User:Trimalchio/The Fritz List

- This is a list that my students usually ask for after a semester of hearing me yack about how great literature is. I am posting it here because I frequently lose this list and have to replicate it. Also, it will be easier to update from any terminal this way. Obviously, by posting this, I am submitting it to the public domain (not that it is any great achievement on my part) but I would appreciate it if you didn't mess the list up. If you want to argue with me about the list (how vain of me to imagine you even care) then go to User_talk:trimalchio. Thanks. -

THE FRITZ LIST

As requested, here is my list of books and stuff that you might find interesting as you while away the summer of your lives.

This is what I think someone needs to have under their belt if they want to think they lived in the Twentieth Century. It's completely idosyncratic, does not include music or vacation spots (the other great mediums of the Twentieth Century) and it stretches back to a few key pre-modern classics that are vital.

Also, bear in mind, there is a huge Rock of Salt that needs to be swallowed when regarding this list. I am WHITE. I am MALE. I am MIDWESTERN AMERICAN. I grew up a happy, Norman Rockwell life on a farm with chickens and cats and dogs and corn and parents that stuck it out. I was an Eagle Scout. I have Blue Eyes fer crisssakes! The only thing that keeps me from being a complete white-bread facist is that I am aware of who I am and where I am from. I realize how small and narrow my place is in the world. But it is still my position.

So, from my white, male point of view, these are important Movies, Books and TV shows. I think they are good, beyond their personal interest to me, and I think they go a long way toward educating a person about where the world has been. The white world, anyway. But that's a point of view like any other.

So, again, let me foreground my almost transparent WHITENESS. I like vanilla ice cream and four door sedans. But I also secretly have a fetish for serial killers and fireballs.

Broken glass, sand in the face, surfboards, hula girls, imperialism, the metropolis, and McDonalds.

Anyway, I think you get my point.

Also, keep in mind that I think genre is bullshit. I use genre here to give you a sense of where you might find things at the store. But, for example, The Lord of the Rings is perhaps the greatest novel of the Twentieth Century. Written by a World War I veteran for his son to read while fighting in World War Two... LOTR is the strongest, realest inheritor of the Western Canon. But no one reads it in college. Most of the english speaking world is conversant in it, or has read it, or has been influenced by it, but no one reads it in school. So, I say, read the damn thing. It's better literature than Hemingway.

So, this list strips away some of those borders. Trust me, I believe these works are GOOD. I'm not just pressing my taste on you (I am doing that, but it isn't the ONLY thing I am doing).

As always, this is an incomplete list. I am sure it will seem to be too long for some, and too short for others. do your best. use this email group to ask questions if you feel like it. Have a good summer.

-Fritz


 * Books
 * Literature of the Western canon
 * Beowulf
 * The Adventures of King Arthur and his Knights  trans. John Steinbeck
 * The Stories of Ambrose Bierce
 * The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
 * The Sketch Book Washington Irving
 * Satyricon Petronius  (read with Homer and Virgil in mind)
 * Divine Comedy of Dante
 * Paradise Lost  Milton
 * Grimm's Fairytales
 * The Plays of Shakespeare Worth Seeing or Reading
 * Titus Andronicus
 * Julius Caesar
 * Othello
 * King Lear
 * Romeo and Juliet
 * A Midsummer Night's Dream
 * Macbeth
 * Hamlet
 * Richard II
 * Henry IV pt 1
 * Henry IV pt 2
 * Henry V
 * Measure for Measure (a very cruel comedy)
 * Twelfth Night
 * Tempest
 * Richard III
 * Horror
 * The Call of Cthulhu and Other Tales Howard Philips Lovecraft  (Edited by ST Joshi)
 * Dracula Bram Stoker
 * House of Leaves Mark Danielewski
 * Carrie Stephen King
 * Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann
 * Books on Writing
 * Burning Down the House Charles Baxter
 * On Fairy Stories or The Tolkien Reader John Reuld Ronald Tolkien
 * On Writing Stephen King
 * Not Knowing  Donald Barthelme
 * The Uses of Literature  Italo Calvino
 * Elements of Style  E. B. White
 * Twentieth Century Classics
 * Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
 * 1984 George Orwell
 * The Stone Book Quartet [Alan Garner]
 * Elidor [Alan Garner]
 * Red Shift [Alan Garner]
 * The Owl Service [Alan Garner]
 * Pale Fire  Vladimir Nabokov
 * Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson
 * 1000 Acres  Jane Smiley (read King Lear with this)
 * 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea Jules Verne (not quite 20th Cent.)
 * Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
 * The World According to Garp John Irving
 * American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis
 * The Lord of the Rings John Reuld Ronald Tolkien
 * Secret History Donna Tartt
 * In the Lake of the Woods Tim O'Brien
 * The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien
 * In Cold Blood Truman Capote
 * Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson
 * Confessions of a Crap Artist Philip Kindred Dick
 * A Scanner Darkly PK Dick
 * Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? PK Dick (read with Blade Runner in mind)
 * The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
 * 42 Stories  Ernest Hemingway
 * Fernando Pessoa and Co.
 * Orlando Virginia Woolf
 * The Erasers  Alain Robbe-Grillet
 * Fight Club  Chuck Palahniuk
 * So Long, See you Tomorrow William Maxwell
 * Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
 * Libra Don Delillo
 * White Noise Don Delillo
 * Underworld Don Delillo
 * Rabbit Redux John Updike
 * Americka Franz Kafka
 * China Men Maxine Hong Kingston
 * Emigrants Sebald
 * Neuromancer William Gibson
 * The Great Gatsby Francis Scott Fitzgerald
 * The Knife Thrower and other stories Stephen Millhauser
 * Cosmicomics Italo Calvino
 * Invisible Cities Italo Calvino
 * The Old Man at the Railroad Crossing William Maxwell
 * 60 Stories Donald Barthelme
 * Dead Father Donald Barthelme
 * Illuminatus  Robert Anton Wilson
 * Non-fiction
 * Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder Lawrence Weschler
 * Boggs Lawrence Weschler
 * Hiroshima John Hersey
 * Anthropologist on Mars  Oliver Sacks
 * 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time   John Vankin
 * The Work of JD Salinger
 * Catcher in the Rye Jerome David Salinger
 * Franny and Zoe Jerome David Salinger
 * Nine Stories Jerome David Salinger
 * Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenter Jerome David Salinger
 * Comic books
 * Watchmen Alan Moore
 * V for Vendetta Alan Moore
 * From Hell  Alan Moore
 * The Sandman Neil Gaiman
 * Ghost World  Daniel Clowes
 * Astrocity Kurt Busiek
 * Tom Strong Alan Moore
 * Jimmy Corrigan Cris Ware
 * Why I Hate Saturn  Kyle Baker
 * Strangers in Paradise
 * Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller


 * Movies
 * "Classic"
 * The Maltese Falcon
 * Citizen Kane
 * King Kong
 * Moby Dick (John Huston version)
 * To Catch a Thief
 * Todd Browning's Freaks
 * Thomas Edison's Death of an Elephant
 * Action
 * Usual Suspects (watch after reading Dracula)
 * The French Connection
 * The Game
 * The Manchurian Candidate
 * The Killing
 * Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill
 * Lone Star
 * The Outlaw Josie Wales (watch together)
 * A Fist Full of Dollars (watch together)
 * Unforgiven (watch together)
 * Tailor of Panama (watch after watching any James Bond picture)
 * The Running Man
 * The Limey
 * Batman (Tim Burton)
 * Raiders of the Lost Ark
 * Silverado
 * Donnie Brasco
 * Taxi Driver
 * Goodfellas
 * Leon the Professional (Director's Cut... this is serious. If you watch the American Release you will be missing 		more than 20  minutes. The original release makes NO SENSE)
 * La Femme Nikita
 * Science Fiction
 * Transformers the Movie (Orson Welles is the Villain and re-wrote the script!)
 * Star Trek the Wrath of Kahn
 * Blade Runner (Director's Cut)
 * The Brother from Another Planet
 * 2001
 * A Clockwork Orange
 * Dune (David Lynch)
 * Naked Lunch (watch together)
 * Existenz (watch together)
 * Videodrome (watch together)
 * Fifth Element
 * Twelve Monkeys
 * Brazil Terry Gilliam
 * Time Bandits
 * The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen
 * Close Encounters of the Third Kind
 * Fire in the Sky
 * Horror
 * Company of Wolves (watch with a copy of Grimm's Fairytales... Dover Edition)
 * Nosferatu
 * Alien
 * Carnival of Souls
 * The Haunting (1963 Robert Wise's follow-up film after The Sound of Music)
 * Rosemary's Baby
 * Blood for Dracula (an Andy Warhol Production)
 * Flesh for Frankenstein (an Andy Warhol Production)
 * Seven
 * Silence of the Lambs
 * The Shining
 * Psycho
 * Blackula
 * Psycho (Gus Van Sant Remake)
 * Exorcist
 * Comedy
 * State and Main
 * Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (watch after reading or watching some copy of Hamlet)
 * Joe Versus the Volcano
 * But I'm A Cheerleader
 * Welcome Home Roxie Carmichael
 * Heathers
 * Fletch
 * Caddyshack
 * Manhattan
 * Annie Hall
 * Deconstructing Harry (to be watched with Annie Hall)
 * Ferris Bueler's Day Off
 * The Breakfast Club
 * Teen Wolf (watch after seeing Michael Landon's I Was A Teenage Werewolf)
 * Back to the Future
 * Edward Scissorhands
 * The Burbs
 * The Lost Boys
 * The Graduate
 * Grosse Point Blank
 * Drama
 * Godfather Trilogy
 * Grifters
 * City Hall
 * Velvet Goldmine (watch after Citizen Kane)
 * JFK
 * Romeo and Juliet (the Baz Lurhman production)
 * Macbeth (the Roman Polanski production)
 * Glengarry Glen Ross
 * The Spanish Prisoner
 * All the President's Men
 * Eight Men Out
 * A Night on Earth
 * Drugstore Cowboy
 * Smoke
 * My Own Private Idaho (watch after reading Henry IV by Shakespeare)
 * Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh super-forever version)
 * Henry V (K. Branagh)
 * The Sweet Hereafter
 * Affliction
 * The Ice Storm
 * Ed Wood
 * Stand By Me (read Stephen King's The Body)
 * The Shawshank Redemption
 * Papillon
 * Cabaret
 * Big Chill
 * Mosquito Coast
 * Kundun
 * Kurosawa's Dreams
 * Kurosawa's Ran (read King Lear before viewing)
 * Lost Highway
 * Blue Velvet
 * War
 * Patton
 * Apocalypse Now
 * Tora! Tora! Tora!
 * Paths of Glory
 * Full Metal Jacket
 * The Thin Red Line
 * The Longest Day
 * Schindlers List
 * Saving Private Ryan (watch after The Longest Day)
 * Documentary
 * F for Fake
 * Pumping Iron
 * Roger and Me
 * Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
 * Dr. Death
 * The Big One


 * TV
 * Daria (MTV)
 * Nero Wolfe Mysteries (A&amp;E)
 * Shark Week (Discovery)
 * Ultimate Guide (Discovery)
 * Sex and the City (HBO)
 * MASH (in syndication)
 * NOVA (PBS)
 * The Simpsons (FOX)
 * Futurama (FOX)
 * Malcolm in the Middle (FOX)
 * My So Called Life (MTV)
 * Twin Peaks (AE)
 * Northern Exposure (AE)
 * Picket Fences (TNN)
 * The Prisoner (Watch all seventeen episodes in order if possible)
 * Wild Palms (the mini-series produced by Oliver Stone)

Sanbox:

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about states, cities and towns. Here they are: WikiProject U.S. States These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!


 * See also : User:Trimalchio