With the exception of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I reread recently, the other books were devoured in my freshman year at Harvard, and gave me the desire, which has never gone completely away, to be a writer, to be an American writer. They’re all selections from the mainstream of American novels, not a surprise on the list, which separates me, I suspect, from my colleagues. But it’s an honest list, even if it doesn’t bring a deserving writer out of obscurity. Freshman year at Harvard is luminous because of these books.
John Dos Passos
U.S.A.
Mark Twain
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
James T. Farrell
STUDS LONIGAN
Thomas Wolfe
LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL
John Steinbeck
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE GREAT GATSBY
Ernest Hemingway
THE SUN ALSO RISES
John O’Hara
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA
James M. Cain
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
Herman Melville
MOBY DICK