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American tales and travels, selected by a modern troubadour.
It took almost ten years for singer-songwriter Josh Ritter to rise from relative obscurity, playing earnest, Americana-laden folk at Irish music festivals, to international stardom, buoyed by the songs from his 2010 album So Runs the World Away. With his music firmly rooted in the balladeer's tradition of storytelling, it's little surprise he'd turn to fiction as well. His debut novel, Bright's Passage, is a visionary tale of one man and his infant son's journey through a lonely America in the aftermath of the first World War. This week, Ritter recommends three books that will appeal to writers and world-weary travelers alike.
By Pete Dexter
"I've been a huge fan of Mr. Dexter for some time, but this book -- brutal, funny, and full of twitchingly manic energy -- just takes the cake. A young man and his obsessive journalist brother attempt to prove that a man convicted of murder is innocent. Brotherhood, writing, ambition, and love curl around each other like kudzu in the Florida Everglades."
By Philip Roth
"A young writer gets the opportunity to meet his literary idol and is snowed in with the author, his wife, and his assistant. As the night crawls by, he begins to notice some mighty strange things about the trio...I recommend this book for anyone embarking on a career as a writer of any kind."
Blue Highways: A Journey into America
By William Least Heat-Moon
"In the mid-seventies, at the end of a marriage and a job as a professor, Heat-Moon decided to take a trip around America using only the non-interstate roads. What follows is a travelogue of supreme beauty that is a constant companion with me on my own roads."
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