English language books everyone should read

[Syt]

I haven't finished Ulysses, but I have an annotated copy that has a long preface about the genesis of the work. Apparently Joyce had made a detailed spreadsheet of motifs and ideas per chapter that he followed meticulously. However, no one seemed to "get it", so he got so frustrated that eventually, years after the books was published, he released that information.

[merithyn]

I haven't finished Ulysses, but I have an annotated copy that has a long preface about the genesis of the work. Apparently Joyce had made a detailed spreadsheet of motifs and ideas per chapter that he followed meticulously. However, no one seemed to "get it", so he got so frustrated that eventually, years after the books was published, he released that information.

That's the book that I read, too.

[Capetan Mihali]

Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano.  Written in the late 40s (in B.C., no less ), a hallucinogenic exploration of one day (the last day) in the life of a severely alcoholic British consul in Mexico in 1936.  Lowry's own alcoholism unfortunately reduced his output (and lifespan) a lot, so this is one lasting achievement, though other writings by him are great as well.  He has a very tragicomic novella about being picked up having the DTs on the NYC waterfront and being locked in Bellevue.

Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Cathedral short-story collections.  It's kind of love it or loathe it with Carver, though I think he gets a bad rap cause of the prominence of his less talented imitators, to this day, but esp. in the 80s.  All the stories were the process of an intense back and forth between Carver, who wanted the stories to be a little more expansive, and his very talented editor Gordon Lish, who used the scapel on them until they became the modern life fragments they are famous for. 

Anything by Jim Thompson during the 50s.  Nobody captured the the deranged and perverse in the American psyche than these hilarious pulp novels, written by a true pulp individual.  [Hmm, my list is all bad alcoholics at this point.  ]

Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, or the one I actually like best Black Spring, by Henry Miller.  Written in the 1930s by a Brooklynite telegram clerk who, around age 40 in the late 1920s, went over to live a poor and filthy expat life in Paris, the flip side of Fitzgerald et al's experience.  Tropic of Cancer was banned in the US for its sexual descriptions for years, and only made an impact here after Grove Press brought it out and had a big court case about it.  [EDIT: Not an alky!  ]

[Eddie Teach]

Don't you know all literature worth reading originated in the UK or the US?

Not all of it, some was written by Americans living in Paris. 

[garbon]

Don't you know all literature worth reading originated in the UK or the US?

Not all of it, some was written by Americans living in Paris. 

Like an embassy they had a halo of US/UK around them protecting them from the unwashed masses.

[dps]

Trying not to duplicate anything that's already been mentioned:

Gulliver's Travels by Johnathon Swift
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

[mongers]

As I get older, I become less concerned about the books I've yet to read and more interested in the story I've so far told.

[Admiral Yi]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The Aubrey/Maturin series
To Kill a Mockingbird
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Comedians
Mating

[garbon]

As I get older, I become less concerned about the books I've yet to read and more interested in the story I've so far told.

I don't think Shitditch will be a bestseller.

[Sheilbh]

It may be inaccurate, but the language is certainly magisterial and as a work it is stupendous.

Yep. And there's always the old argument of what translation is for. You need, say, Heaney's Beowulf and a more literal almost transliteration. Both have their place. One's trying to make a work of art into art in another language, the other is to enable study and proximity to the other.

I did and do not ascribe to myself any preternatural powers, so I assume others must be capable of it as well.

Yep. I loved it.

For me I think The Sea, The Sea or another Murdoch (maybe The Bell, or Sacred and Profane Love Machine both of which I love) would be a must-read. Murdoch and Greene are probably the two authors I force most on other people.

[fhdz]

Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano.

[merithyn]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Yes!

[Admiral Yi]

Can you give me an Amen!

[Neil]

The Three Musketeers and Monte Cristo are English Literature? in which parallel universe?

Well, they were originally written in a dead language.  All works of consequence are English works.

[Ed Anger]

Silly people. Monte Cristo is a sandwich.