever since.
The second was Philip Wylie's philippic, Generation of Vipers. "You got to read this," my roommate, Don Tucker, exclaimed. "This guy trashes everybody!" And so it seemed through the first reading of the misanthropic Vipers. But there were seeds of hope amid this "compleate indictment" of our self induced self satisfaction during the patriotic days of World War II. And I had found my favorite author of all time. My Wylie collection continues to grow and improve, although his signed and dedicated books have been getting rather pricey of late.
It was in the days of the Bohemian Co-op that I began to read again at my earlier pace. (See my blog post, When Faith Left, for more on the Co-op.) One of my roommates, Henry F. (Hank) Beechhold, was getting his masters in English lit by writing a thesis on James Joyce's Ulysses. I made it through Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but was not -- and never have been -- able to master Joyce's more demanding works, even with Hank's steady nagging. He did successfully introduce me to Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Stendhal's, The Red and the Black and Aldous Huxley's Point, Counterpoint. Huxley in particular remains a favorite.
On my own, and to Hank's displeasure, I began an intense flirtation with that didactic grand dame of Capitalism, Ayn Rand. Earlier I had seen the film version of The Fountainhead, and ultimately read (and reread) the book. I still love it, although, with a greater detachment -- distance even -- from her underlying philosophy. She did teach me not to live my life through others, including her.
The Long Beyond
After college my habit was set. Aside from brief periods when work interfered, I have read constantly: for education and pleasure; properly in a chair; indolently in bed; graphically while enthroned; riding in cars, buses, trains and planes; while eating, watching the tube, and listening to music. (Never, though, while riding a bicycle, diving a car, playing golf or enjoying sex. It is sometimes necessary to put the book down and live.)
About six years ago I branched out. To the pleasant avocations of collecting and reading books, I added the hobby of selling them on line, usually after a reading. I use the on line services of the Advanced Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com), a subsidiary of Amazon.com. A few of the books listed below are for sale at my nom de book, BruceGBooks. ABE has a vast data base of millions of titles searchable by author, title, publisher, year of publication and other keys. You can also find me among its 30 thousand or so booksellers world wide by a similar route: click on Book Sellers and find and search or browse my store of about 500 titles.
Most of my sale books are hard cover, priced above $10. Few are old, fewer still at all valuable. No Gutenberg prints or Shakespeare folios among them. If a few are overpriced it's because I really don't care to sell to anyone who does not value them as I do. And A Voice to Sing With, signed "Bruce. Love. Joan Baez," and priced at $1,000 is an example. Maybe some other Bruce with the same infatuation as I will bite one day. A growing number in the inventory are signed or inscribed (dedicated) by author. Not one of those vile inventions known as ebooks is on offer.. How does an author sign one of those?
The list of books read that follows is intended to be comprehensive and is ordered alphabetically by author. Rather than continuing this rambling narrative. , I have deployed a set of symbols to date and rank by preference each author and each of his works. An example:
Lippmann, Walter* A Public Opinion+++*; A Preface to Morals++;
Drift and Mastery
(1) (4) (2) (3) (4)(5)
Translation: (1) Author's last name, first name in bold face type. (2) C for childhood, A for adolescence, A for adulthood. (3) Book title in italics. (4) + Liked and recommended; ++ Outstanding read; +++ Great favorite, read and reread; [Blank] Read but no strong opinions; - Not recommended. (5) * I have written or probably will write about the author and this book especially as an separate post to this blog. If no book followes an author's name, I plan to read him Any Day Now. If a book title is not in italics I haven't read it yet but will some day.
A bbott,
Elizabeth Haiti
Bellamy, Edward Looking Backward
Bell, Daniel The Coming of Post-Industrial Society
Bellow, Saul Humbolt's Gift; Adventures of Augie March
Benatovich, Beth (Ed.) What We Know So Far
Bernstein, Jeremy A Comprehensible World; Three Degrees Above Zero
Bierce, Ambrose The Devil's Dictionary
Bischoff, John Paul Mr. Iba: Basketball's Aggie Iron Duke
Blackmore, Susan The Meme Machine
Blaikie, Thomas To the Manner Born
Blake, William Songs of Innocence and Experience
Bloom, Harold The Book of J; The Western Canon
Bohailian, Chris The Buffalo Soldier
Boswell, James
Boulding, Kenneth E. (Ed.) The Economics of Human Betterment
Bowen, Catherine Drinker Miracle At Philadelphia
Branch, Taylor Parting the Waters: America in the King Years: 1954-63
Brant, Irving The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning
Bradbury, Ray Fahrenheit 451
Braun, Ernest; Macdonald, Stuart Revolution in Minature
Brenton, Denise; Largent, Chris The Soul of Economics
Brodie, Fawn Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History
Broder, David The Party's Over
Bromfield, Louis The Farm
Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl The Good Earth
Buckley, William God and Man At Yale; Overdrive
Bunyan, John Pilgrim's Progress
Burnett, Frances Hodgson The Secret Garden
Burns, James MacGregor Presidential Government; The Workship of Democracy;
The Vineyard of Liberty
Burns, Jennifer Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right
Burroughs, Edgar Rice Tarzan of the Apes; The Return of Tarzan; The Beasts of
Tarzan; Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar; The Son of
Tarzan; Jungle Tales of Tarzan; Tarzan the Untamed;
Tarzan the Terrible; Tarzan and the Golden Lion;
Tarzan Lord of the Jungle; Tarzan Triumphant
Butler, Samuel The Way of all Flesh
Caldwell, Erskin Tobacco Road
Campbell, Joseph Myths to Live By
Capote, Truman Other Voices, Other Rooms; Breakfast at Tiffany's;
In Cold Blood
Caroll, Lewis Alice In Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass
Carr, J. Revell Seeds of Discontent: The Deep Roots of the American
Revolution 1650 -- 1750
Carson, Rachel Silent Spring; The Sea Around US
Carwardine, Richard Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
Case. James Competition: The Birth of a New Science
Cather, Willa
Chambers, Whittaker Witness
Chandler, Raymond
Chaucer, Geoffrey Canterbury Tales
Chayefsky, Paddy
Childe, V. Gordon Man Makes Himself
Childs, Marquis W. Swden: The Middle Way; Ethics in a Business Society
Churchill, Sir Winston Thoughts and Adventures; Great Contemporaries
Cleland, John Fanny Hill
Clooney, Nick The Movies that Changed Us
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Commager, Henry Steele The Empire of Reason
Conant, James B. On Understanding Science
Coon, Carl One Planet, One People
Cooper, Helene The House at Sugar Beach
Costain, Thomas
Cozzens, James Gould
D
Davies, Joseph E. Mission To Moscow
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Carusoe
Descartes, Rene
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities; A Christmas Carol
Dodge, Mary Mapes
Donne, John
Dos Pasos, John
Dostoyevsky, Fedor The Brothers Karamosov
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
E - F - G
Eisley, Loren
Elliot, T. S.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Farrell, James T.
Falkner, William Sanctuary; Requiem For a Nun
Feiffer, Jules Sick, Sick, Sick
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Flaubert, Gustave Madam Bovary
Foote, Shelby
Fordham, Frieda An Introduction to Jung's Psychology
Forster, E, M.
Frank, Anne Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Franklin, Benjamin Autobiography; Poor Richard's Almanac
Freemantle, Anna (ed) The Age of Belief
Freud, Sigmund A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis;
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego;
The Future of An Illusion
Friedan, Betty The Feminine Mystique; The Fountain of Age
Friedman, Milton
Frost, Robert
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Gardner, Earl Stanley
Garland, Hamlin
Geisel, Theodor Seuss The Cat in the Hat
George, Henry Progress and Poverty
Gibran, Khalil
Golden, Harry
Goodman, Paul Growing Up Absurd
Goodman, Paul; Percival Communitas
Gould, Stephen Jay
Grafton, Sue "N" Is For Noose
Gray, Zane Riders of the Purple Sage
Gunther, John
Guthrie, A. B.
H - I - J
Halberstam, David
Haley, Alex Roots
Hall, Edward T. The Silent Language
Hammett, Dashiell
Hamlin, Oscar Son of the Middle Border
Hampshire, Stuart (ed) The Age of Reason
Hansberry, Lorraine A Raisin in the Son
Hardy, Thomas
Harrington, Michael
Harris, Thomas A., MD I'm OK--You're OK
Hart, Moss
Hart, Brett
Hartsog, Jan de
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Hayward, De Bose
Hazlitt, Henry Economics in One Lesson
Heffner, Richard A Documentary History of the United States
Heggen, Thomas Mr Roberts
Heinlein, Robert
Hellman, Lillian Scoundrel Time; The Little Foxes; Another part of the
Forest
Hemmingway, Ernest
Henry, O.
Hersey, John
Heyerdahl, Thor Kon-Tiki; Aku-Aku
Hilton, James Lost Horizon
Hobbs, Thomas
Hoffer, Eric The True Believer
Homer
Hooker, Richard M*A*S*H Goes to Maine
Hume, David
Hunter, Evan
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Huxley, Julian Evolution In Action
Irving, John
Isherwood, Christopher Good - Bye to Berlin
Jackson, Shirley
James, William
Jastrow, Joseph Freud: His Dream and Sex Theories
Jones, James From Here To Eternity
Joyce, James Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
K - L - M
Kafka, Franz
Keillor, Garrison
Keefer, Truman Frederick Philip Wylie
Kennan, George Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin;
American Diiplomacy
Kerouac, Jack On the Road
Keys, Frances Parkinson Dinner at Antoines
Kirk, Russell
Kohler, Wolfgang Gestalt Psychology
Krutch, Joseph Wood
L'Amour, Louis
Langer, Susanne Philosophy in a New Key
Lardner, Ring
Lardner, Ring Jr.
Lawrence, D. H.
Lawrence, Jerome; Lee, Robert E. Inherit The Wind
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
Le Guin, Ursula
Leopold, Aldo Sand County Almanac
Letwin, William The Origins of Scientific Economics
Lewis, Oscar
Linder, Robert The Fifty Minute Hour; Must You Conform
Lippmann, Walter
Lock, John
Lofting, Hugh
London, Jack South Sea Tales; The Sea Wolf;
Burning Daylight; Call of the Wild
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth The Scarlet Letter
Lowell, James Russell
Lucretius The Nature of Things
MacDonald, John D.
Machiavelli, Niccolo The Prince
Manchester, William
Marx, Karl
Maslow, Abraham H. Religions, Values and Peak-Experiences
McCarthy, Mary
McCullers, Carson
McMurtry, Larry
McNeill, William H.
McPhee, John
Mead, Margaret Coming of Age in Samoa; Male and Female
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Metalious, Grace
Michener, James Hawaii; The Source; Centennial; Chesapeake;
South Sea Tales
Mill, John Stuart
Miller, Arthur Death of a Salesman
Miller, Henry
Milton, John
Mitchell, Margaret Gone With the Wind
Montaigne, Michel
Moore, Sir Thomas
Morrison, Samuel Eliot
Morley, Christopher
Muller, Herbert J. The Uses of the Past
Mumford, Lewis
N - O - P - Q
Nabokov, Vladimir
Nash, Ogden The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash
Neustadt, Richard Presidential Power
Nevins, Allan
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Ninn Anaisis
Nordhoff, Charles; Hall, James Norman Mutiny On The Bounty; Men Against the Sea;
Pitcairn's Island
Oates, Joyce Carol
O'Conner, Edwin
O'Hara, John Ten North Frederick
Orwell, George Animal Farm; Nineteen Eighty-four
Padover, Saul K. Jefferson
Paine, Thomas
Paretsky, Sara
Parker, Dorothy
Parkinson, C. Northcote Parkinson's Law; The Law and the Profits;
The Evolution of Political Thought;
In-laws and Outlaws
Parkman, Francis
Petras, Kathryn and Ross Age Doesm't Matter Unless You're a Cheese
Plath, Sylvia
Plato The Last Days of Socrates
Poe, Edgar Allan
Porter, Gene Stratton Girl of the Limberlost
Porter, Katherine Ann
Prescott, William H.
Puzo, Mario The Godfather
Pyle, Ernie Brave Men
Pyle, Howard
Queen, Ellery
R - S - T -U
Radin, Max The Law and You
Rand, Ayn The Fountainhead; Atlas Shrugged;
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal;
The Night of January 28th
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan Cross Creek
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Richter, Conrad
Riesman, David The Lonely Crowd; Individualism Reconsidered.
Robbins, Harold
Roberts, Kenneth
Roth, Philip
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques The Social Contract
Russell, Bertrand The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Sagan, Carl The Cosmic Connection
Salinger, J. D. Catcher in the Rye; Franny and Zoie
Sanburg, Carl Lincoln
Saroyan, William
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
Schulberg, Budd What Makes Sammy Run?
Shakespeare, William
Shaw, George Bernard Androcles and the Lion; Pygmalion;
Back to Methuselah; Caesar and Cleopatra;
Saint Joan; Major Barbara; Man and
Superman; Candida; The Deil's Disciple;
Arms and the Man; The Doctor's Dilema
Shaw, Irwin
Sheehan, Neil
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Sherwood, Robert
Shub, David Lenin
Simpson, George Gaylord The Meaning of Evolution
Skinner, B. F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Skolnik, Richard Jefferson's Decision
Smith, Adam
"Smith, Adam" Supermoney; Powers of Mind
Snow, C. P. Science and Government
Sophocles Oedipus the King
Soule, George Introduction to Economic Science
Stebbing, L. Susan Thinking to Some Purpose
Steinbeck, John Grapes of Wrath; Travels With Charley;
East of Eden
Stendhal The Red and The Black
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Tan, Amy
Tarkington, Booth Penrod; Penrod and Sam; The Story of a
Bad Boy
Tawney, R. H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Terkel, Studs
Thomas, Lewis The Lives of a Cell; The Medusa and the Snail
Thoreau, Henry David
Thurber, James The Years With Ross
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Trilling, Lionel
Tuchman, Barbara
Turner, Frederick Jackson
Twain, Mark
Updyke, John
Uris, Leon
V - W - X - Y -Z
Van Loon, Hendrik William
Veblen, Thorstein
Vernon, M. D. The Psychology of Perception
Vidal, Gore Lincoln
Voltaire Candide
Vonnegat, Kurt Slaughter House Five
Walker, Kenneth Human Physiology
Wallace, Lew Ben Hur
Ward, Barbara The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations
Warren, Robert Penn All The King's Men
West, Nathanael
Whatmough, Joshua Language
White, E, B.
White, L. L. The Next Development In Man
White, Morton (ed) The Age of Analysis
White, Theodore H. The Making of the President 1964
Wilder, Thorton
Whyte, William H. Jr. The Organization Man
Whitman, Walt
Williams, Tennessee The Night of the Iguana; A Streetcar Named Desire;
Wills, Garry
Wilson, Edmund
Wister, Owen The Virginian
Wolfe, Thomas
Wolfe, Tom
Woodward, Bob; Bernstein, Carl All The President's Men; The Final Daus
Woolf, Virginia
Woollcott, Alexander
Wordsworth, William
Wouk, Herman
Wright, Frank Lloyd The Natural House
Wright, Harold Bell
Wright, Richard
Wrong, Dennis H. Population
Wylie, Philip Generation of Vipers; Gladiator; Night
Unto Night; Opus 21; Finley Wren:
His Notions and Opinions; An Essay On
Morals; The Magic Animal; The Answer;
The Disappearance; Tomorrow; Triumph;
The End of the Dream; The Savage
Gentleman; The Innocent Ambassadors;
The Party; The Murderer Invisible;
Corpses At Indian Stones; An April
Afternoon; The Smuggled Atom Bomb;
Experiment In Crime; To Much of
Everything; The Other Horseman
Wylie, Philip; Balmer, Edwin When Worlds Collide; After Worlds
Collide
Wylie, Philip; Muir, William W. The Army Way
Yeats, William Butler
Yerby, Frank
Zinsser, Hans Rats, Lice and History
To be continued . . .
Childhood
I cannot remember when books were not an important part of my life. My mother read to me while I could not read for myself. Three or four of us neighborhood kids would cluster around on the floor by her rocking chair in our living room and listen to the adventures of the Hardy Boys et al and to classics like The Secret Garden and (Mother's favorite) Anne of Green Gables. (One of the rocking chair cluster of kids was Ann-next-door, but not with an "e" and I had the red hair.)
Best of all: tales of the Land of OZ. Mother owned about thirty of these treasures in their original hard copy (Which, alas, were destroyed in a fire years later) by their originator, L(yman). Frank Baum, and his successor, Ruth Plumly Simpson.
I was not one of those who entered kindergarten fully able to read, but by the end of the first grade I was the avid bibliophile I remain to this day. Mother was proud of me and my new skill, but you couldn't tell by her usual reaction to my new obsession. "Get your nose out of that book and go outside and play! It's summer!" she would nag.
Our house was small, and because I could read any place and in any posture, I was always in her way. So I would leave with my book of the moment. I had a favorite tree with a branch just right for stretching out without holding on. I would spend hours there, absorbed, shaded and hidden by the foliage. Often I now would read for myself books that Mother had read to us in years past.
My first favorite author was L. Frank Baum. Next was Hugh Lofting and his Doctor Doolittle tales which I found in the library of a family friend. Then I became enamored of the Tarzan books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which I discovered in our family bookcase. Tarzan taught me the lore and lure of the jungle and how to read with a dictionary. Mother helped with that. "You will remember better if you look it up yourself. We had an ancient tattered Funk & Wagnells dictionary, but, no, she never once ordered me to "Get out your Funk 'n Wagnells!" Mother was a lady, and you had damn well better know it.
Tarzan led inexorably to the true animal adventure stories of Osa and Martin Johnson, including her classic, "I Married Adventure." I remember waiting for the bus home after checking it out from the Tulsa Public Library. An elderly man spotting the title. asked, "Why do you want to read that book about getting married? You're too young to get married!" All I could do was stutter. Perhaps to him marriage was the ultimate adventure.
Tulsa's public library was the first place I learned to get to on my own by bus. A classic Carnegie edifice, it always ran a summer reading program for the school aged to help them retain skills learned the previous year. You signed up and got a paper form with room for thirty books. Fill one out and you could get another plus a certificate of your accomplishment.. All books counted except comics. I earned three certificates one summer. I remember these favorite books by favored authors:
L. Frank Baum The Wizard of OZ; The Scarecrow of OZ; Ozma of OZ; The Lost King of OZ
Victor Appleton Tom Swift and His Airship
(Ed Stratemeyer)
Hugh Lofting Doctor Doolittle
W. M. Reed The Earth for Sam; The Stars for Sam
Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes; The Beasts of Tarzan; Tarzan and the Golden Lion
Steven W. Meader T-Model Tommy
Joseph A. Altsheler The Riflemen of Ohio
Albert PaysonTerhune Lad, A Dog
Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Felix Salten Bambi
A D Howden-Smith Porto Bello Gold
R. L. Stevenson Treasure Island; Kidnapped
Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book; Just So Stories
Rand McNally (pub) World Atlas: Ideal Edition; Atlas of the United States
Osa Johnson I Married Adventure
Alfred Ollivant Bob, Son of Battle
Adolescence
These were the fallow years for reading as I discovered other goals and pastimes worth pursuing, mostly sports: golf, basketball, baseball, football, girl watching. I was best at basketball and golf, but was only instinctively adept at one on that list. But when the hormones were still I often turned to a book. My parents belonged to the Book-of-the-Month club, which insured a steady stream of new volumes. They occasionally let me pick bonus books, which is how I acquired and dutifully read the The Complete Short Stories of O'Henry, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
Just before the war, Pocket Books made their debut as the first popular paper backs. Still in my library are two such: Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. They survive from among the many forgotten ones my parents bought during those years of shortage and rationing.
Occasionally less exalted literature occupied my attention. "How's Amber?" my grandmother asked slyly. I can't remember just where I got a copy of Kathleen Windsor's Forever Amber in my 13th year. Nor do I remember the book's historical themes such as the fire of London and an outbreak of the plague. I do remember the "good parts" which were a text book example of how to sleep your way to the top in 15th century England, as well as an educational experience any early teen would relish. It was banned in Boston, proscribed by the Catholic church and bowdlerized by Hollywood's Hays Office. You could love Amber for the enemies she made.
After Amber I became absorbed in a sea adventure tale by Garland Roark, Wake of the Red Witch, set in the islands of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Some of his passages amidst the islands were purple indeed. Lotsa native girls and slipping sarongs.
Other less salacious authors became favorites as well. Maybe Amber led me to the revisionist historical novels of Kenneth Roberts -- with help from my mother. Northwest Passage, still in my library, bears her signature and the date 1946. So, too, does Lydia Bailey, only with my name in her handwriting. Roberts' books kindled a passion for American history still burning.
Non fiction didn't really grab me at first. The dumbed down history books for children bear some blame. One that did grab, and is still in my library, which I might have read just before adolescence is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Published as No. 23 by Pocket Books, its flyleaf faintly shows my name in Mother's hand writing dated 1939. My first American history book was was cribbed from Mother. Her signature and date of 1944 on the flyleaf shows when The Beards' Basic History of the United States was first in our home. By Charles A. and Mary R. Beard.
Certain books are remembered as most significant. The first of these was my father's doing. A shy, quiet upright man with ambitions to heights he was unable to reach, he was also a slow halting reader. He stuck mostly to literature that would help him advance his business career. One of these was the father of all self help books, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. I was shy and awkward, too, and here was a way out of my social backwater. I read and studied it and tried to put its precepts into practice. Modest success came in my final year of high school -- I think.
College
My early college years were a period of adjustment. There is little time for reading other than text books when you are pledging a fraternity, learning to drink beer and working overtime on the college daily paper. I also attended some classes. The only textbook of significance that I remember was Paul Samuelson's Economics. I enjoyed my first brush with the dismal science, and have been its avid student ever since. I also remember two semesters of statistics, but not the names of the texts or their authors. Perversely, what most others found deadly dull, I found fascinating and insightful.
My reading changed radically in my final two years when I fell in with a group of bohemians (and out with my fraternity brothers) who were reading literature and debating politics from perspectives new to me. Two books figured prominently in my transformation. The first was Public Opinion, a Walter Lippmann study circa 1922 about the "pictures in our heads" that formed opinions held by the public and how it was cooked and fed to us by the quaintly primitive media of the day.. I was persuaded to read it by a friendly journalism professor, but never wrote to thank him. I have continued to read Walter's works ever since.
The second was Philip Wylie's philippic, Generation of Vipers. "You got to read this," my roommate, Don Tucker, exclaimed. "This guy trashes everybody!" And so it seemed through the first reading of the misanthropic Vipers. But there were seeds of hope amid this "compleate indictment" of our self induced self satisfaction during the patriotic days of World War II. And I had found my favorite author of all time. My Wylie collection continues to grow and improve, although his signed and dedicated books have been getting rather pricey of late.
It was in the days of the Bohemian Co-op that I began to read again at my earlier pace. (See my blog post, When Faith Left, for more on the Co-op.) One of my roommates, Henry F. (Hank) Beechhold, was getting his masters in English lit by writing a thesis on James Joyce's Ulysses. I made it through Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but was not -- and never have been -- able to master Joyce's more demanding works, even with Hank's steady nagging. He did successfully introduce me to Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, Stendhal's, The Red and the Black and Aldous Huxley's Point, Counterpoint. Huxley in particular remains a favorite.
On my own, and to Hank's displeasure, I began an intense flirtation with that didactic grand dame of Capitalism, Ayn Rand. Earlier I had seen the film version of The Fountainhead, and ultimately read (and reread) the book. I still love it, although, with a greater detachment -- distance even -- from her underlying philosophy. She did teach me not to live my life through others, including her.
The Long Beyond
After college my habit was set. Aside from brief periods when work interfered, I have read constantly: for education and pleasure; properly in a chair; indolently in bed; graphically while enthroned; riding in cars, buses, trains and planes; while eating, watching the tube, and listening to music. (Never, though, while riding a bicycle, diving a car, playing golf or enjoying sex. It is sometimes necessary to put the book down and live.)
About six years ago I branched out. To the pleasant avocations of collecting and reading books, I added the hobby of selling them on line, usually after a reading. I use the on line services of the Advanced Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com), a subsidiary of Amazon.com. A few of the books listed below are for sale at my nom de book, BruceGBooks. ABE has a vast data base of millions of titles searchable by author, title, publisher, year of publication and other keys. You can also find me among its 30 thousand or so booksellers world wide by a similar route: click on Book Sellers and find and search or browse my store of about 500 titles.
Most of my sale books are hard cover, priced above $10. Few are old, fewer still at all valuable. No Gutenberg prints or Shakespeare folios among them. If a few are overpriced it's because I really don't care to sell to anyone who does not value them as I do. And A Voice to Sing With, signed "Bruce. Love. Joan Baez," and priced at $1,000 is an example. Maybe some other Bruce with the same infatuation as I will bite one day. A growing number in the inventory are signed or inscribed (dedicated) by author. Not one of those vile inventions known as ebooks is on offer.. How does an author sign one of those?
The list of books read that follows is intended to be comprehensive and is ordered alphabetically by author. Rather than continuing this rambling narrative. , I have deployed a set of symbols to date and rank by preference each author and each of his works. An example:
Lippmann, Walter* A Public Opinion+++*; A Preface to Morals++;
Drift and Mastery
(1) (4) (2) (3) (4)(5)
Translation: (1) Author's last name, first name in bold face type. (2) C for childhood, A for adolescence, A for adulthood. (3) Book title in italics. (4) + Liked and recommended; ++ Outstanding read; +++ Great favorite, read and reread; [Blank] Read but no strong opinions; - Not recommended. (5) * I have written or probably will write about the author and this book especially as an separate post to this blog. If no book followes an author's name, I plan to read him Any Day Now. If a book title is not in italics I haven't read it yet but will some day.
The List
A – B – C
Adams, Henry
Alder, Ken The Lie Detector
Alexander, Holmes To Covet Honor+
Allen, Frederick Lewis Back to the Future
Ambrose, Stephen D-Day, June 6, 1944
Anderson, Walter Truett To Govern Evolution+++
Ardrey, Robert African Genesis; The Territorial Imperative
Armstrong, Karen The Case for God
Arnold, Thurman The Symbols of Government; The Folklore of Capitalism
Ashworth, William The Economy of Nature
Ashworth, William The Economy of Nature
Asimov, Isaac
Atkins, P. W. Creation Revisited++
Aurelius, Marcus Meditations
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice
Baez, Joan And a Voice to Sing With+++
Baker, Dorothy Young Man With a Horn
Baker, Russell Growing Up; The Good Times
Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain; Notes of a Native Son
Giovanie's Room; The Fire Next Time
Giovanie's Room; The Fire Next Time
Barash, David The Survival Game+
Barnett, Lincoln The Universe and Dr Einstein
Barrow, Sir John The Mutiny of H. M. S. Bounty+
Barshay, Robert Howard Philip Wylie: The Man and His Work
Barshay, Robert Howard Philip Wylie: The Man and His Work
Barth, Alan The Loyalty of Free Men++
Beard, Charles A; Mary R The Beards' Basic History of the United States
Bellamy, Edward Looking Backward
Bell, Daniel The Coming of Post-Industrial Society
Bellow, Saul Humbolt's Gift; Adventures of Augie March
Benatovich, Beth (Ed.) What We Know So Far
Bernstein, Jeremy A Comprehensible World; Three Degrees Above Zero
Bierce, Ambrose The Devil's Dictionary
Bischoff, John Paul Mr. Iba: Basketball's Aggie Iron Duke
Blackmore, Susan The Meme Machine
Blaikie, Thomas To the Manner Born
Blake, William Songs of Innocence and Experience
Bloom, Harold The Book of J; The Western Canon
Bohailian, Chris The Buffalo Soldier
Boswell, James
Boulding, Kenneth E. (Ed.) The Economics of Human Betterment
Bowen, Catherine Drinker Miracle At Philadelphia
Branch, Taylor Parting the Waters: America in the King Years: 1954-63
Brant, Irving The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning
Bradbury, Ray Fahrenheit 451
Braun, Ernest; Macdonald, Stuart Revolution in Minature
Brenton, Denise; Largent, Chris The Soul of Economics
Brodie, Fawn Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History
Broder, David The Party's Over
Bromfield, Louis The Farm
Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl The Good Earth
Buckley, William God and Man At Yale; Overdrive
Bunyan, John Pilgrim's Progress
Burnett, Frances Hodgson The Secret Garden
Burns, James MacGregor Presidential Government; The Workship of Democracy;
The Vineyard of Liberty
Burns, Jennifer Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right
Burroughs, Edgar Rice Tarzan of the Apes; The Return of Tarzan; The Beasts of
Tarzan; Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar; The Son of
Tarzan; Jungle Tales of Tarzan; Tarzan the Untamed;
Tarzan the Terrible; Tarzan and the Golden Lion;
Tarzan Lord of the Jungle; Tarzan Triumphant
Butler, Samuel The Way of all Flesh
Caldwell, Erskin Tobacco Road
Campbell, Joseph Myths to Live By
Capote, Truman Other Voices, Other Rooms; Breakfast at Tiffany's;
In Cold Blood
Caroll, Lewis Alice In Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass
Carr, J. Revell Seeds of Discontent: The Deep Roots of the American
Revolution 1650 -- 1750
Carson, Rachel Silent Spring; The Sea Around US
Carwardine, Richard Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
Case. James Competition: The Birth of a New Science
Cather, Willa
Chambers, Whittaker Witness
Chandler, Raymond
Chaucer, Geoffrey Canterbury Tales
Chayefsky, Paddy
Childe, V. Gordon Man Makes Himself
Childs, Marquis W. Swden: The Middle Way; Ethics in a Business Society
Churchill, Sir Winston Thoughts and Adventures; Great Contemporaries
Cleland, John Fanny Hill
Clooney, Nick The Movies that Changed Us
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Commager, Henry Steele The Empire of Reason
Conant, James B. On Understanding Science
Coon, Carl One Planet, One People
Cooper, Helene The House at Sugar Beach
Costain, Thomas
Cozzens, James Gould
D
Davies, Joseph E. Mission To Moscow
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Carusoe
Descartes, Rene
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities; A Christmas Carol
Dodge, Mary Mapes
Donne, John
Dos Pasos, John
Dostoyevsky, Fedor The Brothers Karamosov
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
E - F - G
Eisley, Loren
Elliot, T. S.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Farrell, James T.
Falkner, William Sanctuary; Requiem For a Nun
Feiffer, Jules Sick, Sick, Sick
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Flaubert, Gustave Madam Bovary
Foote, Shelby
Fordham, Frieda An Introduction to Jung's Psychology
Forster, E, M.
Frank, Anne Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Franklin, Benjamin Autobiography; Poor Richard's Almanac
Freemantle, Anna (ed) The Age of Belief
Freud, Sigmund A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis;
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego;
The Future of An Illusion
Friedan, Betty The Feminine Mystique; The Fountain of Age
Friedman, Milton
Frost, Robert
Galbraith, John Kenneth
Gardner, Earl Stanley
Garland, Hamlin
Geisel, Theodor Seuss The Cat in the Hat
George, Henry Progress and Poverty
Gibran, Khalil
Golden, Harry
Goodman, Paul Growing Up Absurd
Goodman, Paul; Percival Communitas
Gould, Stephen Jay
Grafton, Sue "N" Is For Noose
Gray, Zane Riders of the Purple Sage
Gunther, John
Guthrie, A. B.
H - I - J
Halberstam, David
Haley, Alex Roots
Hall, Edward T. The Silent Language
Hammett, Dashiell
Hamlin, Oscar Son of the Middle Border
Hampshire, Stuart (ed) The Age of Reason
Hansberry, Lorraine A Raisin in the Son
Hardy, Thomas
Harrington, Michael
Harris, Thomas A., MD I'm OK--You're OK
Hart, Moss
Hart, Brett
Hartsog, Jan de
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Hayward, De Bose
Hazlitt, Henry Economics in One Lesson
Heffner, Richard A Documentary History of the United States
Heggen, Thomas Mr Roberts
Heinlein, Robert
Hellman, Lillian Scoundrel Time; The Little Foxes; Another part of the
Forest
Hemmingway, Ernest
Henry, O.
Hersey, John
Heyerdahl, Thor Kon-Tiki; Aku-Aku
Hilton, James Lost Horizon
Hobbs, Thomas
Hoffer, Eric The True Believer
Homer
Hooker, Richard M*A*S*H Goes to Maine
Hume, David
Hunter, Evan
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Huxley, Julian Evolution In Action
Irving, John
Isherwood, Christopher Good - Bye to Berlin
Jackson, Shirley
James, William
Jastrow, Joseph Freud: His Dream and Sex Theories
Jones, James From Here To Eternity
Joyce, James Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
K - L - M
Kafka, Franz
Keillor, Garrison
Keefer, Truman Frederick Philip Wylie
Kennan, George Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin;
American Diiplomacy
Kerouac, Jack On the Road
Keys, Frances Parkinson Dinner at Antoines
Kirk, Russell
Kohler, Wolfgang Gestalt Psychology
Krutch, Joseph Wood
L'Amour, Louis
Langer, Susanne Philosophy in a New Key
Lardner, Ring
Lardner, Ring Jr.
Lawrence, D. H.
Lawrence, Jerome; Lee, Robert E. Inherit The Wind
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
Le Guin, Ursula
Leopold, Aldo Sand County Almanac
Letwin, William The Origins of Scientific Economics
Lewis, Oscar
Linder, Robert The Fifty Minute Hour; Must You Conform
Lippmann, Walter
Lock, John
Lofting, Hugh
London, Jack South Sea Tales; The Sea Wolf;
Burning Daylight; Call of the Wild
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth The Scarlet Letter
Lowell, James Russell
Lucretius The Nature of Things
MacDonald, John D.
Machiavelli, Niccolo The Prince
Manchester, William
Marx, Karl
Maslow, Abraham H. Religions, Values and Peak-Experiences
McCarthy, Mary
McCullers, Carson
McMurtry, Larry
McNeill, William H.
McPhee, John
Mead, Margaret Coming of Age in Samoa; Male and Female
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Metalious, Grace
Michener, James Hawaii; The Source; Centennial; Chesapeake;
South Sea Tales
Mill, John Stuart
Miller, Arthur Death of a Salesman
Miller, Henry
Milton, John
Mitchell, Margaret Gone With the Wind
Montaigne, Michel
Moore, Sir Thomas
Morrison, Samuel Eliot
Morley, Christopher
Muller, Herbert J. The Uses of the Past
Mumford, Lewis
N - O - P - Q
Nabokov, Vladimir
Nash, Ogden The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash
Neustadt, Richard Presidential Power
Nevins, Allan
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Ninn Anaisis
Nordhoff, Charles; Hall, James Norman Mutiny On The Bounty; Men Against the Sea;
Pitcairn's Island
Oates, Joyce Carol
O'Conner, Edwin
O'Hara, John Ten North Frederick
Orwell, George Animal Farm; Nineteen Eighty-four
Padover, Saul K. Jefferson
Paine, Thomas
Paretsky, Sara
Parker, Dorothy
Parkinson, C. Northcote Parkinson's Law; The Law and the Profits;
The Evolution of Political Thought;
In-laws and Outlaws
Parkman, Francis
Petras, Kathryn and Ross Age Doesm't Matter Unless You're a Cheese
Plath, Sylvia
Plato The Last Days of Socrates
Poe, Edgar Allan
Porter, Gene Stratton Girl of the Limberlost
Porter, Katherine Ann
Prescott, William H.
Puzo, Mario The Godfather
Pyle, Ernie Brave Men
Pyle, Howard
Queen, Ellery
R - S - T -U
Radin, Max The Law and You
Rand, Ayn The Fountainhead; Atlas Shrugged;
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal;
The Night of January 28th
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan Cross Creek
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Richter, Conrad
Riesman, David The Lonely Crowd; Individualism Reconsidered.
Robbins, Harold
Roberts, Kenneth
Roth, Philip
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques The Social Contract
Russell, Bertrand The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Sagan, Carl The Cosmic Connection
Salinger, J. D. Catcher in the Rye; Franny and Zoie
Sanburg, Carl Lincoln
Saroyan, William
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
Schulberg, Budd What Makes Sammy Run?
Shakespeare, William
Shaw, George Bernard Androcles and the Lion; Pygmalion;
Back to Methuselah; Caesar and Cleopatra;
Saint Joan; Major Barbara; Man and
Superman; Candida; The Deil's Disciple;
Arms and the Man; The Doctor's Dilema
Shaw, Irwin
Sheehan, Neil
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Sherwood, Robert
Shub, David Lenin
Simpson, George Gaylord The Meaning of Evolution
Skinner, B. F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Skolnik, Richard Jefferson's Decision
Smith, Adam
"Smith, Adam" Supermoney; Powers of Mind
Snow, C. P. Science and Government
Sophocles Oedipus the King
Soule, George Introduction to Economic Science
Stebbing, L. Susan Thinking to Some Purpose
Steinbeck, John Grapes of Wrath; Travels With Charley;
East of Eden
Stendhal The Red and The Black
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver's Travels
Tan, Amy
Tarkington, Booth Penrod; Penrod and Sam; The Story of a
Bad Boy
Tawney, R. H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Terkel, Studs
Thomas, Lewis The Lives of a Cell; The Medusa and the Snail
Thoreau, Henry David
Thurber, James The Years With Ross
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Trilling, Lionel
Tuchman, Barbara
Turner, Frederick Jackson
Twain, Mark
Updyke, John
Uris, Leon
V - W - X - Y -Z
Van Loon, Hendrik William
Veblen, Thorstein
Vernon, M. D. The Psychology of Perception
Vidal, Gore Lincoln
Voltaire Candide
Vonnegat, Kurt Slaughter House Five
Walker, Kenneth Human Physiology
Wallace, Lew Ben Hur
Ward, Barbara The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations
Warren, Robert Penn All The King's Men
West, Nathanael
Whatmough, Joshua Language
White, E, B.
White, L. L. The Next Development In Man
White, Morton (ed) The Age of Analysis
White, Theodore H. The Making of the President 1964
Wilder, Thorton
Whyte, William H. Jr. The Organization Man
Whitman, Walt
Williams, Tennessee The Night of the Iguana; A Streetcar Named Desire;
Wills, Garry
Wilson, Edmund
Wister, Owen The Virginian
Wolfe, Thomas
Wolfe, Tom
Woodward, Bob; Bernstein, Carl All The President's Men; The Final Daus
Woolf, Virginia
Woollcott, Alexander
Wordsworth, William
Wouk, Herman
Wright, Frank Lloyd The Natural House
Wright, Harold Bell
Wright, Richard
Wrong, Dennis H. Population
Wylie, Philip Generation of Vipers; Gladiator; Night
Unto Night; Opus 21; Finley Wren:
His Notions and Opinions; An Essay On
Morals; The Magic Animal; The Answer;
The Disappearance; Tomorrow; Triumph;
The End of the Dream; The Savage
Gentleman; The Innocent Ambassadors;
The Party; The Murderer Invisible;
Corpses At Indian Stones; An April
Afternoon; The Smuggled Atom Bomb;
Experiment In Crime; To Much of
Everything; The Other Horseman
Wylie, Philip; Balmer, Edwin When Worlds Collide; After Worlds
Collide
Wylie, Philip; Muir, William W. The Army Way
Yeats, William Butler
Yerby, Frank
Zinsser, Hans Rats, Lice and History
To be continued . . .
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