[Jeff L]

Late to the game. Not a full list, but these are the books I give to others the most. They're the breakout novels that put their authors on the map.

1951-1960 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

1981-1990 City of Glass by Paul Auster (1985)

1991-2000 The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers (1991)


The Adventures of Augie March
Like other books with "Adventures" in the title, this is a picaresque novel, a romp through the country and the times.


City of Glass
Nowadays, this is packaged by the publisher as part of the New York Trilogy, along with Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986), all from the 1980s. Auster is an inventive stylist whose spareness is sometimes described as minimalist, but that's only superficial. Where other minimalists tend towards realism, Auster is more theater of the absurd, but with the original fun and not the later angst, and all in the context of a seeming detective story.


The Gold Bug Variations
Commentary about Powers usually mentions CP Snow's idea about Two Cultures, the split between science and the humanities. Powers' books often range over both terrains expansively. Like Gödel, Escher, Bach but as a novel, the book covers math, music, genetics, and art.



ETA:

1941 - 1950 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)