Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 9
Introduction 11
Part 1 Youth and Growing Up
1 The Midlife Crisis of Huckleberry Finn 19
2 Candide Says Relax. Then Get to Work 24
3 A Separate Peace and the Dream of Best Friends Forever 29
4 Owners of Our Lonely Hearts 34
5 How the Uncaged Bird Sings 40
Part 2 Identity
6 Real Indians Play Rock 'n' Roll 49
7 The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Yours and Mine 54
8 Edith Wharton: "Innocence Is for Wimps" 59
9 The Us Yet to Come 64
10 Am I a Man or an Android? 68
Part 3 The Inner and the Outer World
11 If This Library Is Paradise… 75
12 Staying Out of the Bell Jar 80
13 You May Find Yourself Trapped in 86 Alexander Portnoy's Head … 86
14 Cannery Row: Where Everybody Knows Your Name 91
15 My Favorite Book of Them All 96
Part 4 Love and Pain
16 Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen for the Clumsier Sex 103
17 Marriage Counseling from Henrik Ibsen 107
18 .Eyes on Love 112
19 I've Been Young and Afraid, Joyce Carol Oates. Thank You for Asking 117
20 The Scarlet Letter: I Don't Like It Either 122
Part 5 Working
21 Bartleby in the Breakroom 129
22 The Work/Life Balance of Sherlock Holmes 134
23 Working at Relaxing with David Foster Wallace 141
24 At the Office with "Master Harold" … and the Boys 147
25 Burning Books: One Crappy Job 151
Part 6 Family
26 Why To Kill a Mockingbird Makes a Great Father's Day Gift 157
27 The Ambivalent Family of Toni Morrison 161
28 Of Won tons, Mahjongg, and Time 166
29 A Family of Giant Insects 171
30 Maus: A Comic Book about Fathers, Sons, and Genocide 176
Part 7 Ideas and Learning
31 The Renaissance Nerds of The Phantom Tollbooth 183
32 Camping It Up with Susan Sontag 188
33 "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Walter Benjamin Kevin Smokier 194
34 Hello, I'm William Shakespeare 205
35 Understanding Marshall McLuhan 210
Part 8 Violence and Loss
36 Holden Caulfield, That Little Brat 221
37 Albert Camus, the Unsexy Stranger 229
38 Shirley Jackson's Rituals of Violence 234
39 The Stone-Faced Trip of Slaughterhouse-Five 239
40 An Act of Violence, a Book of Forgiveness 244
Part 9 We The Hero
41 The Shameless Case of Walt Whitman 251
42 Emily Dickinson's Lessons for Success 256
43 Little Heroes and Locust 263
44 Visit Tinker Creek. Then Keep Going 268
45 How to Tell a Hero Story 272
Part 10 The Future
46 Beware of Revolutionaries Who Look Like Pigs 279
47 Meet Thomas Pynchon, Your Driving Companion 284
48 The Remains of Tomorrow 289
49 Four Different Ways That Things Fall Apart 293
50 A Letter 299
Notes 303