50 books for 50 states, continued

Hey, I lost a follower. That's worse than being "unfriended." Where did he/she go?

Further thoughts following up on yesterday's post about 50 books for 50 states:

Making a last-minute substitution here, don't know how I could have overlooked Mark Twain, but, sorry Franzen, though you've written very beautifully about that seldom-enshrined 27th city of St. Louis, I'm going to drop you from the list and bestow the Missouri honor on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

It also occurs to me that the best New Mexico book by far, passe Tony Hillerman, is Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, one of the truly great works of American literature, so let's make her the only one on the list to encompass two states.

And how could I have overlooked Louise Erdrich as the one for North Dakota? The only question would be which of her books - they are so much of a piece, much like Faulkner's work - so let's go with her first, even though I think it's a story collection (linked stories, anyway), Love Medicine.

I did not want to make Lake Wobegon Days the book of Minnesota, and wish I could honor Bob Dylan as part of the list (Chronicles does touch on his boyhood, but only for a small section of the book), but how about Sinclair Lewis, and Babbitt - much as Minnesotans will cringe at identifying their state w/ that novel.

And what's the deal with Ohio? Why doesn't anything come to mind there? I think Beloved may be set at least in part in Southern Ohio - not positive though. And isn't one of her earlier works - The Bluest Eye, maybe - in Cleveland? So far, though, Ohio is a vacant spot on the map.

And let's add Snow Falling on Cedars as the book for Washington.

Something tells me I'm leaving out some major authors from South Carolina and Georgia (Color Purple? The Known World?)

And finally, this little mind exercise shows how amazingly the American literary landscape - following the publishing landscape - skews to New York, NYC in particular - we could do a history of NYC through novels (I'm sure it's been done) - I selected Gatsby as the representative, but from different eras why not: Bartleby, Washington Square, Catcher in the Rye, Bonfire of the Vanities, Let the Great World Spin, Netherworld - and many others. To be continued in another post.