From Big Think:
We call it “getting lost” in a novel, but what we find there is often more impactful than any nonfiction work can offer. Literature makes us more empathic and intelligent. Storytelling is how we bond, as tribes and a planet. A powerful narrative, like a good mythology, carries us far away from ourselves only to deliver us right back where we started, transformed.
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These are 10 works of literature that made an impact in my life, offering varied perspectives of what happens between the two oceans and two nations bordering us (speaking continentally, of course).
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American Pastoral — Philip Roth
Every Philip Roth novel is a slice of America, mostly told through the lens of the Jewish experience in and around Newark. Sure, there’s something purely Americana about Seymour “Swede” Levov, a former high school star athlete squaring off in later age with adultery and mortality. The novel traces Jersey life during the cultural upheaval of the late sixties, when Swede’s daughter, Merry, hides out in inner-city Newark after she killed multiple bystanders by planting bombs. Merry’s character profile—an outlaw devoted to Jainism living in squalor—is one of the most fascinating in modern literature. The book is a meditation on the dissolution of the American dream in front of a family’s eyes.
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Cannery Row — John Steinbeck
How to choose one work from the primary voice of Depression-era America?”East of Eden” is always a reflexive choice. Yet there’s a beautiful tenor in this much simpler tribute to the citizen of Cannery Row. Set amidst sardine canneries in Monterey, California—the city renamed the street in honor of the book’s title—the story focuses on a culturally diverse cast of shop owners, town elders, and a marine biologist. A party for the biologist, Doc, ends in disaster, but the deeper narrative identifies the pain points of trying to survive in uncertain times—a recurring occurrence seemingly tailor-made for this current era.
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The Other — David Guterson
This is probably the most heartfelt book on friendship I’ve ever read. American novelist David Guterson, most well-known for “Snow Falling on Cedars”, is one of the Pacific Northwest’s greatest biographers. The plot of “The Other” occurs in the Seattle area in 1972, when Neil Countryman and John William Berry meet for the first time. Countryman chases the American dream (as his name suggests), while Berry decides to forgo society to live in the woods, completely off the grid. The scene in which Countryman reminisces over being taught to shave with cold water has stuck with me all these years later—the intimacy of friendship, and, as the novel progresses, the wrestling with transience we call encounter.
Link to the rest at Big Think