The 25 Best Novels Written By Writers Under 30
Guaranteed to make you feel worthless and unaccomplished!
Image via Complex Original
January is already a time to feel terrible about yourself, with everyone around you promising to make themselves better in this or that way over the next year. If you aren't deep enough into self-loathing yet, we've got just the thing for you.
One of the hardest things a person can do is complete a great novel. We feel like it's up there with scaling Everest and sleeping with your friend's hot mom. There are a handful of gifted authors who were able to finish writing one before they were 30 years old. Sure, these authors were generally alcoholics, suicidal, or had terrible personal relationships (and sometimes all three), but they completed a novel before they turned 30, so what do you expect?
Whether it lights a fire under your lazy ass or sends you further into existential despair, we present you The 25 Best Novels Written by Writers Under 30.
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Written by Brenden Gallagher (@muddycreekU)
25. V. (1963)
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Age: 26
Here's another example of strange inspiration. After graduating from Cornell, Pynchon went to work for Boeing as a technical writer. The corporate structure at Boeing would inspire the "Yoyodyne" corporation that would appear in both V. and The Crying of Lot 49. The success of V. allowed him to quit working for Boeing and "flirt with the lifestyle and some of the habits of the Beat and hippie countercultures," which sounds to us like living the dream.
Unlike many young writers, Pynchon has gone on to enjoy a prolific career. On January 4th it was announced via Twitter that Pynchon plans on publishing a new novel, entitled The Bleeding Edge.
24. The Call of the Wild (1903)
Author: Jack London
Age: 27
London is not only better than you because he published a novel at a young age, he is also better than you because he actually participated in the Klondike Gold Rush. London paid dearly to find what would be the inspiration for many of his novels, including The Call of the Wild.
While in the Klondike, London suffered from scurvy, lost his four front teeth, and earned permanent marks across his face. After this experience, he resolved to make his living by selling his brains, in order to avoid the "work trap." Judging by what happened the first time he fell into the "work trap," we feel he made a wise decision.
23. The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Author: Norman Mailer
Age: 25
If you are lacking for inspiration as an artist, one surefire cure is to go to war. It worked for Norman Mailer. Though Mailer was a cook during World War II and saw little active duty, he was able to draw upon his observations and create a best-selling novel.
The novel is not widely read today, and it certainly has its critics, particularly regarding its prose style. While the responsibility for most of the prose can fall on Mailer, there was one choice that was not his fault. Mailer was asked by his publisher to replace the word "fuck" with "fug." Allegedly, this prompted actress Tellulah Bankhead to grate him by remarking, "Oh, hello, you're Norman Mailer. You're the young man that doesn't know how to spell..."
22. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988)
Author: Michael Chabon
Age: 25
Michael Chabon became a literary celebrity while attending graduate school at UC Irvine. A professor submitted The Mysteries of Pittsburgh to a literary agent, and a six-figure advance later, he was a celebrity. He was offered a kind of literary stardom that is quite rare in this day and age; he was approached to star in Gap ads and appear in People's "50 Most Beautiful People."
His response: "I don't give a shit [about it]... I only take pride in things I've actually done myself." Yup, this guy sounds like he has spent some time in Pittsburgh.
21. Less Than Zero (1985)
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Age: 20
Bret Easton Ellis started Less Than Zero when he was a sophomore in high school. When our staff was prompted to think of projects they started in high school, all that most of us came up with were schemes to see girls naked.
Despite the book's success, Ellis describes the novel in the way anyone would describe a high school journal: "...It read like teen diaries or journal entries—lots of stuff about the bands I liked, the beach, the Galleria, clubs, driving around, doing drugs, partying." It just goes to show you "write what you know." Of course, after this novel and Rules of Attraction, Ellis wrote American Psycho, which we desperately hope was not borne out of the same advice.
20. The Bell Jar (1963)
Author: Sylvia Plath
Age: 29
Plath had already been writing for a decade when she enrolled in Smith College. She had been writing poems from the age of 8 and completed dozens of short stories by time she turned 18. Like the protagonist of the novel, Plath suffered from depression. Plath attempted suicide on several occasions before putting her head in an oven while her children were in the next room. The Bell Jar is still widely read today, but her collection of poems, Ariel, has garnered her far more critical praise.
19. Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
Author: Truman Capote
Age: 24
The photo that Capote used on the dust jacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms had as much to do with Capote's rise to notoriety as the book itself. On the back of the book, which was about a teenager coming to terms with his homosexuality, was a photo of Capote lounging back, staring at, almost challenging, the camera.
Few reviews mentioned being offended by the contents of the book, but many were put off by the photo. The Los Angeles Times wrote that the photo looked, "as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against conventional morality." The book did well, but it was the photo that placed Capote firmly in the national consciousness.
18. Soldier's Pay (1926)
Author: William Faulkner
Age: 27
After graduating college and doing a stint in the British Armed Forces (he was barred from U.S. military service due to his height), Faulkner returned to the South and began work on his first novel. The novel is about an aviator returning home from war. Faulkner claimed to be drawing on his experience as an pilot, but his contention that he was part of the British Royal Flying Corp has since been exposed as a likely lie.
Though this was his first novel to reach publication, the work that defined his literary legacy would not begin until several years later when he began The Sound and the Fury at the age of 30.
17. The Broom of the System (1987)
Author: David Foster Wallace
Age: 27
Wallace described the inspiration for The Broom of the System as semi-autobiographical. He called the book a "tale of a sensitive young WASP who's just had this midlife crisis that's moved him from coldly cerebral analytic math to a coldly cerebral take on fiction." Wallace's focus was on mathematics and philosophy as an undergraduate, but then he opted to take a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona afterwards.
He would go on to publish a number of works, perhaps most notably Infinite Jest. Wallace's description of Broom as the working out of a "midlife crisis" proved prophetic. He took is own life after succumbing to deep depression at the age of 46.
16. Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Author: James Baldwin
Age: 29
Baldwin was a man who knew who he was at a young age, and whose artistic tastes were shaped early on. After befriending Beauford Delaney, an African-American artist who become his mentor, in New York's Greenwich Village during his teenage years, Baldwin quickly began to develop as an artist and thinker.
While the cliché American writer moves to Greenwich Village, Baldwin left Manhattan for Paris, where he could find what he viewed to be a better life both as an African-American and a homosexual. There he would get deeply involved in politics and pen his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, which examined racism in the country he'd left behind.
15. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
Author: Ken Kesey
Age: 27
Sometimes we find inspiration in the most unlikely places. Kesey found the spark for his novel while working at a veteran's hospital in San Fransisco. He came to believe that the patients who were treated there for mental illness were really there because they didn't fit society's conventions for behavior.
Kesey's inspiration may or may not have been helped by the hallucinogenic drugs he was voluntarily testing at the time, but the fact remains that he created a must-read novel of stirring, vivid compassion.
14. Wise Blood (1952)
Author: Flannery O'Connor
Age: 27
O'Conner used to joke that she had her first brush with fame when a news crew filmed her and one of her chickens that could walk backwards when she was 6 years old. "I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life," she said. "Everything since has been anticlimax."
She went on to have an illustrious literary career that began with Wise Blood, the novel concerning a veteran who begins an "anti-religious" ministry after returning from war. O'Conner ultimately ended her life as she began it. She returned to her family farm years later to raise different species of birds during the last decade of her life as she fought lupus and continued to write.
13. White Teeth (2000)
Author: Zadie Smith
Age: 25
White Teeth was the subject of a bidding war before it was even finished; the auction for her unfinished novel occurred while Smith was still a student a Cambridge in the late '90s. One would think that a writer who was able to produce such great work so early in her career would have been devoted solely to writing. This was not the case with Zadie.
As a teenager, she split her time between musical theatre, tap dancing, and journalism before settling on writing. Zadie's family, it seems, was bursting with creativity on the level of the Royal Tannenbaums. She has two younger brothers: One is stand-up comedian Doc Brown and the other is rapper Luc Skyz.
12. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
Author: Carson McCullers
Age: 23
Carson McCullers is another example of an author whose early literary fame was only equalled by the difficult life she would have to lead afterwards. She published The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter while living with her husband, aspiring writer Reeves McCullers. They soon divorced, only to remarry in 1945. Their marriage ended permanently when Reeves killed himself in what he believed would be a joint suicide by overdosing on pills in a hotel room.
As if her love life weren't hard enough, she suffered from a series of ailments throughout her life, including strokes that left an entire side of her body paralyzed by the time she was 31.
11. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
Author: Douglas Adams
Age: 27
The story of Douglas Adams's inspiration for his must-read masterwork is much funnier than most on this list. Adams came up with the idea for The Hitchhiker's Guide while bumming through Europe with a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe in tow. One night, Adams found himself drunk in a field in Austria, staring up at the stars, and was struck by inspiration. This inspiration led first to a series of radio plays, then to novels, and ultimately to stage plays, films, and merchandising.
Adams was not without creative frustrations, as he was never able to turn anything in on time. He credits others for forcing him to overcome his trouble with deadlines. On one occasion his editor went as far as to lock him in his hotel room until he finished a manuscript. Of deadlines, he famously said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."
10. The Pickwick Papers (1836)
Author: Charles Dickens
Age: 25
Charles Dickens' strategy in publishing The Pickwick Papers should have gotten him fired. Dickens was initially hired to supply copy to a "picture novel" of gentlemen hunting and fishing. He decided to write whatever he wanted and force the illustrator to adjust his drawings to what he wrote. So, ultimately, rather than a goofy picture book, Dickens was able to craft of novel about contemporary London.
We wouldn't suggest trying anything like this if you are hired for a copywriting job, as some of the Pop Culture staff landed at Complex after attempting similar tricks inspired by Dickens.
9. Buddenbrooks (1901)
Author: Thomas Mann
Age: 25
Normally, the Nobel Prize is awarded based on a novelist's entire body of work. In the case of Mann's Buddenbrooks, the Swedish Academy went out of its way to identify the novel as the primary reason for the award. The book is not one that you see on tons of your friends' bookshelves, but the themes are as relevant today as they were then.
Mann's novel follows the Buddenbrook children as they wrestle with their desire to engage their artistic side without abandoning the culture of their family. Almost anyone who has left their hometown, whether in 1901 or 2013, can relate to that.
8. Sons and Lovers (1913)
Author: D.H. Lawrence
Age: 27
Sons and Lovers was Lawrence's third novel, in case the other authors weren't making you feel like a slouch. Lawrence's novel of a mother's love for her sons was the most deeply personal of his early work. When his own mother died, several years prior to the novel's ultimate publication, Lawrence went into what he referred to as a "sick year." Not only do we wish that we had the work ethic of Lawrence, but we also wish that we were allowed to take sick years.
7. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
Author: John Kennedy Toole
Age: 29
It seems that authors who create great work at a young age are often troubled. John Kennedy Toole famously ended his life before Confederacy of Dunces could be published. It is strange to hear this after reading the rollicking, comically absurd novel, but Toole was deeply depressed and self-critical regarding what he perceived to be his failures. Those who knew him were equally surprised; Toole was a favorite professor at the universities where he taught because of his comedic stylings during lectures.
It seems, however, suicide was something that had been on Toole's mind for some time. He had taken an army buddy to the exact spot where he would end his life three years prior to his suicide. Toole's one other surviving novel, Neon Bible, was written when was just 16 years old.
6. Frankenstein (1818)
Author: Mary Shelly
Age: 19
The inspiration for Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was quite strange. You know when kids sit around the campfire and try to scare each other with ghost stories? It was kind of like that, except the people doing it were Percy Shelly, Mary Shelly, and Lord Byron, and when they were done Mary went off and wrote a novel. Not just any novel, either, but one you have to read before you die.
It makes you wonder if the idle entertainments of our generation will result in a great novel. Perhaps a group of people will sit around playing "Never Have I Ever" and chugging beers and a great work of art will emerge...or not.
5. Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Author: Jane Austen
Age: 19
Maybe we would all be more productive if the romances of our youth were handled the way that Jane Austen's was. While Austen was working on Sense and Sensibility, she was dating Tom Lefroy, and things were getting serious. She wrote this to her sister: "I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together." Oh word?
Her parents and the community at large weren't having it, as Lefroy had insufficient cheddar to go marrying anybody, which is the only reason you would be "sitting down" with a lady in the first place. Lefroy was sent packing and Austen went back to work on her craft. She never saw Lefroy again. Seeing as she did not publish anything until 15 years later, in 1811, which was also five years before her death, the sacrifice of love probably wasn't worth it.
4. This Side of Paradise (1920)
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Age: 23
Fitzgerald, who's best known for the classic The Great Gatsby, wrote This Side of Paradise so he could get his woman back. He had been engaged to Zelda Sayre, but the engagement was broken off due to Zelda's feeling that Scott could not support her. He did what any rational man would do. He drank a ton, went back home to Minnesota, took a job fixing car roofs, and finished the novel.
Most of the time plans like this fail, but somehow he sold the novel, won back his lady, and got married in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Of course, Zelda famously turned out to be bat-shit crazy, but that's another, far sadder, story.
3. Wuthering Heights (1847)
Author: Emily Brontë
Age: 29
Emily was one of three Brontë sisters (along with Charlotte and Anne) to publish masterpieces of the English language. She also, unfortunately, was another young novelist that died before having a chance to reach her prime. One theory behind her early death is that the water in her home was contaminated by a nearby graveyard, which is pretty gross.
Even her sister, Charlotte, who lived far longer than Emily, never lived to see the fruits of their labors, as only on her death bed did she cast off the male pen names she and her sisters used, revealing the true authorship of their astonishing works.
2. The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Age: 25
The Sorrows of Young Werther catapulted Goethe to an insane level of literary celebrity. The story of unrequited love, which the kids today might find "quite emo," didn't sit well with Goethe as he grew older, however. He regretted the sentimentality of the piece and he also regretted revealing his own unrequited love to the world.
Nonetheless, even in his last years, he was best remembered for Werther. The autobiographical novel was so popular when it was released that lovelorn young men dressed like the protagonist and even [SPOILER ALERT] took their lives in the same fashion as desperate young Werther. We're lucky that Goethe isn't writing today, as there would certainly be a good number of young folks running around in "Team Werther" T-shirts.
1. The Sun Also Rises (1926)
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Age: 27
Despite Hemingway's numerous later literary achievements, many critics believe The Sun Also Rises to be his greatest work. Hemingway began work on this novel while an expatriate in Paris, during the time chronicled in his memoir of young adult life, A Moveable Feast.
Many of the concerns Hemingway considered central to the identity of the Lost Generation are explored in this novel of love, loss, and bullfighting. He also wrote this while his marriage was falling apart, which would become kind of his thing for the rest of his life (he married four times).