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Moby Dick; or, Th...
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Don DeLillo
“It is all falling indelibly into the past.”
Don DeLillo, Underworld

Wallace Stegner
“How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power? Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction?”
Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

Philip Roth
“As an artist the nuance is your task. Your task is not to simplify. Even should you choose to write in the simplest way, a la Hemingway, the task remains to impart the nuance, to elucidate the complication, to imply the contradiction. Not to erase the contradiction, not to deny the contradiction, but to see where, within the contradiction, lies the tormented human being. To allow for the chaos, to let it in. You must let it in. Otherwise you produce propaganda, if not for a political party, a political movement, then stupid propaganda for life itself -- for life as it might itself prefer to be publicized.”
Philip Roth, I Married a Communist

James Ellroy
“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.”
James Ellroy

David Foster Wallace
“You want your art to be hip and seem cool to people, but a great deal of what passes for hip or cool is now highly commercially driven. And some if it is important art. I think 'The Simpsons' is important art. On the other hand, it's also, in my opinion, relentlessly corrosive to the soul and everything is parodied and everything is ridiculous. Maybe I'm old but for my part I can be steeped in about an hour of it and then I have to walk away and look at a flower.

If there's something to be talked about, that thing is this weird conflict between what my girlfriend calls the 'inner sap,' the part of us that can really wholeheartedly weep at stuff and the part of us that has to live in a world of smart, jaded, sophisticated people and wants very much to be taken seriously by those people.”
David Foster Wallace

3183 Tournament of Books — 2328 members — last activity Oct 08, 2025 11:09AM
This book group was established for those interested in participating in The Morning News's Tournament of Books. Please do not feel the need to finish ...more
19703 Infinite Summer — 304 members — last activity Jun 21, 2019 03:36PM
For all those planning to read Infinite Jest this summer starting June 21. Support, encouragement and gentle pushes welcome.
25x33 Time's 100 all time greatest novels — 33 members — last activity Jan 02, 2023 04:53PM
For those of us too daunted by the 1001 list here's another, compiled by the good folk at Time magazine... ...more
55303 The Millions — 274 members — last activity Apr 01, 2020 08:07PM
'The indispensable literary site' - The New York Times 'Lots of reasons to love The Millions' - The Guardian 'A fantastic website' - Utne Reader Tw ...more
46928 The Bookhouse Boys — 79 members — last activity Oct 29, 2017 08:35PM
Hatched from the The Bookhouse Boys podcast, this is the group for the lover of classic and modern literature, a community made for discussion of all ...more
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