Great American Book Collection

(In early 2019, Harvard had a book collection contest, and I applied, describing my growing collection dedicated to the idea of the Great American Novel. I did not win, but it does give a nice idea of the reading aspect of the project, my dedication to reading all the best American literature, philosophy, poetry, thought. The books in this bibliography represent, at this point, much less than half of my collection; even back then I omitted almost half of it for brevity’s sake. My favorite part of this piece is the way I discuss the weird ways in which I acquired many of the books.)

The Great American Novel Collection

My book collection began with a single book: On the Road by Jack Kerouac. My aunt had given me the Penguin Classics edition of this book for my birthday in winter 2016, my freshman year. That spring, I was feeling disillusioned with Harvard; the students had not lived up to my high expectations for intelligence, creativity, and drive; Trump had been elected, and it felt like America was falling apart, and that nobody was doing anything serious to fix it; furthermore, I wasn’t enjoying my classes as much as I should have. Then a realization hit me— I hadn’t read for fun all year. When I was a kid, I was always the Library Boy; my local library cultivated a whole shelf just for me, and I’d read stacks every week. I’d even ignore my elementary school teachers to read my chosen books half-hidden under my desk. But high school, with its significant time demands for work and socialization, caused a significant dropoff in my time spent reading for pleasure, and by freshman fall, I simply wasn’t reading anymore, even though that had been the single most defining characteristic of my youth. So, one Saturday during that freshman spring, I started reading On the Road. And, at the exhilarating speed of Neal Cassady balling from Denver to Chicago in a day straight, I finished the book. The book made me feel something, something just beyond the adequacy of words, something like It, or Time, or Freedom, or Life. That was when I decided to just go mad.

So, I went mad; for the rest of that spring, I fantasized and planned a hitchhiking trip around America. I had never left the Northeast, since my parents rarely ever travelled far from my rural hometown; I had never seen most of my own country, a country which, after the election, I realized I needed to meet. I wanted to meet all sorts of people, and see all sorts of natural wonders, and explore all sorts of incredible cities, and have all sorts of free, wild, unplanned adventures that I could never have within a prescribed Harvard Summer School program. I wanted grow, and learn, and suffer, and absorb. Furthermore, I wanted to prove that you could still hitchhike in modern America; even though crime rates are far lower now than they were in hitchhiking’s heyday, the narratives dominant in modern American culture are narratives of fear, murder, and distrust. I wanted to prove that Americans could still trust one another, could still share with one another, and I wanted to prove it with my own body. Most adults told me that this was crazy, that I was gonna die, and I told them that yes, maybe it was crazy, but that I was confident that I could do it, as safely and smartly as possible, and that if trusting Americans and travelling around my own country was so crazy and dangerous, and if I did die, why, then what did that say about our country? Something that needed to be said, I felt. And, of course, it’s not like I was just rushing off willy-nilly. I worked in a burrito restaurant to save up $1000 for the trip; I researched hitchhiking deeply in the months before I left, so I felt like somewhat of an expert; and, I had all sorts of safety strategies, such as asking every driver if they would let me send a picture of their license plate to my mother— I only got into cars with drivers who agreed to this accountability measure. I left in late June 2017, and I travelled 8000+ miles in a big zigzaggy loop around America, from New York to Seattle to LA to the Solar Eclipse in Tennessee. I had over 180 rides, and talked to hundreds of new people in passenger seats and in cities around America. I learned a lot, and thought a lot.

Since returning back to school, I have spent the last two years building off of the ideas I developed while on the road, and I have been funneling all of this thought into a Great American Novel project. I am writing a Great American Novel using this trip as the basis for the plot; however, the bibliography for this project is intended to provide a sort of conspectus of the best of American thought and culture for modern Americans. The novel will have quotes from many great American novels woven into the prose (Moby-Dick lines in chapter 1); sections that imitate different styles (Catcher in the Rye style thoughts in New York); homages to famous characters and figures in American thought and culture (a speech by a MLK-esque preacher); discussions about important American figures or ideas (debating the presidents, talking about 60s artists, or discussing baseball with any of the 180 drivers who picked me up); or pastiches of the greatest American poets (like my modern response to Allen Ginsburg’s Howl).

Of course, a project of this scope implies an enormous amount of reading, and so over the last two years I have continually, eagerly, and ravenously acquired more and more books that fit into the web of this project; these always inevitably lead me to discovering new authors or connections or ideas, which then lead me to further book purchases. Some of the books I acquired in my youth. A few special ones I actually acquired while on that first hitchhiking trip: an old copy of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl which I bought in Denver and a copy of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet gifted to me by a kind woman in Northern California. I’ve perused many bookstores in Cambridge, Providence, and even around the country on subsequent hitchhiking adventures (for example, I serendipitously found The Poems of Hart Crane in a small bookstore in Western Massachusetts while hitchhiking along Highway 2 this August, just after I had been reading about Hart Crane via Harold Bloom). I’ve also oriented a lot of my classes from sophomore and junior year towards this project, and have thus bought many books for classes through the Coop which are now part of my collection. I’ve even, I must confess, stolen a few of my books; I have stolen, from large, corporate booksellers, primarily books whose authors, I believe, would want me to steal them (for example, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey). A large majority of my books, however, were legally bought used on Amazon; I’ve bought dozens and dozens of used books on Amazon after falling down a rabbit hole of research on Wikipedia, because Amazon is so convenient, and you can get used books at amazing prices that look like new. Slowly, but surely, I’ve been putting together this web of American thought, all in dialogue with one another, all connected by common threads, the bigger picture of which I see better every day. 

This is how I developed my current book collection, which is probably one of the things I am most proud of. I do not come from significant financial means; I am on nearly full financial aid, and pay my student contribution by working as a tour guide. The only thing I really spend disposable income on is books; I do my best to minimize paying for food, and typically survive just through the dining halls or parental food when home; I also might pay for the occasional Uber. Beyond that, it’s just books, which is why I now own around 300 books between here and my home. I purchase books much faster than I read them, although I spend a lot of my free time reading; ultimately, I have read about half of my books, although I am indescribably excited to read each book I haven’t yet read. I am always aware, at least, of where they fit in the puzzle. About 150 of these books fall under my “Great American Novel” project collection, and many of these are displayed prominently on my two Harvard-provided shelves: the bottom shelf is specifically for American novels and short story collections, and the top shelf is American thought, history, and culture. My poetry is on top of my smaller shelf to the right. It fills me with pride and joy to look at these shelves, and I also love to share my books with friends; I must have at least 20 books somewhere out there in the hands of various friends, unaccounted for, but which I trust will eventually be returned and discussed with pleasure.

I will be taking the next school year entirely off, in order to read the rest of my “America” books and finish writing my novel, which will take at least a full year off to write, if not more, given the scale of the project. This will all take place after I go on another big hitchhiking trip once again this summer, to get myself back into that free mindset. I see my collection growing slightly over the next year or so, as I will inevitably discover new pieces of the American cultural picture that feel crucial enough to purchase rather than obtain from the library; however, I don’t see it growing at nearly the same rate as it has grown over the past year, which has far outpaced my ability to read. I have a lot of catching up to myself I need to do. This project has been my singular focus for the last two years of my life, and will continue to occupy me for the foreseeable future. It has been a process of spontaneous joy in discovery, not of planning, but I realize that I now have a substantial collection on my hands as a result of this joy, and I am sufficiently proud of it to submit it for recognition by this book collecting prize.

The following bibliography represents about ⅔ of my overall “Great American Novel” project collection. The other third was omitted due to the already extreme length of the bibliography, coupled with some other factors. Many of my more secondary American philosophy books (by George Herbert Mead, Charles Sanders Peirce, George Santayana, John Dewey) were omitted for brevity; many smaller history books (on particular wars or periods in American history) were also omitted; some smaller secondary works by minor authors or authors already accounted for were also left out (such as small works by Gary Snyder, Maggie Nelson, or Norman Mailer); I further omitted large anthologies or collections (my Norton Anthologies of American Literature, as well as my Companion to American Thought); books that I own but that I left at my house away from school were largely left out due to imperfect memory, and the desire to have a possible inspection of my collection match the submitted bibliography (this has meant leaving out some Faulkner books as well as Infinite Jest, which I haven’t read yet anyways); finally, I have lent out over a dozen books to various friends, and these, too, are largely omitted. Despite these omissions, what follows is, to my mind, a very impressive conspectus of American literature.

Bibliography

Poetry

Bishop, Elizabeth. Poems. Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, New York, 2011.

Bogan, Louise. The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968. The Ecco Press, New York, 1977.

Crane, Hart. The Poems of Hart Crane. Liveright, New York, 1986.

Dickinson, Emily. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. Barnes & Noble Classics, New York, 2003.

Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1962.  Harcourt, New York, 1963.

Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1969.

Gibran, Khalil. The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 1960 Pocket Edition.

Ginsberg, Allen. The Essential Ginsberg. HarperCollins, New York, 2015.

Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. City Lights Pocket Bookshop, San Francisco, The Pocket Poets Series: Number Four, 1956.

Graham, Jorie. From The New World: Poems 1976-2014. HarperCollins, New York, 2015.

Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems. Random House, New York, Vintage Classics Edition, 1990.

Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Penguin Random House, New York, Second Vintage Books Edition, 2015.

Toomer, Jean. Cane. Liveright, New York, 1975 Turner Edition.

Toomer, Jean. The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer. University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

Whitman, Walt. The Portable Walt Whitman. Penguin Books, New York, 2004.

Novels

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Random House, The Modern Library, New York, 1931.

Baldwin, James. Go Tell It On the Mountain. Random House, New York, Vintage International Mass-Market Edition 2013.

Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March. Penguin Classics, New York, 2006.

Bellow, Saul. Seize the Day. Penguin Classics, New York, 2003.

Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland. Penguin Classics, New York, 1991.

Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Dover Thrift Edition, New York, 1994.

DeLillo, Don. Underworld. Scribner, New York, 1997.

Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. Random House, New York, 1991.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Random House, New York, Second Vintage International Edition, 1995.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. Norton, New York, Third Norton Critical Edition, 2014.

Faulkner, William. Light in August. Random House, New York, Vintage International Edition, 1985.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner, New York, 2004.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender is the Night. Scribner, New York, 2003.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Dover Thrift Edition, New York, 1994.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. Scribner, New York, Hemingway Library Edition, 2014.

James, Henry. The American Scene. Indiana University Press, London, Second Printing 1969.

James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. Penguin Classics, New York, 2011.

Kerouac, Jack. Big Sur. Penguin, New York, 1992.

Kerouac, Jack. The Dharma Bums. Penguin, New York, 1976.

Kerouac, Jack. On the Road: The Original Scroll. Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, New York, 2007.

Kerouac, Jack. Visions of Cody. Penguin, New York, 1972.

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Penguin, New York, Signet, 1963.

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. HarperCollings, New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition, 2002.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. Norton Third Critical Edition, New York, 2013.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Random House, New York, Vintage 1997.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Random House, New York, Second Vintage International Edition, 1997.

Pirsig, Robert. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. HarperCollins, New York, HarperTorch Paperback Edition 2006.

Roth, Philip. American Pastoral. Random House, New York, First Vintage International Edition, 1998.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown & Company, New York, 1976.

Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives. Penguin Classics, New York, 1990.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. Penguin Classics, New York, 2014.

Steinbeck, John. Travels with Charley In Search of America. Penguin Books, New York, 1962.

Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Random House, New York, Second Vintage Books Edition, 1998.

Updike, John. Rabbit, Run. Ballantine Books, New York, 1960.

Warren, Robert Penn. All the King’s Men. Harcourt, New York, 2001.

Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. Penguin Classics, New York, 1996.

Wolfe, Tom. The Bonfire of the Vanities. Bantam Books, New York, 1987.

Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Picador, New York, 1968.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy. HarperCollings, New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition, 2006.

Wright, Richard. Native Son. HarperCollings, New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition, 2005.

Collections, Short Stories, Plays

Baldwin, James. Baldwin Collected Essays. Library of America, New York, 1998.

Barthelme, Donald. Sixty Stories. Penguin Classics, New York, 2003.

Crane, Stephen. The Portable Stephen Crane. Penguin, New York, 1969.

Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008.

Douglas, Frederick and Harriet Jacobs. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Random House, New York, Modern Library Mass Market Edition, 2004.

Gass, William H. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. New York Review of Books, New York, 2015.

Hemingway, Ernest. In Our Time. Scribner, New York, 1930.

Lovecraft, H.P. The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. Quarto Publishing, New York, 2016.

Mailer, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1992.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Penguin, New York, 1976.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Penguin Classics, New York, 2015.

Twain, Mark. Mississippi Writings. Library of America, New York, 1982.

Waldman, Anne. The Beat Book: Writings from the Beat Generation. Shambhala Publications, Boston, 1996.

Great American Short Stories. Dover Thrift Edition, New York, 2002.

American Thought, Philosophy, Culture, History

Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. Simon & Schuster, New York, 25th Anniversary Edition, 2012.

Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998.

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1944.

Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Norton Critical Edition, New York, 1999.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Signet, New York, 1995.

Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed. Oxford University Press, New York, 1989.

Fisher, Philip. Still the New World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000.

Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Dover Thrift Edition, New York, 1996.

Hamilton, Alexander, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist. Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, Gideon Edition 2001.

James, William. Writings 1878-1899. Library of America, New York, 1987.

James, William. Writings 1902-1910. Library of America, New York, 1987.

Kaag, John. American Philosophy. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2016.

King, Martin Luther. Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. HarperCollins, New York, 1986.

Lepore, Jill. These Truths. Norton, New York, 2018.

Lincoln, Abraham. Selected Speeches and Writings. Library of America, New York, 2009.

Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2001.

Muir, John. The Essential Muir. California Legacy Series, 2006.

Thoreau, Henry David. Civil Disobedience and Other Essays. Dover Thrift Editions, New York, 1993.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Washington Square Press, New York, Varorium Edition, 1963.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. HarperCollins, New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition, 2006.