Pulitzer Prize-winning novel recommendations

[Parson]

I would have enjoyed The Things They Carried much more if it had kept the true story vs. fictionalized story separate. I was often left scratching my head thinking "This can't be true? Can it?" And in all fairness that might have been what he was trying to accomplish. Perhaps he wanted us to realize how profoundly war disturbs all of what we think of as "normal" life? A worthy endeavor, for sure, but I'm much more of a "tell the truth in a non-complicated way." Why, I ask, would you obscure the message?

 

[Randy M.]

I didn't feel he obscured the message. He was trying, I think, to make some sense of war while at the same time examining a writer's role in making reality. I think he's keenly aware that the writer chooses the facts he or she uses, molds them to fit his (her) narrative, and so skews reality while trying to depict it.

His first well known novel, Going After Caccioto felt a bit more obscure that way to me. I think it's one I'd need to read again to come to terms with it. His later novel, In the Lake of the Woods is perhaps a bit more direct in its examination of what is told versus what has happened, and that the reader may never know what has really happened. (But can certainly guess.)

By the way, Parson, no intended criticism of your reaction. O'Brien, like many 20th century authors, tries to force the reader to work to get at the heart of the story and that's an approach that just doesn't work for all readers.

Randy M.

 

[Parson]

By the way, Parson, no intended criticism of your reaction. O'Brien, like many 20th century authors, tries to force the reader to work to get at the heart of the story and that's an approach that just doesn't work for all readers.

And that approach is antithetical to my way of thinking and to the way I was taught to communicate. I believe that if the truth is important, you should tell the story as clearly as you can. The more ambiguity in what is communicated, the less likely the communication will effectively convey that truth. Now, a sermon is a different form of communicating a truth than a series of short stories is, and my audience is composed of a wide range of educational levels, whereas O'Brien was likely going for the inteligensia, but as I understood O'Brien's purpose it was mostly to communicate a truth. His form was in my view a hindrance to his purpose.

 

[Randy M.]

Sermon's tell you; fiction leads you.

At least, that's my experience. It may just mean I've listened to really bad sermons.

 

[Parson]

One more post and then I'll have to leave this subject for fear of derailing and perhaps for religious talking "rules."

Good sermons are dialogical. You want your listeners to think along with you so that when the conclusion is reached it feels like a mutual understanding, and not a lecture.

 

[Bick]

Pulitzer prize winners I've read:

1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder - Okay
1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - Excellent
1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. - Excellent, but 'The Big Sky' is even better
1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - Excellent
1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - Excellent
1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow - Good
1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever - Okay/Good (only read in part)
1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (posthumous win) - Excellent
1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike - Good, but first Rabbit novel is better
1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - Especially excellent (ignore Parson )
1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx - Excellent
1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford - Meh
2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo - Excellent
2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Excellent

Lots of good stuff - its a prize worth investigating I think

 

[Don]

I've read nearly half a dozen, supposedly truthful, war books. And O'Brien's story seems to most truthful of them all.

How to Tell a True War Story

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made a victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ...

You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. ...

In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. .. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed. ...

In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It's a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness....