The Grumpy Librarian
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
OK, basically you're into Huck Finn, all grown up and epistemologically adrift.
LOVED: Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
LOVED: Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
HATED: D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
OK, basically you’re into Huck Finn, all grown up and epistemologically adrift. That’s cool; geographically precise mythic examinations of the Poetic Man Who Doesn’t Read Poetry make up a good third of modern American literature. And at least it’s not another dude just really into Updike.
The Grumpy Librarian already recommended Knut Hamsun’s Hunger to another strapping young reader, but you’d probably enjoy it too — oblique humor, a tortuous search for self and no distracting ladies. But the GL has decided it is her enduring mission to GET DUDES TO READ SOME DAMN WOMEN so instead you should read Marilynne Robinson. Gilead is a beautifully written meditation (and bonus! a meditation in the classical sense too) of a loner tethered by his history and his evaporating sense of purpose. Or just read some poetry; whatever is in this week’s New Yorker is probably fine.
