Please recommend some books about happy Americans

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Because I've been reading a lot of Tom Wolfe and Lorrie Moore and Richard Ford and Mary Gaitskill lately, and you're all starting to look like fuckups to me. Balance needed. Thanks!

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Don't know if it's about happy Americans, but it's very American and it makes me very happy and I'm American. But you've probably already read it.

― NA (Nick A.), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:08 (twenty-two years ago)

the Illuminatus! trilogy!

― Maria (Maria), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:08 (twenty-two years ago)

all of the Fletch, Flynn, & Sklyar novels from Gregory MacDonald. Not only is the dialogue fuckin' cracking, but the main characters are relatively positive folks.

― Kingfish (Kingfish), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha I knew it! Only three suggestions. You ARE all miserabilist fuckups after all.

(I have read ACOD Nick but perhaps I will do again.)

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:45 (twenty-two years ago)

most books in general aren't that happy are they?

― Maria (Maria), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:53 (twenty-two years ago)

You should reread it, it gets better every additional time.

― NA (Nick A.), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Here's another try, and this one's really stretching it as far as your request, but I have to make my obligatory Nabokov recommendation: Pnin. OK, so the main character is Russian, but it takes place at an American college. It's really different from other Nabokov. The tone is more, um, "sweet." It's more directly humorous, but I think more emotionally affecting than most of his other books. The style is a lot more straightforward and plain, less wordy, than most Nabokov, and I think it works. It's about the episodic adventures of a kind of hopeless, absentminded, yet goodhearted Russian professor at a US college who doesn't really speak English that well.

― NA (Nick A.), Monday, 15 September 2003 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

You're probably right Maria and I guess I'm not really looking for happy books, more an antidote to a particular type of nebulous urban angst that I've ODed on lately.

I will try Pnin Nick, thanks!

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 15 September 2003 14:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Happy Americans? Have you tried....

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0307155102.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 15 September 2003 14:29 (twenty-two years ago)

where is lowly worm?!! i protest!

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 15 September 2003 14:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Clearly that fire truck is about to mow down the tiny cat in the car, while the bear policeman is about to shoot it. Enough already.

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 15 September 2003 14:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought Scarry was Swiss?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 15 September 2003 14:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Based on the immodesty of his book title, he must be American.

― NA (Nick A.), Monday, 15 September 2003 14:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Michael Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, mostly; at least, it isn't urban angst.

Isaac Adamson's Billy Chaka books, Jonathan Carroll's The Wooden Sea, but those are cheating, cause they're genre books (angst is something writers make up when they aren't allowed to have Mysterious Conspiracies, Giant Robots, Dragons, or Space Aliens).

Um, I just woke up, I'll probably think of some others. It's not that we have a lot of angst so much as we admire it because too many of us never get over the adolescent thing where you think angst means you're Serious.

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Ned: nope, he just lived there.

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought about Kavalier and Clay but didn't really know how "happy" it is.

― NA (Nick A.), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Tom Sawyer!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:34 (twenty-two years ago)

The Sweet Valley High series!

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Funnily enough I did think of Kavalier and Clay when I started the thread, as an exception (I read it a few months ago). It's not 'happy' exactly but it does have people DOING stuff rather than just thinking about stuff. I like books with people thinking about stuff, it just seems that I've read a lot of them recently.

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought about Kavalier and Clay but didn't really know how "happy" it is.

Yeah, I waited [i.e. did not log on until] Archel said "antidote to nebulous urban angst." I think that in the main K&C is a positive book rather than a negative one, but either way -- it definitely isn't nebulous urban angst.

Crosspost with the lady hrself.

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Hehe Kirsten, I will re-read my dog-eared Anne of Green Gables books until they fall apart before I will resort to Sweet Valley High. Again...

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 15 September 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

The problem was pinpointed decades ago by Wodehouse, who claimed that the way to turn his books into serious literature was to take out all the plot and bung in loads of misery.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 15 September 2003 17:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Tim Sandlin's great Sorrow Floats, Social Blunders, Skipped Parts trilogy --- a sorta Tales of the City/Salinger-type/underage sex thing. And it's got back cover recommendations from Kim Gordon and Drew Barrymore on the back! Uh, never mind. It's dashed good, though.

― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Monday, 15 September 2003 19:18 (twenty-two years ago)

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