The Books of the States: Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes; Guest: Stewart O'Nan)
We're pleased to move into the big battleground state of Pennsylvania today with a great deal of help. Our first guest Books of the States contributor is Pittsburgh native Stewart O'Nan. He has since moved on to Connecticut, where recent books of his like Last Night at the Lobster have been set (and where he has become enough of a New Englander to cowrite a book about the Red Sox with Mainer Stephen King). But he returned to his roots for us and put together a list of 14 local favorites to start our Pennsylvania list with. His new novel, Songs for the Missing (set in the Midwest), comes out on October 30.
- The Homewood Trilogy (Damballah, Hiding Place, Sent for You Yesterday), John Edgar Wideman: Two novels and a story collection from an African American neighborhood in Pittsburgh that form the beginnings of a deep and searching family saga.
- Brothers and Keepers, John Edgar Wideman: An intimate memoir recounting his brother's arrest and ongoing incarceration for a killing. A portrait of a family, a city and a system.
- Olinger Stories, John Updike: Nostalgic yet always piercing views of smalltown life in the Eastern part of the state. Updike's love of detail delivers his world whole.
- The Rabbit Books, John Updike: A trip through time, absorbing and disgorging every damn thing in American life, as everyman/schmuck Harry Angstrom lives and lusts and dies, and Shillington, PA, changes from an energetic small town into a plump, overstuffed suburb.
- South Street, David Bradley: Long since gentrified, this formerly funky section of Philadelphia gives Bradley a chance to fictionally frame the cultural chasms of 1970s America.
- Spellbound, David McKain: A memoir of growing up in Bradford, PA. Marvelously honest about the relationships of parents and children.
- Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon: Set mostly in the Oakland and Squirrel Hill neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, a hilarious novel of academia and ambition.
- Mickelsson's Ghosts, John Gardner: His last novel, a rambling philosophical mystery of a possibly mad professor lost in the Endless Mountains of the far northeast corner of the state.
- The Johnstown Flood, David McCullough: A nonfiction account of privilege and tragedy from America's most popular popular historian.
- Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger: Most folks would call this a novel of New York City, but the first 69 pages and the tone of Holden's voice come directly from Pencey, a fictionalized boarding school like so many in the eastern part of the state.
- Eyesores, Eric Shade: A rollicking collection of stories set in Windfall, a depressed Western PA town like the author's home of Altoona. Much drinking, driving and sad weirdness (or weird sadness).
- The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara: Enough Gettysburg to last the average reader a lifetime.
- About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, Roy Blount, Jr.:We Picksburghers love our Steelers. Roy Blount shows the rest of you just how much.
- Our Kind, Kate Walbert: A smart, lyrical novel-in-stories about a tightly knit group of "women of a certain age" holding on in a far-flung, upscale suburb of Philadelphia.
What would you add (or argue with)? To go back a little ways, you'd have to include Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, as well as something about the Constitutional Convention (Catherine Drinker Bowen's classic Miracle at Philadelphia?), and I might suggest one of Charles Brockden Brown's weirdo early gothic novels, Arthur Mervyn. And then there's the plays in August Wilson's Century Cycle, John O'Hara (Appointment in Samarra), the noir master David Goodis (Down There, which became Shoot the Piano Player after the Truffaut adaptation), and Annie Dillard's American Childhood, about her early days in Pittsburgh. Send us more! --Tom
- See all of our state posts
- Read our introduction to The Books of the States: 50 States, 538 Books
- Read our interview with State by State editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey
P.S. All due respect to former Gov. Tom Ridge, who made the pick, but the Pennsylvania quarter has to be one of the most nondescript grab bags in the series: the outline of the state, a keystone, and one of those ladies in drapery holding up something symbolic. Would you rather have that, or the impish face of the Bard of Shillington himself? I'd pay 50 cents at least for that quarter.
Aging Lit Major in PA on September 18, 2008 at 06:13 AM
I lived everywhere else but Pennsylvania growing up but during my adult years here I have continued to be surprised by the literary life in the Commonweatlh. Poet Wallace Stevens, novelist Conrad Richter, naturalist Rachel Carson, for starters. Willa Cather spent time in Pittsburgh. Thomas Bell wrote "Out of This Furnace," about western PA. Edgar Allan Poe was in and out of Philadelphia and was headed there when he left the boat and died in Baltimore. Myra Goldberg set "Bee Season" in a Philly suburb. Alice Sebold grew up in the greater Philly area and set "The Lovely Bones" in the region. Zane Grey lived in the Northeastern corner while writing his westerns. Bobbie Ann Mason is a southern writer who lived and wrote in PA before returning home. Lewis Nordan is a mostly southern writer ("Music of the Swamp") who lives and writes in Pittsburgh.