A look back on 20th Century Literature (Pre-WW2)

Looking back on the books that we have read for our group i have this to say; some of the books seem very modern. I am referring to Tarzan Of The Apes and Of Mice and Men. Both are easier reads so that's why i think these seem to have been the easiest to understand. Other books in this time frame that i disliked mainly because they seem out of date. As I Lay Dying almost makes me think the guy was drugs when he wrote the book adding in weird stuff (like the abortion part which were very uncommon in that time frame). The part about when of the sons comparing the dead fish to his mother just simply creeps me out and the stream of conscious writing style is simply hard to understand.
All of the books have been made into films some have many versions such as Tarzan where the latest movie released about it was by Disney in 1999. The majority of the books have also been turned into theatre productions as well.
Overall i did not like this era of literature, the majority of the stories tend to about country life as opposed to taking place in the city. Some of these books i may read again but the majority no as they are out of my time frame for me to fully understand maybe if I had lived in that time frame i could fully understand.

Side note: i do not take any credit for the map below, it is neat if you can work it but its hard to understand/operate

As I Lay Dying - Relationship Map

Randomhouse's top 100 novels of the 20th century

100 Best Novels picked by thier board

ULYSSES by James Joyce
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner (also did As I Lay Dying)
CATCH-22
DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
1984 by George Orwell
I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
KIM by Rudyard Kipling
A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
LOVING by Henry Green
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
IRONWEED by William Kennedy
THE MAGUS by John Fowles
WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

Thought it was worth to point out 3 out of 6 books are in this list

Sons and Lovers - Accolades

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Sons and Lovers ninth on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century.

It contains a frequently quoted use of the English dialect word "nesh". The speech of several protagonists is represented in Lawrence's written interpretation of the Nottinghamshire dialect[1], which also features in several of his poems

Quote:
"Sons and Lovers was the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. Never was a son more indentured to his mother's love and full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrence's young protagonist. Never, that is, except perhaps Lawrence himself. In his 1913 novel he grappled with the discordant loves that haunted him all his life--for his spiritual childhood sweetheart, here called Miriam, and for his mother, whom he transformed into Mrs. Morel. It is, by Lawrence's own account, a book aimed at depicting this woman's grasp: "as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers--first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother--urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives."

The Great Gatsby - enough films?

The Great Gatsby has been filmed four times:

The Great Gatsby, in 1926 by Herbert Brenon – a silent movie of a stage adaptation, starring Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson, and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest that it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at National Archives is all that is known to exist

The Great Gatsby, in 1949 by Elliott Nugent – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Shelley Winters; for copyright reasons, this film is not readily available;

The Great Gatsby, in 1974, by Jack Clayton – the most famous screen version, starring Robert Redford in the title role with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan and Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, with a script by Francis Ford Coppola;

The Great Gatsby, in 2000 by Robert Markowitz – a made-for-TV movie starring Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd and Mira Sorvino.

Tropic Of Cancer

The book Tropic of Cancer had a very Critical reception as the large amounts of sexuality in the book was just unheard of at the time. Yet to many literature people it was great piece of work. Here are some opinions of the novel

George Orwell called this novel

"the most important book of the mid-1930s [and Miller is] the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.


Samuel Beckett hailed it as "a momentous event in the history of modern writing


Some were not so positive though
Edmund Wilson said of the novel:

The tone of the book is undoubtedly low; The Tropic of Cancer, in fact, from the point of view both of its happening and of the language in which they are conveyed, is the lowest book of any real literary merit that I have ever remember to have read... there is a strange amenity of temper and style which bathes the whole composition even when it is disgusting or tiresome.


In his dissent from the majority holding that the book was not obscene, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno wrote Cancer is "not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity

Tarzan of The Apes - Films based on the book

The book Tarzan of the Apes has been made into a number of movies (according to the Internet Movie Database there has been 89 movies with Tarzan in it's title from 1918 to 2008. Originally the first adaptions of the book to film were through silent films which appeared a few years after the book was pubslihed/the character was made. After talking pictures were introduced a popular Tarzan movie franchise was developed, anchored at first by actor Johnny Weissmüller in the title role, which lasted from the 1930s through the 1960s. After the many smaller films Disney’s came out with the animated Tarzan (1999) which marked a new beginning for the ape man, taking its inspiration equally from Burroughs and Greystoke. The newest film does however change the plot a large amount from the original book.