What’s your choice? Mine is Richard Powers, Gain. What a terrific book about American capitalism. And how often do you get to say that? (Go on, nominate JR.) Also full of neat wordplay and eminently readable. Plus, Powers has an excellent and timely sense of what it means to slide into the Best Healthcare System in the World™.
Your turn.
102 comments
September 2, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Ben Alpers
Gain is wonderful! I was just noticing it on my shelf at work today. For the longest time I wanted to put together a course that would provide me with an excuse for teaching it, though somehow it never quite fit any course I was designing.
I’m not sure what counts as underrated (though I think Gain certainly qualifies….it seemed to get less attention than other Powers novels). Some that might make my list: Robert Harris’s Imperium, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland (which I think is underrated for a Pynchon novel…and is first and foremost a meditation about how we got from the Sixties to the Eighties), and if alternate history counts, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Years of Rice and Salt.
September 2, 2009 at 5:46 pm
md 20/400
Gain is great. Another good one by Powers is Prisoner’s Dilemma. I was convinced that he had studied at Rutgers with Sussman.
September 2, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Levi Stahl
I don’t know that it’s underrated, since it’s been nominated for the Booker this year, but because 1) it hasn’t yet been published here and 2) the author doesn’t have all that strong a track record over here and 3) it’s brilliant, I nominate Hilary Mantel’s new novel about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall. If you love reading about power politics in an era when they could easily get you beheaded, you should read it now. It’s at least as good on those fronts as, say, Halldor Laxness’s Iceland’s Bell, Ronan Bennet’s Havoc in Its Third Year, and it’s better than A Man for All Seasons, to which it serves as a rebuttal of sorts.
Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s suggestions.
September 2, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Cosma Shalizi
Gain made me cry.
September 2, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Canid
The Crater, by Richard Slotkin….best Civil War novel, ever. By the author of Gunfighter Nation, etc….
September 2, 2009 at 6:42 pm
ari
A novel, Canid, is a work of fiction. I know saying this makes me a pedant and/or a jerk. But on the off chance that my students are reading this, I had to correct you.
September 2, 2009 at 6:54 pm
snarkout
I love the historical half of Gain, but the present day narrative is fantastic. (Thanks for the tip, Levi — Mantel’s A Change of Climate is one of my favorite novels, but I’ve never read any of her historical fiction.)
Hard question. Probably not underrated (in that Ishiguro has a good reputation): Kazuo Ishiguro’s WWII-era An Artist of the Floating World. Probably not underrated (in that it’s far from Boyle’s best book): T.C. Boyle’s first novel, Water Music, about Mungo Park. Probably underrated, but not a historical novel the way most people use the term: Declare, Tim Powers’ scrupulously researched magic realist secret history of Kim Philby and T.E. Lawrence.
September 2, 2009 at 6:54 pm
snarkout
Bah. Is less fantastic, I meant.
September 2, 2009 at 6:57 pm
brian
While Slotkin is perhaps best known for his brilliant three-volume meditation on the frontier, he has written several historical novels, of which The Crater is one.
September 2, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Ben Alpers
I think the confusion is that Slotkin has more recently published a work of history about the Battle of the Crater, No Quarter. I also did a double take when I read Canid’s post, but I then realized he was talking about an entirely different book.
September 2, 2009 at 7:11 pm
joe5348
Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt
September 2, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Charlieford
Moby-Dick. I forget who wrote it.
September 2, 2009 at 7:35 pm
ari
Oops, now I look like a pedant and a fool. Well, if the shoe fits… Anyway, apologies to Canid. I was indeed making the error that Ben identifies. I really am sorry about that. And thanks for correcting me relatively gently, brian.
September 2, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Vance
I’ve been trying to think of good examples, but all of the ones I really like are very highly rated. The Leopard, Dance to the Music of Time, etc….embarrassingly conventional choices all. The War of the End of the World?
September 2, 2009 at 8:17 pm
jen
Maybe not underrated, but possibly under-read (because Black Robe covers the same period and is half the length?) — William Vollmann, Fathers and Crows. And on a more minimalist note, I really liked Penelope Fitzgerald’s Human Voices, about the BBC during WW2 (like Mantel, maybe less well-known in the U.S. than she might be).
Great thread.
September 2, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Buster
Maryse Conde’s I, Tituba is really brilliant, though more a fictional meditation on myth and history than a straight-up historical novel.
And, I don’t suppose that one can rightly call a Pulitzer Prize winning novel underrated, but not enough of my peers seem to have read Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. It should have special appeal for those out there at the edge of the West, too.
September 2, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Jesse
Hands-down, ‘Blood Meridian: Or, The Evening Redness in the West.’ An excellent complement to Slotkin as well. Keep ‘em coming…
September 2, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Vance
McCarthy is underrated?
September 2, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Jesse
Was underrated.
September 2, 2009 at 8:52 pm
md 20/400
I second Declare. That is another book that I enjoy re-reading (along with the two Powers books mentioned above).
I just finished Pynchon’s latest and I think it gets the milieu right. A late 1960s, hippy dippy detective, right out of Chandler.
September 2, 2009 at 9:01 pm
brian
Since Pynchon’s work has already been raised, I would vote for Mason and Dixon – Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor may be better recognized as a postmodern 18th – century novel, but Pynchon is hugely successful in evoking the culture of the 18th century Atlantic world. It does raise the question as to whether historians would consider Pynchon a great historical novelist.
September 2, 2009 at 9:39 pm
serofriend
I vote for Mason and Dixon. Despite criticism of her prose, I liked Zane Kotker’s White Rising on Metacom’s War in colonial New England. I also found E.L. Doctorow’s The Waterworks an enjoyable read, although Caleb Carr’s The Alienest really captivated me. I read that Doctorow’s latest book received mixed reviews.
September 2, 2009 at 10:18 pm
andrew
I would nominate The Bridge on the Drina but it seems to be a staple of history courses, though I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who’s read it outside of a history course (unless re-reading*).
*Exception is the co-worker who read it on my recommendation. She didn’t really like it that much.
September 2, 2009 at 10:21 pm
eric
At least one historian takes Pynchon seriously as a historical novelist.
September 2, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Goldrush
Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo tells a phantasmagorical tale of the threat to Andrew W Mellon’s uptight White America from the Jes Grew, the spirit of African-American culture. Paul Buhle seemed convinced at the time that Doctorow took his historical approach in Ragtime from it.
Mason & Dixon was unjustly overlooked, much like Vineland. When Pynchon stops the fireworks to tell a human story, he’s accused of being off his form. Lazy readers….
How can JR, one of the funniest books ever written, be a historical novel? The history it describes won’t stop long enough to be summed up.
The equally funny A Frolic of His Own skewers the fundamental corruption afflicting our legal system. The lead character has to sue himself after he’s run over by his own automobile.
Louis Auchincloss said of Frolic that Gaddis knew the law better than lawyers do. Judge Crease’s opinions are some of the best legal writing ever.
September 2, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Goldrush
Ack, where’d those brackets go?
September 2, 2009 at 11:31 pm
andrew
Historical novel is an interesting category because it quite frequently means “novel written relatively recently and set in the past.” At least that’s what I think of first. But lots of classic novels that I don’t automatically think of as “historical novels” were historical novels: War and Peace, obviously, but also A Sentimental Education and to a certain extent Zola’s entire Rougon-Maquart cycle, even though they were almost contemporary with their settings.
September 2, 2009 at 11:39 pm
erubin
Slightly off-topic, but one of my favorite memories from elementary school is my fifth grade teacher reading My Brother Sam is Dead to us. It’s probably below the level Eric is looking for and one could hardly call it underrated. Still, it was the first time in my memory that history was presented to me as something other than a series of events.
Other than that… gosh, I guess I don’t read many underrated books.
September 3, 2009 at 1:01 am
ben
JR was put forward as a terrific book about American capitalism, not as a historical novel.
Tim Powers’ scrupulously researched magic realist secret history of Kim Philby and T.E. Lawrence.
That sounds fascinating.
September 3, 2009 at 1:35 am
Zora
Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. Set in 1952 India, published in 1994. Long but totally absorbing.
September 3, 2009 at 3:33 am
Richard J
Tom Holt seems to have slipped into a rut of not-particularly funny comedic fiction these days, but beforehand, he wrote some of the best novels set in Ancient Greece – the Walled Garden and Goatsong are well worth tracking down – a dryly witty recreation of the life of one of Aristophane’s main rivals in Greek comedy (whose works are now conveniently all lost).
September 3, 2009 at 4:14 am
Jay Lake
It’s not history, it’s future history, but Robert Charles Wilson’s Julian Comstock reads as if Mark Twain had written Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. A very unusual book with a very historical flavor.
September 3, 2009 at 5:46 am
booferama
Maybe it’s not underrated, but E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime is amazing. His more recent work, which has been overpraised, isn’t very good, but Ragtime is really wonderful.
September 3, 2009 at 5:48 am
Michael Elliott
Great list developing here, and I’m a big fan of Gain as well. James Welch wrote a pair of historical novels that I think are generally underrated: Fools Crow is set in the world of the 19th c. Blackfoot, and The Heartsong of Charging Elk is about a Lakota who travels with the Buffalo Bill show to find himself stranded in France. The latter treats sexuality in a way that I find problematic, but is otherwise fascinating.
September 3, 2009 at 6:21 am
Levi Stahl
I second Jen’s suggestion of Penelope Fitzgerald’s Human Voices. Her Gate of Angels, about Edwardian Oxford (or is it Cambridge?), is wonderful, too.
September 3, 2009 at 6:47 am
Ryan F
Mason & Dixon may be my favorite novel, but I’m not entirely sure it’s underrated.
I’d also second Years of Rice and Salt. Yes, it’s counterfactual, but it has more to say about world history than any other novel I’ve read (plus, it ends in an alternate universe Davis).
September 3, 2009 at 6:57 am
Anderson
Wow. I hadn’t realized so many people finished Mason & Dixon. I would read through Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle before I would pick that Pynchon up again. (This from someone who’s read Gravity’s Rainbow twice.)
September 3, 2009 at 7:04 am
PorJ
O.K., this is really mixing genres here, but would epic poetry that references specific – and detailed – historical moments count? I ask because John G. Neihardt’s Cycle of the West is an outstanding and stylistic work of history that doesn’t conform to an academic or scholarly insistence on rigorous facticity.
But its not a novel, so: nevermind, I suppose. I guess I’ll just say: Ragtime.
September 3, 2009 at 7:12 am
Knox
I just reread Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine and The Persian Boy, and was amazed again at how good they are. They wouldn’t have been called underrated when they came out, but I don’t think they’re widely read today.
September 3, 2009 at 7:24 am
LT
A Legacy by Sybille Bedford.
September 3, 2009 at 7:47 am
Modulo Myself
The Singapore Grip , J. G. Farrell. Also, is the The Public Burning underrated? If it is, that too.
September 3, 2009 at 7:49 am
Modulo Myself
And A Tomb For Boris Davidovich.
September 3, 2009 at 7:58 am
shadowcook
Underrated:
Pat Barker’s Regeneration
John Banville, The Untouchable
Colm Toíbin, The Master
Joseph Kanon, Los Alamos.
I’m just skimming the surface of my library too soon after first coffee.
September 3, 2009 at 8:10 am
Ahistoricality
I would read through Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle before I would pick that Pynchon up again
I’ve read the Baroque Cycle. I don’t think it’s underrated. I think the first two books are a lot more fun, historically speaking, than the third book which is a desparate (and ultimately failed, I think) attempt to entertainingly and happily resolve the lives of the characters — not the story, or plot, perhaps, but the personalities. You can easily read the first two books and stop, as long as you trust that the author will make everything right in the end. If you really, really, really like picquaesque English historical political adventure stories, go ahead and read it, but otherwise it’s a kludge, desperate to maintain continuity with Cryptonomicon.
September 3, 2009 at 8:42 am
Ryan F
I’m having a tough time trudging through System of the World right now, so that’s not very reassuring.
The Confusion was a ton of fun though, and I’d also consider it a viable nominee (though again, maybe not so underrated).
September 3, 2009 at 10:49 am
arthur
Creation by Gore Vidal
September 3, 2009 at 10:54 am
eric
I like the Baroque Cycle and Pynchon, but it’s hard to call books that sell at Costco underrated.
September 3, 2009 at 11:08 am
Sir Charles
Although neither were underrated, I would second “The War of the End of the World” and add “Cloudsplitter.”
Another Vargas Llosa novel that might qualify is “Conversations in the Cathedral” which early on has this wonderful line: “At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?” It is not, as far as I know, a depiction of actual historical events, but captures the milieu of 1950s Peru.
September 3, 2009 at 11:18 am
eric
And speaking of books that haven’t crossed the Atlantic yet, I’m intrigued by Giles Foden’s new book.
September 3, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Doctor Science
Are Mary Lee Settle’s Beulah novels considered highly-rated, these days? They are awesome.
Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels, especially Sword at Sunset — insofar as any Arthurian novel can be called “historical”.
M.T.Anderson’s two Octavian Nothing novels are *very* highly-rated among those of us who deign to read YA, but are likely to be underappreciated by those who insist on sitting at the grown-ups table.
September 3, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Michael Elliott
I just read the Octavian Nothing novels and was, frankly, underwhelmed, though I’d be curious to hear from other readers. I thought it was a little too drawn out and precious — and that the historical ironies were too obvious. On the other hand, they are YA novels and so I’m not the target audience. (On the other hand, it seems to be all the rage for adults to read YA now, a trend that I find troubling.)
I’ll second the suggestion of Cloudsplitter. Loved it.
September 3, 2009 at 12:47 pm
eric
I’ll second the suggestion of Cloudsplitter. Loved it.
Y’all are gonna make Ari mad.
September 3, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Ralph Hitchens
James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor. What the Greatest Generation were really experiencing in home-front America during World War II. And a great snapshot of the “citizen military” yoked uneasily to the thin veneer of professionals who ran the war. And, oh yes, the casual racism of the 1940s. Underrated today, but massively deserving of the Pulitzer it won.
September 3, 2009 at 2:07 pm
oudemia
I really liked Augustus, the semi demi epistolary novel novel by John Edward Williams. I guess it won the National Book Award 30 or so years ago, but I had never heard of it until fairly recently.
September 3, 2009 at 2:08 pm
oudemia
Novel novel! Novel.
September 3, 2009 at 2:13 pm
jen
what’s wrong with Cloudsplitter?
September 3, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Fats Durston
Maybe not underrated, and not quite historical fiction (non-sfnal time travel is the sub-genre), but Octavia Butler’s [i]Kindred[/i].
September 3, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Vance
On Cloudsplitter: Eric expects us to remember things, but I have Google.
September 3, 2009 at 2:46 pm
jen
Thanks, Vance. Ari, what about novels about historical figures whom we don’t know quite as much about, then? are they okay? (Like Toussaint L’Ouverture in Madison Smartt Bell’s novels about Haiti, maybe.) (Not underrated, but good.)
September 3, 2009 at 2:49 pm
ari
Like I said at the time, I recognize that we’re talking about my limitations here. And yes, as it happens, this particular subset of my limits are limited to figures about whom I already know a great deal. Otherwise, my interests are nearly limitless. Again, I’m not proud of what I think of is a failure of imagination on my part.
September 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Rick
The Berlin Triology, by Phillip Kerr, is a brilliant recreation of Germany in the 1930s-40s, cast as detective novels.
September 3, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Anderson
Slightly OT, if I haven’t read any Richard Powers, is Gain where to start?
September 3, 2009 at 3:51 pm
oudemia
Anderson, you should definitely start with Galatea 2.2.
September 3, 2009 at 3:51 pm
shadowcook
How about Alan Furst’s novels set in eastern Europe prior and during WWII? I realize the issue is whether a work is underrated rather than good, but if I rarely meet others who have read the ones I’ve enjoyed and rarely come across references to them in the press, I figure they’re underrated in my own limp narcissistic way. “Underrated” presupposes that we have all read pretty much the same things. I recognize about half of the books mentioned in these comments and I consider myself a pretty dedicated middle-brow fiction reader.
September 3, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Howard
I’m not sure what is under, over, or rightly rated, so I’m not going to think about it too hard. I thought Ethan Canin’s recent “America, America” got at some important aspects of the recent American political past. Ward Just’s “Echo House,” about three generations of a Washington, DC, political family is very strong.
The Gore Vidal American history cycle is great, in my estimation. I guess “Burr” and “Lincoln” are my favorites.
I love what Richard Powers I’ve read, and have already gotten “Gain” from my local library, so thanks for that. And, since the late Warren Susman of Rutgers was mentioned in conjunction with Powers, I will add that as his T.A. around 30 years ago, I taught Reed’s “Mumbo Jumbo” in a US Cultural History survey.
September 3, 2009 at 4:14 pm
SEK
This is the part where it’s my job to point out that “historical novel” is a problematic category, isn’t it?
Because it is, you know.
There are “historical novels” that emphasize historically significant events, like Cloudsplitter, but then what would you call Dreiser’s An American Tragedy or Mailer’s Execution’s Song, both of which delve into great detail about historical personages, but neither of which was written with much of any historical perspective. I’ve not yet read Gain, so I can’t speak to it specifically, but the award it won only confuses me further (for what should be obvious reasons). Did I mention that “The Historical Novel” was one component of my exam lists?
September 3, 2009 at 4:28 pm
eric
Scott, I think it would be great if you wrote a post about that. You wouldn’t have to link to Patterico at all.
September 3, 2009 at 4:45 pm
ben
it’s hard to call books that sell at Costco underrated.
Hard to call them underexposed, perhaps.
September 3, 2009 at 4:46 pm
eric
I concede that “underrated” is a difficult term to pin down, yet I regard it as a useful heuristic.
September 3, 2009 at 4:55 pm
andrew
On the concepts of “overrated” and “underrated”, it’s worth linking to this again.
September 3, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Josh
You wouldn’t have to link to Patterico at all.
I thought it was in SEK’s contract that he had to link to Patterico. Or was it Protein Wisdom?
September 3, 2009 at 5:11 pm
marvin thalenberg md
Neal Stephenson’s trilogy about the London of the newly founded Royal Society- remarkable as history of a fascinating time and place, with Newton and Boyle and Christopher Wren as characters.
September 3, 2009 at 5:39 pm
drip
Some great choices. I’ll avoid underrated and try for under read because both of my suggestions were written by Nobel Prize winners : Haldor Laxness’ Independent People and Naguib Mahfouz’ Cairo Trilogy. Do you want to look at last falls economic crisis again? Read the Laxness and Mahfouz does 1900 to 1950 Mid East history like no one else.
Now, I guess I’ll have to find Gain. It has got to be here somewhere.
September 3, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Michael Elliott
Ari’s complaint about Cloudsplitter reminds me of why I am not an historian. Scott’s desire to problematize the category of “the historical novel” reminds me why I am leaving literary studies. (Don’t tell anyone, btw.) And this list of books reminds me how much more time I had to read before I had kids.
September 3, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Josh
Neal Stephenson’s trilogy about the London of the newly founded Royal Society- remarkable as history of a fascinating time and place, with Newton and Boyle and Christopher Wren as characters.
I tried reading Quicksilver, but I ran into the precise problem ari did with Cloudsplitter, with the added issues that AFAICT Stephenson didn’t bother with niceties like narrative and decided to lump in a bunch of anachronisms for no better reason than to make hamhanded jokes.
September 3, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Ben Alpers
Leaving aside the vexed question of underrated, some more gooduns:
The Last King of Scotland (since Foden was mentioned…and the novel is so much better than the movie)
Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 (a crime novel set in late Stalinist Russia)
Don DeLillo’s Libra and Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale (respectively the best CT and single-shooter JFK assassination novels)
One novel that actually wouldn’t make my list is Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America which is ok, but IMO overrated. I’m a big Roth fan, but I found his alternate history oddly thin. Among his “historical” novels I much prefer I Married a Communist.
September 3, 2009 at 6:04 pm
eric
(Don’t tell anyone, btw.)
We’re very discreet here. It’s just us and the plain people of the Internets.
September 3, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Ben Alpers
I almost forgot to mention a book I’m in the middle of reading right now (and so far looks like it might make the list): John Crowley’s Four Freedoms. (Incidentally, does the Aegypt cycle count?)
September 3, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Michael Elliott
We’re very discreet here. It’s just us and the plain people of the Internets.
What a relief.
I was also hooked for a while, strangely, on Harry Turtledove’s 11-volume counterfactual “Timeline-191 series”. The writing is, shall we say, not so strong, but I found the books oddly compelling.
September 3, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Ahistoricality
Neal Stephenson’s trilogy about the London of the newly founded Royal Society-
See “Baroque Cycle”, above. Josh is right about the clunker jokes, by the way.
September 3, 2009 at 6:26 pm
snarkout
Anderson, Galatea 2.2 is definitely the right place to start. Oudemia and I got into a tussle about whether The Gold Bug Variations or Prisoner’s Dilemma is his second-best book. (The Philip Kerr books mentioned above are also very good.)
Libra is a great novel (not as good as Mao II, but a great novel), but it was a National Book Award finalist and, for that matter, hit the Times bestseller list. Similarly, the Regeneration trilogy is magnificent, but Pat Barker won the Booker Prize for… The Eye in the Door, was it? I mean, it’s possible to win the biggest prize in your field and be underrated — steroids-era Barry Bonds managed — but it’s really, really hard. Whereas I’ve never heard of Child 44 or A Tomb For Boris Davidovich and know The Last King of Scotland only through the movie. I’ve added all three titles to my look-for list. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!
September 3, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Anderson
Thanks for the Galatea tips — Gold Bug looked a bit intimidating.
September 3, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Sir Charles
The Berlin Noir trilogy is great.
I think Phillip Roth’s “American Pastoral” is the finest single work about the Sixties of all. I didn’t really think of it as a historical novel though — but now the definition of that genre is seeming more elusive to me.
If Roth’s novel qualifies, then I think Milan Kundera’s “Book of Laughter and Forgetting” should be considered too.
September 3, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Vance
I read one Alan Furst novel (possibly Kingdom of Shadows?) and found it weakly written and imagined. Particularly by contrast to Joseph Roth.
September 3, 2009 at 8:29 pm
jen
Furst occasionally has his characters reading Joseph Roth for bedside or train reading, though. I think in Kingdom of Shadows some even go to his funeral. I think Furst is enjoyable fluff, but (and here I expose my provincial Americanist shallowness) Joseph Roth seems like (depressing) homework to me. I guess I could try The Radetzky March again.
Another good Powers is The Echo Maker (environment, neuroscience, car crashes).
September 3, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Vance
The Legend of the Holy Drinker is a depressing blast.
September 3, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Vance
And now I remember what I was really thinking of in relation to Furst. Roth is great, but Remarque’s Arc de Triomphe is a glamorous entertaining roman noir set in wartime Paris — a much closer model.
September 4, 2009 at 6:24 am
Matt McKeon
James Blish wrote a novel about the medieval scholar Roger Bacon that I remember as very vivid. “Dr. Mirabelis”? That was decades ago and I don’t know how it would read to me now.
Howard Bahr wrote a couple of Civil War novels. The only one I have read is “To play for a kingdom” which alternates between the horrifying battles between Lee and Grant in 1864, and a surrealist baseball series played between some Confederates and a Union Zoave company from Brooklyn. It works.
September 4, 2009 at 6:29 am
Matt McKeon
Er..Zouave.
Alan Furst is repeating himself now, but I remember really liking a lotof his stuff. Best line for “The Polish Officer,” One tough Polish colonel is talking to the protagonist about their plans to continue resist the Germans.
“We going to lose the war. But we’ll not going to lose our minds.”
September 4, 2009 at 9:14 am
Michael Bartley
Clear lines between historical novels and novels set in history are difficult to distinguish. The historical novelist may create dialog, internal thoughts, and fill in the blanks as it were but their principal characters, place, and time are bound by the known historical record. Novels set in history are primarily works of the imagination and are not bound by anything more than the storyteller’s imagination. They may be set in specific times and places and encounter persons of history but the author feels no need to accurately reflect the historical record. For example, the James Welch novels are wonderful, but are they historical novels or novels set in history? What about Pete Dexter’s Deadwood or Ron Harrison’s exceptional “outlaw” novels? I’m not sure. However, I do believe that John Vernon’s The Last Canyon would fit as would Mari Sandoz’s Cheyenne Autumn. Both Vernon and Sandoz’s work, while excellent, feel somewhat stilted and bound by the press of history. While, Welch, Dexter, and Hanson’s stories seems much freer as works, primarily, of the imagination. Wow, I managed to work in some recommendations along with my prattle.
September 4, 2009 at 10:05 am
rja
The historical novelist may create dialog, internal thoughts, and fill in the blanks as it were but their principal characters, place, and time are bound by the known historical record. Novels set in history are primarily works of the imagination and are not bound by anything more than the storyteller’s imagination.
This is an important distinction–if we’re including the second category, then Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow is worth thinking about. Turning now familiar events backward, he makes them once again incomprehensible and absurd.
September 4, 2009 at 10:11 am
serofriend
James Clavell’s books are quite fun. I especially enjoyed Tai-Pan and Noble House, mostly due to storyline continuities. I’m not sure if his work garnered any major awards.
September 4, 2009 at 1:40 pm
serofriend
Turning now familiar events backward, he makes them once again incomprehensible and absurd
Slaughterhouse-Five fits the bill, I think.
September 4, 2009 at 7:49 pm
TF Smith
Here are a few I would recommend:
Once an Eagle, by Anton Myrer
The Sand Pebbles, by Richard McKenna
The Cruel Sea, by Nicholas Monsarrat
Sort of a rut, I know, but I yam what I yam…
Does anyone still read Kenneth Roberts?
September 4, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Rebecca
Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety is amazing.
(I adore the Baroque Cycle.)
September 5, 2009 at 6:23 pm
John Desmond
Salutations, gentlefolk,
The two best books about America in the 1960′s:
James Carroll, _Prince of Peace_
George R.R. Martin, _The Armageddon Rag_
September 5, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Ron
The Wreckage of Agathon by John Gardner
September 5, 2009 at 9:11 pm
adolphus
I think all of the Harry Flashman books by George MacDonald Frasier should be read more than they are. They are more historical satires and parodies, but Frasier is (was) a historian of sorts and did write some regimental histories. Flashman is the anti-hero of the British Empire and managed to be at every significant military debacle of the Victorian era from Balaclava and the TaiPing Rebellion to Little Big Horn and Harper’s Ferry. They are all well researched and hilarious. Unfortunately the weakest book, Royal Flash about the Schleswig-Holstein Affair, was made into an even weaker movie. Don’t judge the books by that excrescence. MacDonald also wrote the screenplay for Octopussy as well as the Musketeer movies of the 70′s with Michael York and Oliver Reed.
If you want a shorter read on a historic figure you never heard of by MacDonald I suggest Black Ajax which is a series of first person accounts, borderline oral histories, telling the story of the real life a novel about Tom Molineaux, a 19th century black prizefighter in England who rose from being a Louisiana slave to contending for title with Tom Cribb the first of many bouts in boxing history promoted as an existential, symbolic struggle between black and white.
September 10, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Hal
Since no one has given a shout-out to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, I’m declaring them not only underrated but, taken as a whole, a masterpiece far greater than most of the stuff I’m seeing cited here.
September 12, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Josh
Gain is a great book to start your Powers reading with.
Karen Joy Fowler’s Sister Noon is my nominee for great underappreciated historical novel.
September 15, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Citronyella
Raintree County, Ross Lockridge Jr. Not the film, please, the novel.
The Fifth Queen, Ford Madox Ford.
September 18, 2009 at 11:38 am
Ellen Berkovitch
Underrated Western historical pageant photographs discussed here:
http://adobeairstream.com/component/zine/article/187-history-on-horseback-edie-winograde-photographs.html
Has there been a novel of the Legend of Rawhide?