Looking for modern novels that ask very deep questions and pose unique views on modern philosophical problems. As a comparison something like Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground or Brother’s Karamazov, as well as Camus’s The Stranger did for existentialism. Rand’s political/individualist The Fountainhead/Atlas Shrugged and Orwell’s 1984.
Those are the best examples of stuff I read that I should compare my question to. I have not read a fiction novel yet that was published after 1960, (barring trash novels like Davinci Code, Celestine Prophecy) and I have no familiarity with present day philosophy, so the field is wide open. I am a fan of classic philosophy and literature, but its time I get into the 20th century since we’re well into the 21st!
More time is needed before we can really identify anything like that.
If we count JRR Tolkien as a philosophical writer, the anti-Tolkien stance of China Mielville is worth pondering. Richard Morgan’s “Market Forces” is also a good read.
But both of those recommendations are like comparing a third-grade science project to a paper in Science. More Divinci Code like fast-food than something more meaty. I can’t say I’ve really read anything that has reached the heights of those philosophers you are looking for.
Umberto Eco tries hard to reach those heady heights, but he is sort of a given. If you haven’t read “The Name of the Rose” yet, you really ought. Foucault’s Pendulum is more philosophical, substantially so . . . but I’m more of a “Crime and Punishment” kinda guy than a “Brother’s K” kinda guy, if you catch my drift.
Hansberry and Arthur Miller should also be read, they are serious philosphy.
But those all tend to skirt close to the 1960’s line you’ve set. Which makes sense, after all, good philosophy is that which endures. Anything after that is too young to know. I’m not saying Stephanie Meyer is in the running for being the next big philosophical writer, but no doubt there are some writers whose philosophy will only be appreciated later. We often read far more into the text than the author intended, so anyone can be the basis for a philosophical work. I mean, come on, I’ve read serious examinations of the Aliens movies.
How much philosophical greatness is a product of the reader’s making?
I am assuming by the overall gist of your post that you are only using ‘modern’ to mean ‘contemporary to the 20th century’ as opposed to the specific canon of ‘modernism’, which would of course be something altogether entirely different.
There are a million and one my dear friend.
Most novels of literary merit are revealed to be philosophical in some form or another, under ye old microscope of analysis (‘literary’ of course not being merely isolated to ‘prose’).
I will drop some names on you from the literary wing of, the movement of modernism, to highlight un peu de la depth of, the question you have posed:
Rafael Alberti
Gabriele D’Annunzio
Guillaume Apollinaire
Louis Aragon
Djuna Barnes
Bertolt Brecht
Basil Bunting
Mário de Sá-Carneiro
Constantine P. Cavafy
Blaise Cendrars
Jean Cocteau
Joseph Conrad
T. S. Eliot
Paul Éluard
William Faulkner
H.D.
Ernest Hemingway
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Max Jacob
James Joyce
Franz Kafka
D. H. Lawrence
Wyndham Lewis
Federico García Lorca
Hugh MacDiarmid
Marianne Moore
Robert Musil
Almada Negreiros
Fernando Pessoa
Luigi Pirandello
Ezra Pound
Marcel Proust
Pierre Reverdy
Gertrude Stein
Wallace Stevens
Italo Svevo
Tristan Tzara
Giuseppe Ungaretti
Paul Valéry
Robert Walser
William Carlos Williams
Virginia Woolf
William Butler Yeats
Of course after ‘the canon of’, modernism, you have other canons like: postmodernism… and then again others… and then yet again others… etc, etc, etc, ad infinutum, ad absurdum…
However, not to be just a bit of a dickhead, you could try ‘Brave New World’ for whatever reason.
Or google the names of the authors you have already read and use them as leads into, and ‘out of’, ‘this and that’, ‘there and here’, and ‘dadada’, ‘hahaha’, …
(ps and make sure to have fun - best way to explore any “deep” issue
(if there is any depth
(or even
(an end
(to this constant need
(to bracket every ting!)))))
Absolutely Vonnegut! Cat’s Cradle is the most clearly philosophical of his books, with Bokononism as the (anti)religious foil.
There is a vast amount of “postmodern” philosophy to be found in recent books - metatexts and similar literary conceits have filled bookshelves in recent decades, as well as reimagined societies with accompanying new languages/dialects and the corresponding changes in thoughts due to the language, if that makes sense. “Riddley Walker” by Russel Hoban, “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell.
I second Borges, Labyrinths is a great collection. You may also be interested in “In Search of Lost Time” by Proust, which extensively covers the subjects of “difference”, temporality, and memory.
I think without doubt that philopshy and literature (myth even?) have shuttled back and forth between each other for a long time. There’s even the view that a lot of philosophy is pursued better in this form then in philopshy books!
Another reason I’d mourn the apparent death of good “hard” speculative sci fi and the current plague of d and d fantasy style stuff - though maybe there’s some philospphy there too…
I can’t vouch for him personally but I have a dear friend whose opinion I trust who swears by Ernesto Sabato. You’ve got to be able to read Spanish to do it but El Tunel would be a great starting point. Günter Grass hasn’t got any love yet (I don’t think) but he qualifies. Nabokov is critical.
I also recommend “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert Heinlein, and “Stranger in a Strange Land”. But not “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls”, that was a disappointment.
Bradbury is fine if you can stand his technophobia, but not one of my favorites.
Asimov is by far the best. It’s been a few years since I read them, but the Robots/Empire/Foundation novels are fairly philosophical. There’s the idea that internal social conformity is a necessity when faced with other hostile societies, and, of course, there’s the Zeroth Law of Robotics.
I’d start off by recommending james joyce. try portrait of an artist as a young man or ulysses. Ulysses is heavy but I doubt that will bother you. The book touches on a number of difficult and interesting subjects and will undoubtedly expand your language capabilities of english as well as latin, germanic and greek.
Aldous huxley is another great one. Brave new world is an excellent book to place next to 1984. If you are interested in religion the perennial philosophy is also interesting, as are some of his other books on various hallucinogenic drugs, art, and jungian-like psychology. Huxley is also of notable interest due to his powerful command of the english language. i’ve heard that point counter point is also very good but I’ve not yet read that one.
plus Jorge Louis Borges, Robert Musil, Cormac Mc Carthy, Thomas Mann and Philip K Dick