I try to specialize in American authors--but If you want a random selection of my favorites to recommend in order to understand this modern era of America, I present these three:
J.R. - William Gaddis (1975)
(A very nice blog post on it here: https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-again-on-william-g...)
J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired up by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.
Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."
Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon (2013)
It deals with government paranoia, conspiracy theories for 9/11, It uses Computer and ‘deepweb’ Internet as the framing device for the novel—which is why I bring it up in this context. It somehow fits fairly nicely into the political thriller genre, while addressing modern concerns.
Don Delillo - White Noise (1985)
While Jack Gladney is an intellectual academic, an expert in the unlikely field of “Hitler studies” (and something of a fraud, to boot), he’s also a pretty normal dad. Casual reviewers of White Noise tend to overlook the sublime banality of domesticity represented in DeLillo’s signature novel: Gladney is an excellent father to his many kids and step-kids, and DeLillo draws their relationships with a realism that belies–and perhaps helps to create–the novel’s satirical bent.
J.R. - William Gaddis (1975)
(A very nice blog post on it here: https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-again-on-william-g...)
J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired up by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.
Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."
Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon (2013)
It deals with government paranoia, conspiracy theories for 9/11, It uses Computer and ‘deepweb’ Internet as the framing device for the novel—which is why I bring it up in this context. It somehow fits fairly nicely into the political thriller genre, while addressing modern concerns.
Don Delillo - White Noise (1985)
While Jack Gladney is an intellectual academic, an expert in the unlikely field of “Hitler studies” (and something of a fraud, to boot), he’s also a pretty normal dad. Casual reviewers of White Noise tend to overlook the sublime banality of domesticity represented in DeLillo’s signature novel: Gladney is an excellent father to his many kids and step-kids, and DeLillo draws their relationships with a realism that belies–and perhaps helps to create–the novel’s satirical bent.