Read Your Way Across the USA

What is this fad about lists?  Is it just a 21^st century thing or a social media thing or a lazy person’s “100 places to visit before I die” thing or an American thing?

So here’s an interesting new list: “The Most Famous Book Set in Every US State.”  From Alabama (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) to Wyoming (“The Laramie Project”). 

Check it out and get a sense of each state’s ethos, quirks, famous authors. Nebraska – “My Antonia,” wonderful Willa Cather.  Massachusetts – “Walden” – everyone should read Henry David Thoreau.

Think about how the states differ from each other; what would “Mockingbird’s” Jeb and Scout have been like in Alaska?  Would the vampires of the “Twilight” series been more or less appealing in Hawaii instead of Washington State? 

Check out a state you know well and dispute the choice: “What?  California is “East of Eden?”  What about “The Joy Luck Club” or The Maltese Falcon?”  Or Washington – vampires?  What about David Gutterson’s “Snow Falling on Cedars?”

Then there’s the competition – how many have you read?  Does it count if you haven’t read the book but have seen the movie?  (Georgia– “Gone with the Wind,” Connecticut – “Revolutionary Road.”)  (Bragging – I’ve read 23, plus seen the movie of four more.)

Do some literary analysis – is the state just the setting, or is it an actual character in the novel?  Oh wait, they are not even all novels – they’ve got “The Great Gatsby” (New York) next to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (Nevada.)

Yeah, the more you look at it, it’s a pretty silly list.  (3 by John Grisham?  Come on, he’s fun to read, but surely we can add in someone else for Arkansas and Tennessee?)

But it reminds us of our great diversity (“e pluribus”) within this strange nation (“unum?”)  Is there a similar list in the UK or France or China?  Probably. 

Lists like this can also give you some new ideas of things to do.  Or read.  Like for my home state of New Jersey, the choice is a short story collection, “Drown” by Junot Diaz.  I’ve never heard of it or him.  So of course I had to research this mystery confrere.  Born in the Dominican Republic, his father was working in NJ to support his family and Diaz came to live with him as a boy.  They are now estranged and the short stories are said to have a common theme of the absent father.  He’s now an English professor in Boston and the first Hispanic to be named to the Pulitzer Prize judge panel, a prize he has won himself.  Local boy makes good.

But if I’d gotten to chose a book about my beloved home state it would have been “Are You There, God?  It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume.  It’s a 1970 young adult novel about a 13 year old girl who moves from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs and faces identity challenges about faith, puberty and identity.  It was the first popular book actually to discuss in print such taboos as menstruation and sanitary napkins.  And she questions her own faith (hence the title) because of the tension between her Jewish father and Christian mother.  For these controversial topics – blood! God! – the book was widely banned from school libraries and classrooms. 

That was my New Jersey – a young girl growing up, questioning and being told, “We don’t speak publicly about these things!!” 

But that was many years ago. Always good to find out about new books. I’ll check out the Diaz book.

What’s your favorite book about a place you know and love?

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter