Karl Bridges

100 Great American Novels You’ve (Probably) Never Read, by Karl Bridges
Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited, 2007

Published in 2007, 100 Great American Novels You’ve (Probably) Never Read is an attempt by Karl Bridges, librarian and associate professor at the University of Vermont’s Bailey/Howe Library, to provide a resource for readers of American fiction who’ve read their way through the standard canon of classics. “One goal of this book,” Bridges writes in his Introduction, “is to represent a wide time span–one equaling the length of American history”, and the novels listed cover a full 200 years: from Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1797) to Charles T. Power’s In the Memory of the Forest (1997).

For each listing, Bridges provides:

• A paragraph or so extract from the work to give a sense of the writer’s style;
• A synopsis of the story;
• Bridges’ own critical commentary, informed by what he estimates as over 50,000 hours of reading;
• A biographical sketch of the author;
• A selected list of his/her other works;
• References and other suggested sources about the author and the novel

In some cases, the information Bridges assembles represents more than anyone has ever collected on the author and novel. His choices also reveal a broad and eclectic taste, one that includes not only mainstream fiction but genres such as science fiction, serials, detective tales, and novels for young adults.

• Mark, the Match Boy, by Horatio Alger (1869)
• Hungry Men, by Edward Anderson (1935)
• The Underdogs, by Mariano Azuela (1915)
• Out of This Furnace, by Thomas Bell (1941)
• Professor Romeo, by Anne Bernays (1989)
• John Henry, by Roark Bradford (1931)
  

  “This fascinating character study of John Henry is based, in part, on the experiences of a real person, John William Henry, who died while working as a contract laborer while imprisoned in West Virginia in the 1860s. Over time, the life story of this real person evolved into a series of stories that provided inspiration for generations of laborers and other unskilled workers. Bradford’s novel exemplifies how these oral traditions, kept largely by the poor, were reimagined and redeveloped for a more literate and upscale audience.”

• Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker, by Charles Brockden Brown (1797)
• Godric, by Frederick Buechner (1980)
• No Beast So Fierce, by Edward Bunker (1973)
• The Rise of David Levinsky, by Abraham Cahan (1917)
• Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach (1975)
• Laura, by Vera Caspary (1942)
• I Look Divine, by Christopher Coe (1987)
• The Quarry, by Charles Waddell Chestnutt (1928)
• Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object, by Laurie Colwin (1975)
• The Origin of the Brunists, by Robert Coover (1966)
• Twistor, by John Cramer (1989)
• A Feast of Snakes, by Harry Crews (1976)
• The Wrong Case, by James Crumley (1975)
• Players, by Don DeLillo (1977)
• Lies, Inc., by Philip K. Dick (1965)
• Stones for Ibarra, by Harriett Doerr (1984)
• The Immediate Jewel of His Soul, by Herman Dreer (1919)
• The Hoosier School Master, by Edward Eggleston (1871)
• The Young Visitor to Mars, by Richard Elam, Jr. (1953)
• Words of My Roaring, by Ernest J. Finney (1993)
• The Make-Believers, by Berry Fleming (1972)
  

  “In the The Make-Believers, Berry Fleming creates a novel that, besides being a wonderful John Grisham-style courtroom thriller, is also a thoughtful and introspective meditation on the issues of truth and race relations.”

• A Gathering of Old Men, by Ernest J. Gaines (1983)
• Fat City, by Leonard Gardner (1969)
• Through and Through, by Joseph Geha (1990)
• Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
• Virginia, by Ellen Glasgow (1913)
• The Lime Twig, by John Hawkes (1961)
• The Dogs of March, by Ernest Hebert (1979)
• Iron City, by Marion Hedges (1919)
• Hermanos!, by William Herrick (1969)
• The Lonely Crusade, by Chester Himes (1947)
• Oil for the Lamps of China, by Alice Tisdale Hobart (1933)
• Saigon, Illinois, by Paul Hoover (1988)
  

  “This is a very well-written book about one person’s response to the insanity of war. In addition, it is a wonderfully humorous novel, similar in tone in some respects to Heller’s Catch-22, about how people try to deal with situations they cannot control and that have no real solutions.”

• Bridgeport Bus, by Maureen Howard (1965)
• The Rise of Silas Lapham, by William Dean Howells (1885)
• Oxherding Tale, by Charles Johnson (1982)
• Ordinary Money, by Louis B. Jones (1990)
• Margaret A Tale of the Real and the Ideal, Blight and Bloom, by Sylvester Judd (1845)
• Yellowfish, by John Keeble (1980)
• Annotations, by John Keene (1995)
• White Girls, by Lynn Lauber (1990)
• China Boy, by Gus Lee (1991)
• Earthbound, by Milton Lesser (1952)
• The Translator’s Wife, by Deena Linett (1986)
• Raintree County, by Ross Lockridge, Jr. (1948)
• To Make My Bread, by Grace Lumpkin (1932)
• Dingley Falls, by Michael Malone (1980)
• The Accident, by Dexter Masters (1955)
  

  “The Accident revolves around the events during a week in 1946 in Los Alamos, New Mexico, following scientist Louis Saxl’s exposure to a fatal dose of radiation…. The Accident effectively illustrates the fact that when one adopts a technology, one also inevitably adopts the ideology underlying it.”

• They Came Like Swallows, by William Maxwell (1937)
• Village, by Robert McAlmon (1924)
• The Groves of Academe, by Mary McCarthy (1951)
• The Story of My Life, by Jay McInerney (1988)
• The Sin of the Prophet, by Truman John Nelson (1952)
• Big Man, by Jay Neugeboren (1966)
• Bone, by Fae Myenne Ng (1993)
• McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, by Frank Norris (1902)
• Moscow Yankee, by Myra Page (1935)
• George Washington Gomez, by Americo Paredes (1940)
• The History of Rome Hanks and Kindred Matters, by Joseph Stanley Pennell (1944)
• The Street, by Ann Petry (1946)
• Doctor Zay, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1882)
• All-Bright Court, by Connie Porter (1991)
• My Home is Far Away, by Dawn Powell (1944)
• In the Memory of the Forest, by Charles T. Powers (1997)
• Wheat That Springeth Green, by J. F. Powers (1988)
• Bigfoot Dreams, by Francine Prose (1986)
• The Dork of Cork, by Chet Raymo (1993)
  

  “In a surprising meditation on the idea of difference, Chet Raymo takes what might be considered an odd central character, a 43-inch high Irish dwarf, and portrays him as a compelling and fascinating individual whose struggles speak to everyone.”

• Guy Garrick: An Adventure with a Scientific Gunman, by Arthur B. Reeve (1914)
• The Sea of Grass, by Conrad Richter (1937)
• The Mask of Fu Manchu, by Sax Rohmer (1932)
• Clay Walls, by Kim Ronyoung (1987)
• The Hunters, by James Salter (1956)
• Rabbit Boss, by Thomas Sanchez (1973)
• The Last Puritan, by George Santayana (1936)
• Leaving Brooklyn, by Lynne Sharon Schwartz (1989)
• A New England Tale, by Catherine Maria Sedgwick (1822)
• Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
• The Salt Line, by Elizabeth Spencer (1984)
• The Big U, by Neal Stephenson (1984)
• The Morgesons, by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard (1862)
• Mary’s Neck, by Booth Tarkington (1932)
• South of Heaven, by Jim Thompson (1967)
• Alice of Old Vincennes, by Maurice Thompson (1900)
• Chicano, by Richard Vasquez (1970)
• The Wide, Wide World, by Susan Warner (1850)
  

  “The Wide, Wide World retains its appeal to modern readers on a number of levels. It is a sentimental story of a young girl dealing with loss. It is a descriptive and interesting account of life in middle-class America. And finally, it is a thoughtful novel that engages some important intellectual and philosophical questions about what it means to be a woman, what our obligations are to humanity, and what, actually, it means to be an American.”

• Winter in the Blood, by James Welch (1974)
• The Pilgrim Hawk, by Glenway Westcott (1940)
• Nocturnes for the King of Naples, by Edmund White (1978)
• John Dollar, by Marianne Wiggins (1989)
• The Cabala, by Thornton Wilder (1926)
• Dessa Rose, by Sherley Anne Williams (1986)
• The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates (1976)
• The Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska (1925)
• Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia, by George Zebrowski (1979)