Modern Classics – Defining the 20th Century
“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury – Fire of Ignorance
Ray Bradbury has contributed more than he could have probably every hoped for to the realm of science-fiction, shaping it with his groundbreaking and unique stories containing profound meditations on modern society. Fahrenheit 451 is probably his best-known novel, telling the story of Guy Montag, a “fireman” whose job consists of burning books en masse, one day after the next, until a chance encounter challenges him to consider all he has ever known and believed.
“God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” by Kurt Vonnegut – The Shame of Poverty
Kurt Vonnegut has given us no shortage of piercing and poignant stories getting right to the heart of what's wrong in modern American society, but among them, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater flew a little under the radar (in relative terms). It follow the life of Elliot Rosewater, a disillusioned millionaire whose conscience leads him to move the headquarters of his Rosewater Foundation to his former family home, Rosewater, Indiana, where he does all he can for the poor people living there.
“Player Piano” by Kurt Vonnegut – The Automated Future
Kurt Vonnegut's extensive bibliography isn't short on bestsellers, but I see many people overlooking his first novel, Player Piano, which seems a little strange considering how well it resonates with modern times. It tells the story of an engineer, Paul Prodeus, living in a totally automated American society in the future, increasingly desperate to find some true meaning to his life.
“Steppenwolf” by Herman Hesse – The Inherent Beauty of Meaninglessness
Herman Hesse is an author whose literature can be best-described, in my opinion, as profoundly introspective, affording each and every person it touches the tools to peer further within themselves. Steppenwolf is one of his most popular and influential novels, telling the story of Harry Haller, a profoundly sad and lonely individual struggling to reconcile the civil and primeval halves of his own identity.
“Germinal” by Emile Zola – Seeding the Revolution
Emile Zola is a name most people are familiar with, even those who haven't read his works. Objectively one of the greatest authors in our short history, his novels always had the ability to move people, and have been consistently doing so for over a hundred and fifty years. In Germinal, one of his more famous works, he tells the story of Etienne Lantier, a clever and unemployed machinist who eventually stirs a mining community to a strike unlike any other, threatening to open the first cracks in a rotten and unjust world order.
“Galapagos” by Kurt Vonnegut – The Best Course of Evolution
Kurt Vonnegut had the invaluable ability of pointing out all the truly ridiculous aspects of our lives hiding right beneath our noses, and few are the works where he does it better than Galapagos. The story follows a group of random people who, through sheer coincidence, are stranded on the titular islands and become the sole progenitors for a new, and somewhat different human race.
“Three Comrades” by Erich Maria Remarque – The Enduring Spirit of Friendship
Short Summary Erich Maria Remarque captured like none other the chaos of an uncertain daily life in Germany between the two World Wars, and Three Comrades is one of his more iconic works on the subject. The story follows three friends earning a meagre living through a garage they own, searching desperately for a meaning to their wasting lives amidst the upheavals which shook Germany in 1928… a meaning they might just find when a new comrade enters the fold.
“The Black Obelisk” by Erich Maria Remarque – Economics Dictate Values
Erich Maria Remarque has managed to capture like few others the atmosphere of his era, and in The Black Obelisk he takes us to the heart of Germany after the First World War. It introduces us to Ludwig, a young veteran from the war, now working for a monument company, mostly selling stone markers to the loved ones of the recently-departed. With the historical inflation in his country only worsening by the hour, Ludwig tries to find a meaning for his life amidst a turbulent and collapsing society.
“The Sirens of Titan” by Kurt Vonnegut – The Inescapable Plan
Kurt Vonnegut has many novels through which he established his lifelong fame as an essential author of the 20th century, and the first of those was titled The Sirens of Titan. Published all the way back in 1959, it tells the story of Malachi Constant, Earth's richest and most depraved man, as he embarks on a grand interplanetary voyage against his own will, learning much about the universe in the process, and forgetting even more about himself.
“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller – Where Rational Thought goes to Die
Joseph Heller forever gifted humanity a slightly deeper understanding of human nature and the utter folly pervasive in war when he published the eternally-current Catch-22. The novel, drawing in part on Heller's experiences as a bombardier, follows the story of Captain John Yossarian and his mates who experience the incongruous insanity of the Second World War as they fly their missions over Italy.
“The Young Lions” by Irwin Shaw – Different Perspectives on Atrocity
Irwin Shaw is one of the writers whose works have a defined place in history, chronicling a reality we can never afford to forget. The Young Lions is perhaps his best-known work, depicting the Second World War and its immense complexity through three different perspectives: an observant young Nazi, a weary American film producer, and a shy Jewish boy who just got married.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Time is Indeed a Circle
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, is a figure who needs little introduction among book lovers. His works have always been distinguished by their profound and meaningful nature, and One Hundred Years of Solitude represents those qualities like none other. Telling of the rise and fall of a mythical town called Macondo, the story follows the lives of multiple generations belonging to the Buendia family.
“Ragtime” by E.L. Doctorow – The Recurring Patterns in Life
E.L. Doctorow is revered as one of the greatest and most influential authors of the 20th century, and I think anyone who picks up his works, whether they like them or not, can understand why.
Ragtime was considered one of his best works and a true classic, presenting a relatively disjointed narrative following many characters, some real and others imagined, across their trials and tribulations in a snapshot of early 1900s New York City.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway – The Last Stand of Love
Ernest Hemingway has always had a real talent for portraying complex characters in equally complicated situations, made even more impressive with his concise vocabulary. For Whom the Bell Tolls might be one of his more popular stories, following a young American, Robert Jordan, as he fights through the Spanish Civil War as a member of the International Brigades, attached to an antifascist guerrilla unit in the mountains.
H.P. Lovecraft’s Short Stories – The Misadventures of Randolph Carter
Though H.P. Lovecraft is generally considerate enough to spare his characters from more than one venture into the heart of madness, Randolph Carter suffered a rather different fate. The sole character written by the author with the distinction of being the protagonist across multiple stories, Carter appeared in the following three stories we will explore: The Dream-Quest of Kaddath, The Statement of Randolph Carter and The Unnamable.
H. P. Lovecraft’s Short Stories – A Thirst for Retribution
As much as H. P. Lovecraft enjoyed writing about otherworldly horrors, he was also no stranger to the more grounded and dark compulsions laying dormant within us, seldom shying away from exploring them if his mind wandered this way. The Alchemist, The Cats of Ulthar and The Terrible Old Man are three of his lesser-known short stories, each one dealing in their own strange ways with the theme of retribution.
H.P. Lovecraft’s Short Stories – Beyond the Scope of Acceptable Reality
H.P. Lovecraft was undoubtedly a genius when it came to finding new angles from which to approach the horror genre. Shifting themes and focuses from one story to the next he left a great collection of works strewn across the genre's entire spectrum. Today, we're going to take a look at “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”, “Polaris” and “From Beyond”, short stories where we dive deep into overlapping and transcending realities beyond the waking world of awareness.
H.P. Lovecraft’s Short Stories-Terrors Lurking Beneath our Feet
H.P. Lovecraft was an author who endeavored to push the boundaries of the horror genre and explore frontiers no writer has touched before. His stories cover an impressively wide array of subjects, with the horror elements often maintaining a more psychological rather than physical presence. In his short stories The Beast in the Cave, The Tomb and Imprisoned in the Pharaohs we actually get to see both types of horror at work as we are taken deep below the earth to become acquainted with the evils dwelling within.
Short Stories by H. P. Lovecraft – Malevolent Visitors from the Beyond
H. P. Lovecraft's tales cover a wide array of subjects and ideas, and many of them can be grouped in a thematic fashion. Take for instance three of his better-known stories: The Colour Out of Space, The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Whisperer in Darkness. Each of those stories, in its own fashion, deals with the idea of alien visitors from the beyond coming down to Earth from space or emerging from the depths of the sea in order to influence humanity for their own ends. While their intentions may be debatable, the unmitigated suffering they inflict upon their subjects is not.
Lovecraft’s Short Stories – The Terror of Man’s Personal Madness
H.P. Lovecraft has covered a vast array of themes and ideas in his stories, but more than anything he seemed to love when his protagonists were not only confronted with the kinds of horrors that would be specific to their perspective and/or madness, but also when they became the said horrors. In The Outsider, The Evil Clergyman and The Rats in the Walls, we are presented with three stories where the protagonists end up on the other side of the fence, so to speak, and we dive deep into the resulting evil and lunacy.
Short Stories about the Defiance of Death by H. P. Lovecraft – Laughing at the Grim Reaper
H. P. Lovecraft has pioneered much of the horror genre by himself, touching on an absolutely dazzling array of themes and concepts that have endured up until this very day. While most people know him as the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos there is indeed much more to his writings. For instance, he authored a few timeless stories which are centred around the macabre idea of conquering death at all costs, and what follows is a look at three of the most popular ones, the last of which you may already be familiar with: "Celephais", "Cool Air", and "Herbert West - Reanimator".
Short Stories About the Old Gods by H. P. Lovecraft – The World of Eldritch Horrors
H. P. Lovecraft has been one of the most influential horror writers of all time, pioneering many of the concepts and tropes we've come to enjoy time and time again in all kinds of media. It is safe to say that without his groundbreaking work, we wouldn't be enjoying the likes of Stephen King and his peers. Among the many short stories he wrote where Dagon, Nyarlathotep and the all-time famous The Call of Cthulhu , all three revolving around the theme of ancient and otherworldly gods coming to Earth.
“In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote – Reconstruct the American Tragedy
Truman Capote may very well have revolutionized the world of journalism when he wrote the novelized yet non-fictional account of the Clutter family murder, but more than that, he created one of the most powerful and compelling true crime narrations that takes us into the emotional and psychological depths of the American tragedy. Praised by one side and criticized by the other, In Cold Blood remains a rather controversial book to this very day, one that is nevertheless deemed an important milestone in American literature.
“The Trial” by Franz Kafka – The State Knows Best
Franz Kafka was one of the more complex and thought-provoking authors of the twentieth century, and though he may have died young, his classics like The Trial will live on forever, telling the timeless story of an ordinary man, Joseph K., who one day wakes up only to find himself accused of a crime he has no recollection of committing. What's worse, not a person in the world seems to be able to tell him what crime he's actually being accused of. Standing before the grinding gears of the bureaucratic machine Joseph K. must resolve the impossible matter or be grinded down into nothingness, like so many before him.
“The Stranger” by Albert Camus – The Meaningless Past
Albert Camus was always known for his complex stories that were profound studies of human nature, and The Stranger fits that description perfectly, telling the story of a young disinterested in life whose fate quickly spirals out of control for seemingly inexplicable reasons. Meursault isn't the kind of person anyone is used to, having his own outlook on life and a curious way of justifying his actions and inactions. However, when his unusual philosophy leads him into dire straits, he cannot help but question all he has ever held true and whether or not a human life, even one such as his, can have a real meaning to it.