The Great Masterpieces of 22nd Century Prose
These are the novels that will lauded by a literary entomologist in the year 2236, at the end of the Great Lakes War.
The late entomologist Vladimir Nabokov compiled a list of what he called “my greatest masterpieces of 20th century prose.” These are the novels that will lauded by a literary entomologist in the year 2236, at the end of the Great Lakes War.
The Pitiful and the Garrulous, an epic about a group of young men who attempt to build a stone monastery on a remote island but are so overawed by their view of the heavens that they abandon the building in favor of astronomy & dancing.
Occitan, about the wife of a translator who discovers the Provençal poet her husband has spent years trying to translate isn't real and so travels around southern France trying to conjure him in abandoned farm wells.
Usefulness, about the final moments of Carlo Michelstaedter. Written as a dialogue between the manuscript of Persuasion & Rhetoric and the pistol with which he shot himself.
The Cows of Madness, four novels, each with the same title but different authors, about a young man's search for 'the Gustave Courbet of poets' from rural Austria to the crowds at the fall of the Berlin Wall. The novels, differing in length & style, together form a kaleidoscopic history of the Holy Roman Empire.
Falter, Among the Peaks, and The Last Wheel, a triptych about an Arkansan wheelwright who leaves his home to travel the Andes on foot in search of a wife but falls under the spell of a missionary with whom he shares no language.
Winona's Folly, a dark comedy about a young woman whose agrarian dreams fall apart due to her love for the slugs and pests destroying her homestead garden.
Syllables, about a young bartender's search for "the lost light of Laredo," a concept that by the end replaces the plot of the novel, though it is never explained directly.
John's Abbey, about a shy, alcoholic doorman who attends daily Mass and plays checkers with the ghost of Simone Weil.
About the Lake, about the matriarch of a family of archaeologists who spends the final years of her life in rural Wisconsin repenting for her career in trafficking antiquities & secretly delivering envelopes of cash to her neighbors.
Gladstone!, a comedy about a group of precocious teenage anglophiles in South Carolina who attempt to write and perform a musical about the life of William Gladstone despite their bitter disagreements about the first Boer War.
The Isolatoes, a chronicle of the marvelous and dangerous adventures a pair of young men who are so taken with Moby-Dick that they set out to kill a whale with harpoons.