Typical American
Quotes from the Book
read Michael Kohlhaas, as well as The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure, and Bleak House and The Trial and To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Fire Next Time.
If, as my mother used to say, a secret is a shame or a treasure, these were treasures.
Also, now that we were just one league among many, we had needed a league name. And so we had become, despite Eleanor’s objections, Aunt Nellie’s All-Star Resistance League—the Resisters, for short.
Try to distinguish ignorance from malice. And keep your animus for malice.
...even if we returned to the dirt and the wind and the rain like the plants and the animals, we had a bigness in us. Something beyond algorithms and beyond Upgrades-- something we were proud to call human. Or so it seemed to me.
Watch on YouTube
About Gish Jen
We have collected 10 quotes from 2 books by Gish Jen on BookQuoters.
More about the author →More by Gish Jen
Typical American
About the book
An audacious marvel of a novel about baseball and a future America, from the always inventive and exciting author of The Love Wife and Who's Irish
The time: a not-so-distant future. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet--the new face of government--is "Aunt Nettie": a mix of artificial intelligence, surveillance technology, and pesky maxims. The people have been divided, and no one is happy. The angel-fair "Netted" still have jobs and literally occupy the high ground, while the mostly coppertoned "Surplus" live on swampland if they're lucky, on the water if they're not.
The story: To a Surplus couple--he was a professor, she's still a lawyer--is born a Blasian girl with a golden arm. At two, Gwen is hurling her stuffed animals from the crib; by ten she can hit whatever target she likes with a baseball; her teens find her playing happily in an underground
The buzz
- The New York TimesReview in The New York Timesprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- The Washington PostReview in The Washington Postprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- NPRReview in NPRprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- Kirkus ReviewsReview in Kirkus Reviewsprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- The Boston GlobeReview in The Boston Globeprofessional review (via Book Marks)
- Star TribuneReview in Star Tribuneprofessional review (via Book Marks)
Keep reading
Library of Souls
Out of Oz
Sixty Stories
The Hour I First Believed
I Cheerfully Refuse
Saint Odd
False Memory
The Names
The Sympathizer
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
Four Ways to Forgiveness
March
The Sea Keeper's Daughters
Daniel Deronda
A Lion Among Men
The Reivers
The Fall of Babel
The Confessions of Frannie Langton
The Diamond Age
The Adventures of Augie March
Gliff
Speaking from Among the Bones
The Resistance
The Mime Order
The Marriage of Opposites
The Lords of Discipline
NOS4A2
The Handmaid's Tale
The Story of a New Name
Arm of the Sphinx
The Savage Detectives
Embassytown
The Grapes of Wrath
The Rebel Angels
The Novel Habits of Happiness
The Bourne Identity
Sometimes a Great Notion
The Jewel in the Crown
The Rent Collector
High Tide in Tucson
Purity
Open City
Underworld
The Great Mistake
The Weird Sisters
The Kingdom on the Waves
The Complete Saki
Powers
Hawaii
The Pox Party
Old Babes in the Wood: Stories
Hester
The Invasion of the Tearling
Too Like the Lightning
Embers
What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
Middlemarch
Flappers and Philosophers
Jailbird