How The University Works

My department just circulated its annual call for summer reading suggestions. I have long promised an “academic labor bookshelf” series of entries, and will probably deliver on that in a few weeks.

In the meanwhile, moderately lighter fare.  My three suggestions for summer fiction:

Chris Bachelder, US! (2006). hilarious, relevant political novel based on the conceit that Upton Sinclair (The Jungle, Oil!) is serially resurrected (and serially assassinated).

Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water. (1993). Hilarious, brilliant, irreverent, captivating and defies description. My favorite North American novel of the past thirty years. If you must describe it, it’s by far the most readable piece of postmodern historiographic metafiction ever written. So full of ideas, so full of references, and all handled deftly, with incisive wit and a light touch.

Upton Sinclair, Oil! (1927). The “base” of There Might Be Blood, which was really an adaptation of Moby Dick–Daniel Day Lewis stumping about the quarter-deck for 3 hours. Oil! is utterly unlike the movie in mood, plot and characterization. It’s astonishingly like a Dickens novel if Dickens also had the range, virtues  and politics of Jack London. Great youth characters, enduringly relevant conflicts and themes. The perfect long summer book.

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