Gateway Books

Gateway books. Gateway to what? Maybe gateway to serious work like Finnegans Wake, the subject of a book club discussion in Venice, California starting in 1995 and ending in October 2023 after 28 years of analyzing literary allusions, word play, and obscure references only to find find – surprise! – that the book itself doesn’t actually end but loops back to the beginning, heralding an endless cycle (click: Finnegans Wake Book Club). Note to self: devote the next decade of MMs to discussing Ulysses.

Okay, that’s not fair. Our focus piece (click: Gateway Books) by an English professor is very approachable as it centers on the 38 responses to a tweet survey asking the same questions we might discuss about how we may have been shaped by such books in our earlier years: when and how we were exposed to these authors; whether and how they may have shaped our identity; when and why we stopped reading reading them; and how reading these authors at a fairly early age shaped our subsequent intellectual development.

The term gateway would appear to be speaking as much to the sensitivities of the respondents as it does to the underlying works. With a predominant male sampling, the inclusion on the list of Catcher In The Rye with its theme of adolescent alienation is unsurprising as are the other works tapping into the “white middlebrow canon” depicting the anti-war movement and cynicism in general like Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Just reading these titles is a walk down memory lane in the way they once served to bind “us” (meaning all those other otherwise-alienated youths).

One question is whether gateway books had a similar bonding experience among the female readers. Also, given the works were often period pieces, it is reasonable to assume the canons would change with the times. Let us thus take a sampling of these gateway books from the perspective of the various generations represented in our session.

Other works may be more timeless in their reach. One novel, somewhat surprising to be included in the genre, is Grapes Of Wrath, a masterpiece when it comes to addressing philosophical and ethical questions about community in times of crisis. Other surprise entries are The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Love her or hate her, Ayn Rand introduced a philosophy and ideology with a formative influence on conservative thinking that has had an impact that extends well beyond fiction.

Then there is that most delicious “gateway” book Bonfire Of The Vanities in which Tom Wolfe showcased that particular trait better than any other work that readily comes to mind. The list goes on and on . . . . Lord Of The Flies, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Brave New World . . . crazy world with the only cure to attend engineering school.

Your favorites?

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