The Catcher in the Rye

JD Salinger

• Holden Caulfield runs away from his prep school and drifts about NY

Ray Bradbury

• written during Cold War
• presents future American society
• reading is outlawed
• firemen= book burners
  

Ernest Hemingway

• WWI ambulance driver Lt. Frederick Henry loves English nurse Catherine Berkley
• Catherine becomes pregnant
• Henry deserts after Caporetto in Italy
• They go to Switzerland
• Catherine dies

Ernest Hemingway

• WWI ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry loves English nurse Catherine Barkley
• Barkley becomes pregnant
• Henry deserts after Caporetto in Italy
  
• they go to Switzerland, where she dies

Sinclair Lewis

• won Pulitzer Prize
  
• Martin Arrowsmith
• bacteriologist goes to Vermont farm and West Indies

William Faulkner

• husband Anse and kids Cash, Darl, Jewel, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell carry body of Addie Bundren to Jefferson MS

Ayn Rand

• railroad worker Dagny Taggart finds government-free utopia at Gat's Gulch, CO

Truman Capote

• Holly Golightly

Joseph Heller

• Pianosa Island during WWII
• Yossarian can only stop bombing missions if insane but wanting to stop is sane

John Steinbeck

• Salina Valley
• Adam Trask and Cathy have two sons
• Cal kills Aron by telling him mom is a prostitute

Margaret Mitchell

• Civil War Georgia

• Scarlett O'Hara of Tara plantation loves Ashley Wilkes but he marries Melanie Hamilton
•  Scarlett is widowed twice, then marries Rhett Butler
• Alexandra Ripley wrote 1992 sequel Scarlett

John Hersey

• tells of nuclear bombing throught the eyes of six people, including priest, minister, and two doctors

William Faulkner

• part-black Joe Christmas employed by Joe Brown has affair with Joanna Burden and kills her
• Christmas is killed by mob
• pregnant Lena Grove comes to Jefferson looking for her lover
•  Reverand Gail Hightower loses his church because of devotion to the past

Sinclair Lewis

• Carol Kennicott tires of physician husband Will and tries to bring culture to dull Gopher Prairie, Minnesota
• Based on Sauk Centre

Herman Melville

• aka White Whale
• Captain Ahab pursues Moby
  
• others on the Pequod=
• Starbuck
• Stub
• harpooners: Queequeg, Daggoo, Tashtego
• black Pip
• Parsee (fire-worshipper)
• only narrator Ishamel survives
  

Richard Wright

• Bigger Thomas from Chicago slums is victimized for being black
• commits two murders
• defended by communist lawyer and is sentenced to death
  

John Steinbeck

•  strong giant half-wit migrant worker Lennie accidentally kills woman who seduces him
  
• is shot by friend George to protect him from lynch mob

John Updike 

• salesman Harry Angstrom leaves alcoholic wife Janice and child to find freedom but returns

Alex Haley

• many generations of slaves from Gambia, including Kunta Kinte

Robert Frost

• Vermont

"The woods are lovely dark and deep

But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep"

Edgar Allen Poe

• The Fall of the House of Usher:
• narrator visits Roderick Usher
•  twin sister Madeline Usher emerges from burial vault
• house and family destroyed
  

• Berenice:
• man Egaeus prepares to marry his cousin Berenice
• Berenice=sick, healthy=teeth
• Berenice dies, Egaeus obsesses and unburies her to pluck out her teeth

Edith Wharton

• NY 1870s
• Neland Archer marries May Welland but loves her cousin Ellen Olenska

Alice Walker

• Celie made pregnant twice by dad at age 14
• sold to Albert but befriends Shug

E. E. Cummings

• WWI French concentration camp where Cummings was imprisoned on false treason charge

Betty Friedan

• women loses identity in a system requiring them to live through their husband and children
• post WWII
  

Ayn Rand

• architect Howard Roark turns down commissions rather than sacrifice integrity
• possibly based on Frank Lloyd Wright

John Steinbeck

• Joad family travels from OK to CA during Great Depression to find work picking fruit
• Tom Joad becomes involved in strikes and kills a man
• Rose of Sharon has baby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Jazz Age Long Island
• Jay Gatsby loves Daisy Buchanan but she stays with husband Tom
• Daisy runs over Tom's mistress Myrtle Wilson
  
• Tom shoots Jay
• narrator Nick Carraway

Carson McCullers

• eccentric tomboy Mick Kelly
•  goodhearted Biff Brannon
• drunken Jake Blount
• black intellectual Dr. Benedict Copeland
• All admire deaf mute Singer, who commits suicide

Edith Wharton

• orphan Lily Bart loves Lawrence Seldon but reject him because he is poor
• blackmailed and falsely accused by other men
  
• becomes milliner and takes overdose of sleeping pills

Amy Tan

• 4 Chinese American immigrant families who play Mahjong for money while eating a variety of foods
• 3 mothers and four daughters
• 4 parts= 4 sections= 16 chapters
• structured like a Mahjong game

Shirley Jackson

• children gather stones for annual lottery
• head of each family draws a slip of paper
• Bill Hutchinson gets slip with black spot
• each Hutchinson family member draws a slip and Bill's wife Tessie gets black marked slip
• Tessie is stoned to death to ensure good harvest
  

Edgar Allen Poe

• castle masquerade ball during Plague years: Prince Prospero

Ernest Hemingway

• Cuban fisherman Santiago catched marlin on 85th day but it is slowly eaten by sharks on way home

Eudora Welty

• Pulitzer Prize
• Laurel travels to New Orleans
• takes care of father who reads him Dickens
• Father dies and her and stepmother Fay move body to Mississippi

John Steinbeck

• CA Indian pearl-fisher and wife Juana's baby bitten by scorpion
  
• they pay doctor with large pearl

Edgar Allen Poe

• poet is startled by raven tapping at chamber door
• raven perches on bust of Pallas Athene and answers questions about dead lover
• "Nevermore"

Robert Frost

• takes the one less traveled and "that has made all the difference

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Salem
• Hestor Pryne
• wears A for adultery
• husband=Richard Chillingsworth
• minister=Arthur Dimmesdale
• adultery w/ Hestor
• Daughter=Pearl
  

William Faulkner

• 4 sections narrated by Compson family
• idiot Benjy 
• Harvard student Quentin, whose ties with sister Caddy shattered by her loveless marriage
• Jason, who keeps money Caddy sends to support daughter Quentin
• black cook Dilsey

Ernest Hemingway

• Lost Generation 1925 France
•  journalist Jake Barnes narrates
• Lady Brett Ashley is divorcing and may love Jake but plans to marry Michael Campbell
  
• has affair with Spanish bullfighter Pedro Romero in Pamplona
• others include Greek Bill Gorton and American-Jewish writer Robert Cohn

Marjorie Rawlings

• northern FL boy, Jody, loves a fawn but must shoot it when it eats family corn

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• spoiled Middle Westerner Amory Blaine goes to Princeton
• joins literary cults
• loves Rosaline Commase but is rejected
• serves in WWI
• starts career in advertising

Harper Lee

• AL town
• lawyer Atticus Finch defends a black man
• his daughter Scout Finch narrates

John Steinbeck

• carefree Danny meets w/ simple friends
• Pablo
• Big Joe Portage
• Jesus Maria Corcoran
• Pirate
• "like the round table"
  

• Riders of the Purple Sage
• The Last of the Plainsmen
• Tales of Fishing