What inspired this question for me was reading Alex Haley’s “Roots” after having just read “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. I thought that the two taken together give a wonderfully detailed image of American slavery and it’s effects on the body (Roots) as well as on the soul (Beloved).
Another that came to mind was Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” and Hunter S Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” as I personally felt that FaL was written as a direct parody and skewering of the kind of transcendentalist optimism we see in someone like Kerouac.
I guess I’m thinking of books that look at similar issues from complimentary angles or books that seem heavily inspired by others and almost responding or expounding, so that you come away having learned more than the sum of their parts.
EDIT: Doesn’t have to be all fiction. Non-fiction is welcome as well.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Tru and Nelle
Rising Tide by John Barry with One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson and A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Andrew Coe and Jane Ziegelman.
The Ship Who Sang, Anne McCaffrey
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
Desperation by Stephen King, Regulators by Richard Bachman. Same cast of characters in two separate books, by Stephen King and his gritty fiction pseudonym. Both very good, in their own ways.
A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul and Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul. Vidia and Shiva were brothers, and both books are fictionalizations based on their parents’ marriage, but where Vidia centers their father in Biswas, Shiva centers their mother in Fireflies
1984, Brave New World (opposite dystopian views)
Anthem, Perdido Street Station (opposite quasi working views)
The Way Station, The Hobbit (grouded sci-fi vs. fantasy)
Heart of Darkness & Things Fall Apart
Yes - and there’s also a fascinating essay by Achebe called “An Image of Africa” that examines Conrad’s work which is a great bridge.
David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead
Yep, half the fun is comparing the stories side by side. I was essentially doing parallel reads and it makes for a really neat experience. Really makes you feel like you’re traveling through time. David Copperfield feels more modern by it, and it makes you relate more strongly to a classic (which some people have trouble doing because we tend to perceive people in the past as stuffy and more serious than they were), and it makes Demon Copperfield shine and feel all the more devastating all the while. Reading them together highlights how hierarchies and social and economical inequality affects the poor and working class, especially the resulting exploitation of children.
David Mitchell has entered the chat
Robert Heinlein, author of “Starship Troopers” was a Navy officer who served between WWI and WWII. Joe Haldeman, author of “The Forever War” was written by a Vietnam draftee. It’s apparent. Also the director of the movie “Starship Troopers”, Paul Verhoeven, was a child in Nazi-occupied Holland, and I feel makes a great followup viewing.
Naomi Alderman, author of “The Power” was Margaret Atwood’s protege. The book plays with it’s relationship to “The Handmaids Tale”. >!The smug, sexist academic as a framing device, for instance!<. I honestly consider “The Power” to be a better sequel than “The Testaments”.
I didn’t know Alderman was a protege of Atwood but that makes SO much sense!
High-Rise (sometimes High Rise sans hyphen) by J.G. Ballard and The Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing. When I read the former, the latter struck me as an incredibly obvious and blatant lens to read it through, but the scholarship is somewhat absent there.
It could be because the former is a somewhat under-read thriller and the latter is the magnum opus of a decidedly fringe psychiatrist? I read Laing for an existential psychology course, but I can’t speak to his broader influence within the field. I’ve spent enough of my life explaining I am not a psychologist that I’ve never really looked into the currents and eddies at work within psychology. That said, what I know of his work feels remarkably contemporary.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicles & Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Albert Camus’ The outsider (or, The stranger, depending on the translation) and A happy death.
One can throw in The plague and Reflections on guillotine for good measure. The former helps you understand Camus’ way of writing while the later helps you realize his beliefs regarding death penalty.
Lucy Grealy’s memoir Autobiography of a Face and then Ann Patchett’s friendship memoir about Lucy, Truth and Beauty, where she finished telling Lucy’s story and gives insight in that she was an unreliable narrator. Patchett’s essay collection These Precious Days, especially the eponymous essay, leans into and extends the story further.
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe and Hell’s Angels by Hunter S Thompson. The two books cover the California counter culture from very different angles, but there’s a scene where both groups and their respective authors converge and have a big party. Fascinating, sad, disillusioning, but complementary. Getting the same scene from two different writers is unique in my experience as a reader.
Oohh this is a good one. I personally hated the Wolfe (did not vibe with his writing style) and absolutely loved the HST. But would definitely recommend someone to read both if they are interested in the era.