Writers: A Room of Our Own

After much thought and with an eternally changing order:

1. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (misogyny notwithstanding)

2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

3. The Stranger by Albert Camus

4. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (technically a novella)

5. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

6. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

7. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

8. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

9. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

10. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (minus the political preaching)

Great list. I’d add a few of my favorites:

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Stranger by Albert Camus

Although I have to say I don’t get Empire Falls. What makes that novel great? Maybe I didn’t have it in me to relate to it.

If only movies actually could be produced using formulas and assembly lines, then perhaps fewer films would fail at their intention. Look into the auteur theory. Film director is one of the few dictatorial positions left in society. They sometimes control every aspect of production. Especially if the write it, they are responsible for a large portion of the piece. And even if the film is a product of many hands, why does that preclude it from being classified as art?