Here's something I've been thinking a lot about over the past year.

As much as I enjoy Cormac McCarthy or Kazuo Ishiguro, et cetera, I am getting more and more weary of the trend of the past half century (or more) toward fashionable cynicism in literary fiction. It really starts to wear on one after awhile. And because of this, authors like Mark Helprin and John Gardner--a couple of my personal favorites--are a necessary, and rare, antidote. Gardner in particular was a big champion of non-cynical literature, as seen in nearly all of his work--but some of my favorite examples are Gardner stories like "The Art of Living" and "John Napper Sailing Through the Universe." Or take that beautiful and simple moment at the end of Nickel Mountain when little Jimmy responds to his father's declaration of love with "Well I don't love you" and Henry is able to let the moment pass with great wisdom, perspective, and not a trace of anger, saying only: "Poor dreamer."

But is great-hearted fiction mainly a thing of the past, of the age of Dickens and before? A few of my favorite such stories are the Mary Chase play Harvey, C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength, and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. As with Gardner's books, I think these are stories that avoid not only cynicism but that "Pollyanna" quality, at the other end of the spectrum, which Gardner warns about.

So my question is: What "great-hearted" fiction is being published today?

I think that Helprin's Winter's Tale, Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, and Louis De Bernieres' Corelli's Mandolin fit the bill. There are a few others that I haven't read for several years but that might also qualify: Frederick Buechner's The Storm, Ivan Klima's Love and Garbage, and Oscar Hijuelos' Mr. Ives' Christmas. As far as I remember, all of these books end on a note of hard-won optimism and hope for the future. There is certainly also a hint of this sort of thing in the few novels published by Steve Martin and Peter Hedges--and how odd that such work would come out of Hollywood, of all places!

Message edited by its author, Jun 8, 2007, 4:51pm.

As a former literature major, I've often wondered…why did I read all that depressing stuff?

I too am a fan of Helprin.

Is anybody going to take me up on this challenge and suggest some contemporary examples of "great-hearted fiction"?

Or are we mainly non-fiction readers here? (I guess that would make sense, in a politics group.)

People who are deeply concerned about politics are missing out an important dimension of it if they read no fiction.

Politics is the result of hundreds of millions of individuals pursuing their daily lives, shaped by their culture, their history, their immediate circumstances ... and all refracted through personal temperament and inclination and capacity.

Fiction can capture this and can give you a view of the nitty-gritty quotidian detail of human life, examine motivations, show responses to challenges.

Of course, good travel writing can do this too, as well as biography and auto-biography.

My personal favorite authors for revealing these aspects of humanity: Michael Shaara, Mary Renault, Patrick O'Brien, all of them writers of historical fiction, and all of it "great-hearted".

Sadly, I am under-acquainted with the historical fiction genre, but it makes sense that there would be a lot of non-cynical writing there. I really should read at least The Killer Angels and Master and Commander someday. I haven’t heard much about Renault though. (Unfortunately, I have run afoul of some excruciating historical fiction, like The Dress Lodger.)

I didn't respond because we talked about this in other threads.

Also, I was unsure of how to define the criterion you were using. Great heart? It's pretty vague. But I take it you want to read something other than a novel which says that life is crap.

Contemporary writers: Fred Chappell, Cormac McCarthy (careful with that one), Saul Bellow, Ray Bradbury, Robert Grudin, Walker Percy, Anne Tyler, Gene Wolfe, Larry Woiwode and Frederick Buechner.

Soon I'm going to give Tim Powers a try.

I think the problem is that authors generally are a depressed bunch. That is why it's hard to find anything like an affirmation of life, particularly in so-called serious literature. Readers are driven away from all that bleakness and heaviness toward lighter fiction, like mysteries, science fiction, crime fiction, and so on -- something where problems actually get solved. And although the book of Ecclesiastes tell us that in much wisdom there is much sorrow (great literature aims at wisdom, I assume) we do ourselves a disservice if we equate misery with profundity. To quote Saul Bellow, "We are so much more than that!"

We deserve better.

One of my hopes in joining this site was to find some fiction that was not so depressing, something great hearted. Over the years I had lost so much interest in fiction for the very reason that it seemed to consist of depressed authors writing depressing books for other depressed people.

Is this why so many people, so many adults no less, love Harry Potter?

Well, I don't need magic. Just a little hope pushed my way now and again.

Message edited by its author, Jun 14, 2007, 8:33pm.

Certainly Gilead by Marilynne Robinson counts as a contemporary, big-hearted novel. Because it is an epistolary novel consisting of only one, long letter from a 77-year-old minister to his seven year old son, I thought it would be boring. It was certainly different from any other contemporary books I've read, but it wasn't boring at all.

In his letter, the father writes about his own youth and his relationship with his father, his scallywag of a grandfather, his best friend and that man's ne'er-do-well son, the history of his Iowa town as a stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, and his two marriages. Throughout, he ties in the themes of grace, forgiveness, and man's fallibility.

I was particularly struck by the narrator's discussions on how much he enjoyed his life. He writes the letter to his son knowing that he will not be around when his son is an adult. But, although he is approaching death and anticipating his heavenly afterlife, he makes it clear that he appreciated the temporal pleasures of his life -- the beauty of the prairie, his books and education, falling in love, baseball, and his town.

I don't think there is a cynical phrase in the whole book. It was a real delight.

Guy Kay's historical novels, especially The Lions of al-Rassan, which is set in the Spanish reconquista, show tremendous heart.

I think A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor would count. It won the Pulitzer in 1987, so it is not brand new, but still counts as contemporary, I would think.

It is set in mid-Twentieth Century Tennessee, and is a wonderful novel of manners that teaches the importance of going beyond forgetting, beyond even forgiving, and trying to actually understand our parents. I loved it.

Yep, I've read Peter Taylor and enjoyed him.

I've been tempted by Kay. Maybe down the road.

My sister wrote her thesis on Jane Austen. Probably the only author that gets compared to Shakespeare. I believe Miss Austen was not a cynic. Don't all her books end in marriage?

My final thought for the evening:

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud was published in the 1950s, so may not meet your criteria, but is a dang good read.

It is the moving story of an Italian-American stranger who works his way into the lives of an immigrant Jewish shopkeeper and his family. Malamud perfectly portrays the grinding worries of running a mom-and-pop grocery, but also brings out bigger themes such as the importance of education and an individual’s ability to overcome bigotry. It is a story of the redemptive power of love and forgiveness, focusing on the value of loyalty, repentance, and personal responsibility.

It is one of my favorites.

Jane Austen is, of course, an all-time winner. But, old as I feel these days, I wouldn't call her a contemporary. :)

#11 -- I keep forgetting to read that one. It's on my list now.

12 -- Oh…he wanted contemporary writers. Sorry.

re #11: I cried. And, cold-hearted German that I am (as my husband always reminds me), I never cry when I read a book.

Deniro wrote: I didn't respond because we talked about this in other threads. Also, I was unsure of how to define the criterion you were using. Great heart? It's pretty vague.

In fact, I think there's a question here that's quite different from the other threads, and quite specific--not vague at all. As I said in my original post, I'm looking for non-cynical (anti-cynical, really), contemporary fiction. Also, "great-hearted" is a fairly common term. Check out your Websters: "Generous; magnanimous; noble."

ggchickapee: Thanks for the note about Gilead. I forgot to mention that one. And though I liked Robinson's more cynical (!) Housekeeping better, Gilead did deserve to be mentioned in this thread. And I'll look into A Summons to Memphis, but will probably get to The Assistant sooner. I'm overdue for reading Malamud.

Message edited by its author, Jun 15, 2007, 10:55am.

Yes, we've discussed some of these books on the conservative novelists thread, but I see this one as taking a different angle on a similar subject.

And of course, some things bear repeating, so a little overlap isn't a bad thing. :)

anything by Van Reid, The Moosepath League rocks!

Jeanette Winterson, maybe?

I'm so glad I started this thread... I'm now reading The Assistant and loving it (I'm about halfway). My wife is reading Van Reid's first Moosepath book, and she's tickled with it. I've also bought a copy of A Summons to Memphis.

And... I just finished the most incredible though short (140 pages) collection of stories: Bret Lott's A Dream of Old Leaves. Lot is most certainly a great-hearted writer, and I can't recommend his stories highly enough. They're utterly delicious and beautifully crafted.

Jesse_wiedinmyer: Tell me more about Winterson. She's an author I've meant to read but haven't yet. What, of hers, qualifies as great-hearted fiction? What should I try?

You have to read More Shapes Than One by Fred Chappell

#3: "Or are we mainly non-fiction readers here?"

As long as there's great-hearted old fiction I haven't read, I've more or less given up looking for great-hearted contemporary fiction as an unprofitable investment of time. I'm midway through The Pickwick Papers and finding it laugh-out-loud funny, and I think there are still 4 or 5 books in the Dickens canon that I haven't read. Scanning through my library, it appears that the only great-hearted fiction newer than Tolkien's that I've discovered is Richard Adams' (along with some niche writers not of general interest).

I have an interested in the good, old-fashioned weird tale or ghost story--you know, the sort of thing that Dickens, Wharton, and Henry James dabbled in. So, oddly enough, the only things I've read by Chappell and Richard Adams are quite dark. I may eventually read more Chappell, but I found his Dagon rather off-putting. Richard Adams' The Girl in a Swing, however, is a very remarkable book. It's a love story of striking beauty, at least in the beginning... The end of the novel is one of the most morally complex things I've ever had to deal with from a novel. It's guaranteed to leave the reader very conflicted, but I still love the book and look forward to reading more of Adams' stuff.

Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2007, 12:48pm.

>>Tell me more about Winterson. She's an author I've meant to read but haven't yet. What, of hers, qualifies as great-hearted fiction? What should I try?

I'm not really sure what to say about her... She very much reminds me of Mark Helprin (especially Winter's Tale. Grand sweeping, passsionate affairs with a belief in wonder, the magic of the possible, and the redemptive power of love.)

As to which book to start with... I'll have to think on that and get back to you.

I also read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last week and was thinking of this thread as I read it. One of the more touching books I've read recently.

There's also Garcia Marquez's Love in The Time of Cholera, Strange Pilgrims, or Allende's Eva Luna and House of Spirits.

From a couple of my acquaintances I can offer The Midwife's Tale and Self Storage: A Novel.

Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2007, 1:06pm.

Jesse_wiedinmyer wrote: I'm not really sure what to say about her... She very much reminds me of Mark Helprin (especially Winter's Tale. Grand sweeping, passsionate affairs with a belief in wonder, the magic of the possible, and the redemptive power of love.)

Do sexual politics get much in the way of storytelling with her? Does she ever push the "queer agenda" to a distracting degree? It sounds like her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, might be a good place to start--do you think so?

She's definitely not got a strictly hetero-based outlook, but it's not militantly otherwise, either.

I think Written on the Body is orientation ambiguous and one of her more popular works. If orientation is an issue, you'd probably want to avoid The Passion, which I think is the other extremely popular one, but it's definitely not straight.

Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2007, 3:08pm.

Chappell's Dagon was indeed a dark novel. But there is, fortunately, nothing else in his work like it. That was his Lovecraft story.

More Shapes Than One is a collection of short stories in the Bradbury vein.

The rest of his body of work concerns growing up in the South.

What about Wallace Stegner? Crossing to Safety touches on love, memory, and natural beauty in a way that pleases this Helprin fan.

I asked this question over at Readerville and they came up with a couple of titles.

Only one person gave any background on their suggestion, but it was the first response I received, so I'll lead with that one...

The Crossing ~ Cormac McCarthey

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, jesse. This book will break the hardest heart, but the ache is good, in that way that makes it feel sacred to just be alive, no matter how terrible or beautiful the world and our place in it.

Which is pretty much how I'd describe Housekeeping, which is a book that's one of my all-time favorites. Robinson's book, by the way, doesn't strike me as cynical so much as spare or stark. As far as I can tell, Housekeeping is a book about negative space. An absolutely stunning read, though.

The other titles -

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams ~ Wayne Johnston

English Passengers ~ Matthew Kneale

Grace Notes ~ Bernard MacLaverty

The Confessions of Max Tivoli ~ Andrew Sean Greer (A R'ville fave from a few years back. This one was sweet, though at times a bit too saccharine for me.)

And if sexual politics will get in the way of your enjoyment of Winterson, Lighthousekeeping is another title of hers that I don't believe is orientation specific but still touches on a lot her tropes.

Thanks, Jesse. Interesting list. I think Housekeeping does lean toward cynicism. It's about a fundamentally tragic family, a family that defines itself in terms of death and isolation. The book ends with the two main characters seemingly unable to find any place for themselves in the world. They become outcasts largely through their own choices.

...And yet, make no mistake, Housekeeping is one of the most beautifully written American novels that I've read.

I don't recommend The Confessions of Max Tivoli to anyone. It was one of those books that I had to force myself to finish. It had a great, initial concept and great historical background material, but there was so very little to the plot and characters.

I wasn't so fond of The Confessions of Max Tivoli, either.

I'd probably disagree with you on Housekeeping, though. And this is based purely on personal observation and anecdote. I've a friend whose daughter was killed in a car accident a few years back. Said friend had remarried about two months before her daughter's car accident. Her husband left her roughly one month later. "This is not what I signed up for," he said.

I always had to wonder where she'd signed her name.

As someone who'd buried half of my family by the time I was 24, it seems to me that I was an outcast for even thinking that this was a topic worthy of consideration (ie. mortality). When my father died, when I was 24, one of my "friends" at the time left a message on my answering machine when I was home trying to figure out whether or not to take my father off of life support. "Call me if you need to talk," she said.

When I came back to San Francisco, I called her four times over the next two weeks. She finally answered the phone during a weekend when she was in Los Angeles. "Don't ever call me again," she said, "I can't deal with this right now."

"Why would you tell someone to call you and tell them that you were there for them if you had no intention of being there for them?" I asked.

"That's just something people say," she said, "It doesn't really mean anything."

"I didn't want to seem like a bitch," she said.

"I'm just going through a selfish period in my life," she said.

"You can't expect me to want to think about something like this happening to me," she said.

I wish that I could say that her reaction was a deviation from the norm, but as far as I can tell, it was the norm.

For an action that was completely out of my control, I was ostracised. I didn't choose isolation or to be an outcast. It was chosen for me.

Being in grief in our society is somewhat akin to swimming on a beach where the lifeguards, when you are drowning, push you under to deny that such a thing could happen at all, rather than help you to the shore.

This article on Gary Trudeau and Doonesbury speaks to a lot of the same issues, I think.

Message edited by its author, Jun 27, 2007, 2:03pm.

Nathan Englander is someone I've just picked up. Definitely "great-hearted" (life-affirming, magnanimous, optimistic, jubilant). He wrote a fantastic short story called "The 27th Man" about some Russian poets/writers who get rounded up by Stalin's crew and sent to prison, where they await their impending doom. That book is in a collection of stories called For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.

Jesse, I understand what you're saying. However, I still think that rather than "great-hearted," the dominant tone of Housekeeping is best described as being melancholy. And I'm a real sucker for melancholy art--whether it's poetry, music, or fiction. Some of the best fiction I've read in the past couple years is deeply melancholy: Paul Auster's Oracle Night, Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and Dana Standridge's Lessons in Essence.

And I guess that I understand your point, also. I just don't think that you can have melancholy or compassion without "heart". I just don't believe that recognising suffering is an inherently cynical trait.

George F. Will has a piece about that in The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions, talking about country & western songs and the liberal belief that happiness is a right and needs be propagated by the state.

Message edited by its author, Jun 27, 2007, 5:10pm.

Jesse, thanks for posting the Trudeau article. What it discusses certainly rings true here in Atlanta where the people getting together to assemble care packages soldiers come from a balanced political spectrum. NPR liberals work with former Bush supporters to organize donations and prepare packages for our warriors that are full of basic, useful stuff that we often take for granted here at home.

Not a problem, NR. What part of Philly are you originally from? I grew up near Valley Forge.

We hiked in Valley Forge. Grew up in Gladwynne.

Ann Tyler meets my defination of a great-hearted author.

Jesse_wiedinmyer, NativeRoses,

I know this is off topic. I went to Aronimink elementary school in Drexel Hill for first and second grade.

We lived in Drexel Brook apartments, a very upscale apartment complex in the late forties. Dick Clark and several baseball players lived there.

I loved the musty smell inside Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge.

Is there a particular Ann Tyler work that you'd recommend starting with, Ms. V?

I enjoyed The Accidental Tourist.

Thanks.

And Deniro, IIRC, you'd expressed an enjoyment of Tom Wolfe's writing else-thread. May I recommend Michael Lewis as someone else that you might like?

I'd especially recommend Liar's poker : rising through the wreckage on Wall Street (a book, incidentally, that covers a lot of the same territory as The Bonfire of the Vanities) and The Blind Side : Evolution of a Game. The former is a brilliant look at trading culture and a book that inspired more people to trade when I was in options than any other that I know of. The latter is possibly the best book I read last year.

I probably like Wolfe's nonfiction better than his fiction.

The problem with Wolfe's fiction is that there is no one to root for. Everyone gets it in the neck. You know that from page one. It can be depressing.

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers is my favorite of his. But I think he offers a very insightful view of our follies. Then again, he's probably not the best author to bring up in a discussion of "heart". Lewis' Blind Side : Evolution of a Game definitely has a feel good edge to it, though.

For those of you who have read Mark Helprin's books and Louis de Bernieres' Corelli's Mandolin- weren't you struck by the similarity of style and sensibility?

In some ways. But I'm much more fond of Helprin. And as I stated up-thread, sexual politics aside, Winterson is much more much more reminiscent of Helprin than Berniere.

A hallmark of Helprin's writing, to me at least, is the redemptive power of love. It's a recurring trope in Winterson's work.

Although Helprin is something of a guilty pleasure for me, I found the fantastic elements much stronger and found it much harder to suspend my disbelief.

Love and beauty. When I read Helprin I am perpetually amazed by his ability to describe beauty- in the natural world and in people's character. That's one of the things that keeps me coming back to his books.
The fantastic elements I don't have as much trouble with as I do his silliness. Especially in Freddy and Fredericka- the characters' capers broke the narrative stream for me too often.
I'll look up-thread for the Winterson recommendations.

Freddy and Fredericka is one I've not read. But the silliness was a major stumbling block for me the first time I read Memoir from Antproof Case...

As for Winterson, if you're not afraid of sexual ambiguity or whatever the hell you want to call it, start with The Passion. If that will be a stumbling block for you, go directly to Written on the Body or Lighthousekeeping.

Thanks, Jesse.

Awalter1 -

On rereading your reaction to Housekeeping, I stumbled on these two sentences.

The book ends with the two main characters seemingly unable to find any place for themselves in the world. They become outcasts largely through their own choices.

Are these two statements inconsistent?

EDIT: Or does the "seemingly" cover the inconsistency?

Message edited by its author, Jun 28, 2007, 7:29pm.

Jesse,

Well, first off, it's hard for me to nail down exactly what happens at the end of Housekeeping. The first time I read it, I was half convinced that they both had died somehow and had become ghosts "wandering in the night."

But in general terms... No, it's not impossible to become an outcast through your own choice. In fact, this is how I see the status of today's counterculture. (Start wearing a purple-and-red-striped Mohawk, and what do you expect? At the very least, you've chosen to severly limit your employment options.)

Message edited by its author, Jun 29, 2007, 11:02am.

>>The first time I read it, I was half convinced that they both had died somehow and had become ghosts "wandering in the night."

I think that might make an interesting metaphor. And in some sense, I think it's spot on.

If I ever write a book on the same lines, I'm going to start it with something along the lines of "I am not all here/there." To deal with death is to lose a part of oneself.

Just finished ggchickapee's recommendation, Malamud's The Assistant. Brilliant novel. Almost a gentler sort of Crime and Punishment. And it has one of the most effective, unexpected, and satisfying final paragraphs of any novel I've read. I laughed out loud. :-)

To Jesse W.

All Ann Tyler's books are good & they aren't in any kind of series so you can start with which-ever one you come across.
Breathing lessons Saint Maybe Amateur Marriage are some of my favorites.

Thanks.

Anyone disappointed in contemporary literary fiction, so called serious literature, might be interested in a book by B. R. Myers called A Reader's Manifesto.

A novel is good for a number of reasons. Usually, we mean the storytelling ability -- it has a beginning, middle, and end; it has a compelling story that holds our interest; it introduces conflict and tension and resolves them in the end; it introduces complex (rather than one-dimensional) characters who approximate our selves and others we encounter in our lives.

There is also the question of the writing itself, the vehicle upon which the whole matter rests. Myers argues that the reason people are disappointed by contemporary fiction is because the writing itself is poor. The sentences are flawed. They are dull, inflated and pretentious while saying almost nothing, elevating insignificance to absurd heights, with words chosen for their sonorousness or pyrotechnics rather than their ability to convey meaning or truth with clarity.

To paraphrase Charlotte Bronte: Language has been given to us to make our meaning clear.

Myers's book is a quick read and provides a handy reference for whenever someone asks you what is good writing and what is bad.

>>A novel is good for a number of reasons. Usually, we mean the storytelling ability -- it has a beginning, middle, and end; it has a compelling story that holds our interest; it introduces conflict and tension and resolves them in the end; it introduces complex (rather than one-dimensional) characters who approximate our selves and others we encounter in our lives.

See, I'd probably pick a couple of nits with this definition already.

>>They are dull, inflated and pretentious while saying almost nothing, elevating insignificance to absurd heights, with words chosen for their sonorousness or pyrotechnics rather than their ability to convey meaning or truth with clarity.

One wonders whether Meyers has read any Henry James...

And on another note, I picked up Anne Tyler's A Patchwork Planet at the public libraries used bookstore. Yes? No? Meh?

It's O.K. I liked it. It left me with a smile. Try it & see. Some of her other books you might like better.
MarianV

Yeah. I ended up picking up that and a couple of other "lesser" works some major authors (if only because that's what was available." But I'll give it a chance nonetheless. And I figured I couldn't go too wrong for $.25.

I seem to have a problem with closing tags and parentheses. Aaaarghh! The perils of being open-minded.

alexei sayle, the english comedian, has written something called overtaken which is very nice. to go back a bit more in time, any of the humor/fiction/memoir of ludwig bemelmans (of madeline fame) is large hearted with a large L. graham greene, although maybe to the left of some of the thinking in here, especially in travels with my aunt' i think, counts.

I'm not sure how recent the work has to be for you to consider it contemporary, but one of my favorite novels of the 20th century is Eudora Welty's Losing Battles. Miss Julia Mortimer lost her battles, but hope wins out in the end.

Anything by Anne Tyler, but I would start with Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

Robert Morgan's Gap Creek (and others, the titles of which I'm blocking on right now). Gap Creek has the best fictional account of a sermon that I remember in any contemporary book.

Most everything Wendell Berry has written.

Jack Russo. I'm reading Bridge of Sighs right now, so I'm not sure about it yet, but his others have a genuine kind of optimism from a genuinely male point of view.

I think Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is one of the great novels of the 20th century and great-hearted indeed, but maybe not quite as optimistic as you would like.

And how did this question get listed under Political Conservatives. I started my political life as an Eisenhower conservative, but there ain't no more of those as far as I can tell. So I call myself a moderate and deplore the stance of folks who like to label themselves neo-conservatives. They would definitely label me liberal: BUT BELIEVE ME I, TOO, PREFER "GREAT-HEARTED" FICTION, which I define as fiction with a sense of hope, an underlying sense of humor, some credible warm-hearted characters, and a spiritual dimension of some sort or another.

Now what about poetry? Wendell Berry again, Ted Kooser, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Virginia Hamilton Adair, Annie Dillard, most of A. R Ammons, Amy Clampitt (except her poems require a lot of work to understand, I think), Andrew Hudgins, Jane Kenyon, most of Donald Hall (including his grief-stricken elegies for Jane), much of James Dickey, Gary Soto, Rita Dove . . . . the list goes on.

bfrank -- thanks for the recommendations. I was just hoping this thread would liven up a little. Coming into the holidays, I'm in the mood for some great-hearted fiction, so I appreciate your ideas.

It's refreshing to get away from debate--not that I do not bear my share of responsibility for that trend. I nominate Once An Eagle by Anton Myrer (does 1968 count as "contemporary"?). It is a stirring, sincere, and "great-hearted" treatment of three generations in a military family--taking the reader from World War One to Vietnam. The novel is about as pro-military as it is possible to be, yet here is one of its most memorable lines, uttered by the dying soldier-hero: "Joey, if it comes to a choice between being a good soldier and a good human being -- try to be a good human being ..."

Well, since GGChickapee mentions the holidays, I'd like to plug the two Capote stories that I re-read every year while the bird roasts and everyone else is down at the field playing soccer, A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor. Great hearted? I think so. They are both skillfull depictions of friendship and family, of place and identity.