Who better to recommend your next read than Wallace himself? Take a look at his syllabi here (via the Harry Ransom Center) and here (via Salon). And if you enjoyed reading IJ, I’d highly recommend reading some of his other books. A full list appears here, but I’d especially recommend his novel The Broom of the System, his story collection Girl with Curious Hair, and his essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
In addition, here are some of my favorite books by contemporary writers. Like Wallace, I’d consider each of these writers groundbreaking and edgy.
Novels
- Speedboat, by Renata Adler
- The Dead Father, by Donald Barthelme
- U.S.!, by Chris Bachelder
- If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino
- The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
- The Age of Wire and String, by Ben Marcus
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
- Vacation, by Deb Olin Unferth
Short Stories
- Sixty Stories, by Donald Barthelme
- The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, by Aimee Bender
- Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson. This is one of the books that made me want to be a writer.
- Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link
- Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore
- George Saunders is one of my heroes. I’d recommend any of his books, but my favorites are Civilwarland in Bad Decline and In Persuasion Nation.
- Vicky Swanky is a Beauty, by Diane Williams
Poems
- Sad Little Breathing Machine, by Matthea Harvey
- Scary No Scary, by Zachary Schomburg
Contemporary Aesthetic Collectives
- I’m an avid fan of the writers of the Beat Generation – Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Diane di Prima, Hettie Jones, Richard Brautigan and others.
- At our walk on 4/26/15 I was mentioning the writers of the Oulipo (Ouvroir de litterature potentiale) – this includes Italo Calvino, Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau.
- As we discussed in class, Wallace was intrigued by several writers working in the 1960s and onward who are generally classified as postmodern – they’d include the writers Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, David Markson.
Please check back – I’ll continue to add writers to this list!