The Great American Read--The Book of Books

by PBS

  These days the phrase catch-22 has become a routine way of describing the experience of facing a problem that prevents its own solution. But the term got its start in the novel of the same name published by Joseph Heller in 1961. In that satirical work, Heller’s pilots can get out of flying missions if they are found to be insane—yet asking for a medical evaluation demonstrates their capacity for rational thought and ability to worry about themselves, two hallmarks of sanity. Things that puzzle us or strike us as impractical to the point of ridiculous may be termed quixotic, which comes from Don Quixote (1605), a novel about a man who has trouble separating reality from literature. Anything nightmarish and off-kilter could be called Kafkaesque.

  Science fiction offers a treasure trove of jargon that has made its way into everyday—and even scientific—usage. H. G. Wells developed the concept of a time machine in his 1895 novel by the same name, as well as parallel universe in a later work. Isaac Asimov created a bunch, including microcomputer and robotics. Bot arrived later, in a 1969 novel by Richard C. Meredith called We All Died at Breakaway Station. William Gibson invented the word cyberspace in his 1982 short story “Burning Chrome.”

  J. R. R. TOLKIEN, LEXICOGRAPHER

  As a professor of English language and literature at Oxford University, J. R. R. Tolkien spent his days thinking about vocabulary and grammar. But these thoughts began much earlier, when, as a child, he first started constructing an Elvish language he called Quenya, a project he would work on throughout his life. In novels like The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), Tolkien drew on his academic training and lexicographic hobby, incorporating roots from Old English, Middle English, Latin, Greek, Finnish, and Welsh into the tongues of Middle-earth; in fact, he saw these fully formed yet imaginary languages as central to his mythmaking and literary efforts. Tolkien’s son Christopher later published many of his father’s linguistic guides and detailed etymologies, as well as maps, drawings, notes, and scenes, in the 12-volume History of Middle-earth (1983–1996).

  A portrait of William Shakespeare, circa 1610. Shakespeare coined countless new terms, such as assassination and bedazzled.

  In the late 1960s, the venerable Oxford English Dictionary (OED)—considered the definitive guide to English and featuring some 218,632 words—decided to include the word hobbit among its pages. While at Oxford, the OED’s editor in charge of the word had studied under Tolkien, so he wrote to his former professor for feedback on the proposed definition. Tolkien’s subsequent response forms the core of the current version: “In the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973): one of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning ‘hole-dweller’) but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal men.” Other words derived from or revived by Tolkien that now appear in the OED include orc and mathom. Written by three OED editors, The Ring of Words (2006) explores the mutually beneficial relationship between Tolkien and the OED, with a focus on the author as “a word user and word creator.”

  ATHCHOMAR CHOMAKEA, OR GREETINGS TO YOU ALL

  Linguist David J. Peterson may not be a household name, but his work extends far into pop culture. In 2017 he taught a course at the University of California, Berkeley, based on Dothraki, a language he created for the HBO series Game of Thrones. Peterson used bits of vocabulary found throughout A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–present), the fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin on which the show is based, to create the language of the powerful nomadic warriors. In inventing the language, Peterson often drops in references to his family and friends. For example, jolinat means “to cook,” an homage to his mother-in-law, Jolyn, and her culinary skill. If you’re not in California, don’t worry: you can learn High Valyrian, another language from Martin’s series, via the website Duolingo.

  Probably no writer in history more fundamentally altered English as we know it than William Shakespeare. Additions to the language attributed to him include assassination, new-fangled, bedazzled, and even puking. Like Tolkien, Shakespeare took a magpie approach, appropriating in some cases, inventing in others, bedazzling, whatever words he could. He recognized that language is inherently, utterly mutable, and literally lives in the recitation of a word by one person to another. Words survive if they meet our communicative needs, and must adapt or go extinct if they don’t. So, for all we know, our children or children’s children may very well someday wish each other “Asshekhqoyi vezhvena” and “Man aur.”

  First edition cover design for The Stand, published in 1978.

  Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, and started writing stories as a kid. He published his first story in 1965, before graduating from college.

  The complete and uncut edition of The Stand changed the year that the events took place to 1990, whereas the original publication had it 10 years earlier.

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  THE STAND

  Stephen King · 1978

  Long popular with readers, in recent years Stephen King has been openly embraced by critics and other members of the literary establishment. He won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation in 2003, and in 2016 was recognized by the Library of Congress for his lifelong commitment to promoting literacy; his fiction has graced the pages of the New Yorker and Tin House. The master of horror is stepping out from the shadows of genre.

  Born in Portland, Maine, in 1947, King grew up with a single mother and started writing stories at a young age, including novelizations of movies he’d seen (which he’d then sell to classmates for a quarter). He published his first story in 1965, a few years before he graduated from the University of Maine.

  In 1999, King was almost killed by a van while walking along back roads near his house. He chronicled the experience in On Writing (2000), his celebrated book about the craft. He noted how much his wife, Tabitha, recognized his need to be creative as he recuperated. It wasn’t the first time she’d played a crucial role: she fished out some crumpled-up pages from the trash can, smoothed them out, and encouraged King to keep working on the novel that would become the horror classic Carrie (1974). They have three children, two of whom are also writers.

  If there’s such a thing as the opposite of writer’s block, a journalist once quipped, King suffers from it. He’s the author of 54 novels and six nonfiction books, which are estimated to have sold more than 350 million copies all told. Many of his works, including The Stand, have been made into movies or television series. Indeed, his legions of readers relish his fiction in part for its cinematic qualities—King can reveal the essentials about a character in just a single scene.

  With The Stand, his most ambitious stand-alone novel, King set out to create an enormous world on par with that of the Lord of the Rings (1954–1955). He explained when asked about his inspiration: “Only instead of a hobbit, my hero was a Texan named Stu Redman, and instead of a Dark Lord, my villain was a ruthless drifter and supernatural madman named Randall Flagg. The land of Mordor (‘where the shadows lie,’ according to Tolkien) was played by Las Vegas.” Fearful that no one would buy or read such a long book, King’s editors made substantive cuts to the 1978 manuscript. In 1990, King restored that material, and The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition is now the official edition.

  In the opening chapters of this modern-day dystopian epic, some 99.4 percent of the world’s population dies following the accidental release of a biological superweapon. The few survivors begin having prophetic dreams and gravitating to two polar-opposite leaders: Abagail Freemantle, also known as Mother Abagail, a 108-year-old black woman in Nebraska, and the malevolent Flagg. Freemantle and her followers establish a Free Zone in Boulder, while Flagg opts for Vegas. The novel’s title refers to the showdown between good and evil, between those who embrace community and those who embrace self-indulgence, between those who see the ruined world as an opportunity to build a better society and those who seek to dominate, exploit, and destroy.

  As co
mpelling as this moral confrontation may be, the power of The Stand comes from King’s fascinating descriptions of social collapse, his unmatched ability to conjure shuddering terror in readers—Larry Underwood’s journey on foot through the pitch-black, corpse-filled Lincoln Tunnel has become a touchstone of modern horror—and the instantly relatable men and women he follows in their struggle to find meaning in a chaotic, broken world.

  The Hemingway Library edition cover for The Sun Also Rises, originally published in 1926.

  Ernest Hemingway, photographed in 1928 in Paris, where he lived with his first wife and young son.

  The last pages of the first draft of The Sun Also Rises, in one of seven notebooks Hemingway wrote the novel in. It’s dated September 21, 1925.

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  THE SUN ALSO RISES

  Ernest Hemingway · 1926

  For someone well known for his simple prose, Ernest Hemingway was a complicated guy. He went fishing with a machine gun so he could shoot at the sharks that might otherwise bother his catch. He was a quintessential man’s man who loved a dry, extremely cold martini. He adored cats. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954, and killed himself in 1961. He cherished his friends, but used their disaffections and affairs to inspire The Sun Also Rises (1926).

  Hemingway’s first novel grew out of his time in Paris, where he palled around with artists and writers like Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, and Gertrude Stein. It was Stein who coined the term the lost generation, as a way of describing the young people like themselves adrift in feelings of alienation and disorientation in the aftermath of World War I. Hemingway so liked the phrase that he used it as an epigraph to the book, attributing it to his friend.

  The plot can be summed up in a single sentence: an intertwined group of British and American expats heads to Spain to watch some bullfights. Jake Barnes, who narrates the book, fought in World War I but now works as a journalist in Paris. He and his friend Robert Cohn run into the beautiful, promiscuous Lady Brett Ashley, who nursed Jake during the war after he received a mysterious injury that likely left him impotent. Although they care for one another, Brett makes it clear that she needs physicality and therefore can’t commit to him. Cohn develops feelings for Brett, which disturbs her fiancé, Mike. Everyone meets up in Pamplona for the fiesta and bullfighting, and Brett becomes enamored of a gifted young matador.

  What saves the book from being merely a gossipy roman à clef is first and foremost the revolutionary prose. It’s hard to imagine a time before Hemingway, so ingrained are his spare, unadorned sentences in American literature. He did away with flowery descriptions and the long, winding sentences of the 19th century, and ushered novels into modernity with quick jabs and punchy paragraphs. The style that launched a million imitators began right here. In its 1926 review of the book, the New York Times called it “a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame.”

  Hemingway started to develop his distinctive understated style as a journalist. Born in 1899 in a Chicago suburb, he left home after high school to drive an ambulance on the Italian Front, where he was wounded. Back in the States, he took a job writing for the Toronto Star and reported on war-torn areas as a foreign correspondent. By the early 1920s, he was living in Paris with his first wife and young son, socializing, and writing all the while. After the enormous success of The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway continued writing short stories, nonfiction, travelogues, and novels. He traveled to and lived in many parts of the world, from Havana to Key West to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide at age 61.

  The Sun Also Rises deals with heady themes, among them changing gender expectations. In Brett, Hemingway portrayed a sexually liberated woman, independent and unafraid to ask for what she wants. Jake, in contrast, embodies a man who has been neutered by the war, both physically, on account of his wound, and spiritually. World War I rendered the stereotype of the brave soldier useless, as survival in the trenches depended more on random luck than skill. Outwardly Jake, Brett, and the others appear to enjoy a carefree existence of fishing, road trips, and bed hopping, but inwardly they despair and long for a life of greater meaning. If only they knew how much their tale would alter the course of fiction in the 20th century and beyond.

  A 2017 hardcover of Swan Song from Subterranean Press. The book was first published in 1987.

  Author Robert R. McCammon lives and writes in Birmingham, Alabama.

  The author page in the first printing of Swan Song.

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  SWAN SONG

  Robert R. McCammon · 1987

  Consider the title Swan Song. The phrase, as it’s commonly used, implies a bittersweet last effort, an encore or final act, already tinted with nostalgia. In the 1987 horror novel by Robert R. McCammon, the phrase takes on an entirely different meaning, seeing as how it describes the few who remain after a nuclear war has decimated humankind.

  But, as readers discover, Swan is also the nickname of nine-year-old Sue Wanda Prescott, a girl with special powers of rejuvenation. Swan meets Josh, a wrestler on his way to a match, who protects her. She learns of a prophecy in which she’s fated to meet the devil. Meanwhile, in a destroyed New York, Sister Creep finds a glass ring encrusted with jewels, which has magical properties, and encounters “the man with the scarlet eye,” one of the book’s primary villains. Another is Vietnam vet Colonel James “Jimbo” Macklin, who has amassed an “Army of Excellence,” with the intention of killing disfigured survivors and getting revenge on the Russians who launched the nuclear weapons.

  When readers speak about great horror writers of the late 20th century, the names Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Robert R. McCammon roll out in one breath. Given its postapocalyptic setting, lengthy cast of characters, and their quest to start anew, Swan Song covers much of the same territory as King’s novel The Stand (1978), which also focuses on the collapse of society and its aftermath. McCammon’s book, however, is edgier, almost hallucinatory at times, and much more interested in how individual actions bring about calamity and chaos. After a furious period of writing horror from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, McCammon turned to historical fiction, creating a series of books that feature detective Matthew Corbett, an 18th-century “professional problem solver” in New York. He also writes stand-alone books set in the present day.

  McCammon continues to live in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was born in 1952 and grew up. His books often take the Deep South as their setting, and McCammon, deeply influenced by the civil rights movement, often takes race as a theme. He has spoken about witnessing fear and violence during crucial moments in the struggle for racial equality; even more importantly, the politics of his childhood helped give him the sense that society could be altered, for the better or for the worse. He was influenced as well by a supposedly haunted house next door to his childhood home, with some of his earliest ghost stories imagining what went on inside.

  Much of Swan Song describes the vicious encounters between survivors as they struggle to meet their basic needs. Like the Walking Dead television series or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Swan Song highlights the fragility of the norms that hold civilization back from anarchy. As portrayed in these and similar dystopian works, without the benefit of society, many people would quickly and maybe eagerly transform into violent predators, with no compunction about terrorizing others. Holding on to one’s humanity might prove even more difficult than navigating the physical hardships of a ruined land.

  With the release of previously classified documents in recent years, we have been able to see just how close the United States and the Soviet Union came to mutual destruction in the 1980s. From our vantage point in a post-Communist world, fighting a much different enemy as part of the war on terror, it can be difficult to recall the precipitous power balance of the Cold War. Swan Song serves as a reminder of the past and a warning about the future. After all, weapons continue to get more devastating, and more widespread. If we’re not careful, th
is could be us.

  Cover design for Tales of the City (1978).

  Author Armistead Maupin, photographed here in 2006, began writing his Tales of the City in 1974 in serials for Bay Area newspapers.

  A still from PBS’s 1993 television series based on the books. It starred Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis, among many others.

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  TALES OF THE CITY SERIES

  Armistead Maupin · 1978–2014

  Books can give us permission to be who we truly are. As we read about others who represent furtive parts of ourselves, we begin to understand the possibilities for our lives and to consider a way forward. If we’re lucky, this process occurs when we’re children, enabling us to reach adulthood with an identity rooted in comfort and confidence. But even if we discover books like those in the Tales of the City series—with its glorious celebration of diversity—late in life, they still have much to teach about walking one’s particular path with pride.

  Armistead Maupin created Tales of the City as a serial for Bay Area newspapers in 1974. The first book appeared in 1978 and immediately altered the landscape of LGBTQ literature. Midwesterner Mary Ann Singleton impulsively decides, while vacationing in San Francisco, to start a new life there. She moves into the fictional Barbary Lane, where she gets to know her colorful neighbors, like Mouse and Mona. Their free-spiritedness and confident sexuality expand Mary Ann’s horizons. She shrugs off her naïveté and embraces urbanity, in all its messiness and splendor.