30 Best (Best What?) since 50 (or so)

[WKLJAZZ at aol.com]

Who can resist a list?  Some random thoughts on Steelhead's thirty.

12.  On the Road (Kerouac).  YES, YES, YES.  If only Jack and his pals hadn't
become famous for snapping their fingers to jazz and wearing berets and all
that stuff, maybe people would be able to read this book for what it really
is -- a great and original coming-of-age story that provides distance and
perspective on growing up and growing old without ever condescending to those
who are doing it.  I nominate the last four paragraphs or so for some kind of
musical writing hall of fame.

30.  Mumbo Jumbo (Reed).  HURRAY!  And for Pynchoniacs, don't forget his GR
reference to Reed (by name), likely pointing to this very text.

26.  Fathers and Crows (Vollmann).  I haven't read this one yet, but based on
some of his others, I'm happy to see Vollmann on anybody's list of authors
not to be messed with.

Steelhead's list contains novels, short stories and quasi-journalism (FEAR
AND LOATHING . . ., among others), so why not any drama?  When was DEATH OF
SALESMAN premiered?  Sure, it's been canonized to death, but rightly so.  You
might consider WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF by Edward Albee too.

Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN was published in whole for the first time in 1952, I
think.  An oversight or some zesty revisionism, Steely?

Among the Pynchonesque, I wouldn't be able to resist Don DeLillo.  Following
Cal McInvale's Mailer Rule, I would choose only WHITE NOISE -- it's the
funniest and, therefore, the most subversive and ingenius of DeLillo's books,
creeping up on chuckling readers and achieving the kind of impact that only
the best fiction can deliver.

Maybe you don't consider him American, but I sure do, at least at this point
in his career -- the most egregious oversight of all:  Nabokov's LOLITA.
 (Even if you don't buy Vladimir as an American -- though he did naturalize
-- LOLITA is so essentially American, maybe even American in a way that only
an sort-of outsider could make it . . . .)

Long shot:  Paul Auster's LEVIATHAN?  (OK, maybe not, but I'd put it before
NEUROMANCER and MONKEY HOUSE.)

Finally, a big YES to Flannery O'Connor.

-- Will L.