Whose Names Are Unknown
"This story centers on the fictional Dunne family as they struggle to survive and endure while never losing faith in themselves. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, Milt, Julia, their two little girls, and Milt's father, Konkie, share a life of cramped circumstances in a one-room dugout with never enough to eat. Yet buried in the drudgery of their everyday life are aspirations, failed dreams, and fleeting moments of hope. The land is their dream." "The Dunne family and the farmers around them fight desperately for the land they love, but the droughts of the thirties force them to abandon their fields. When they join the exodus to the irrigated valleys of California, they discover not the promised land, but an abusive labor system arrayed against destitute immigrants. The system labels all farmers like them as worthless "Okies" and earmarks them for beatings and worse when hardworking men and women, such as Milt and Julia, object to wages so low they can't possibly feed their children. The informal communal relations these dryland farmers knew on the High Plains gradually coalesce into a shared determination to resist. Realizing that a unified community is their best hope for survival, the Dunnes join with their fellow workers and begin the struggle to improve migrant working conditions through democratic organization and collective protest."--BOOK JACKET.
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2recommend
6mentions
5people
2021–2025years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I've read more than half of those, and every time I see that list, I really wish that almost every book would be paired w/ one which enhances/comments on either the book or that same theme.
e.g., _Kim_ by Rudyard Kipling should be paired w/ Robert Heinlein's _Citizen of the Galaxy_, or _The Grapes of Wrath_, which was cribbed from Sanora Babb's notes w/o permission should be paired w/ her _Whose Names Are Unknown_:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_...
- I really like this idea. I didn't even know about Whose Names Are Unknown... added it to the queue.
- Books which I have read and would recommend include:
- _Ashley's Book of Knots_ --- everyone should be aware of knots and now at least the basics interesting, _The Klutz Book of Knots_ was also mentioned once
- James Clavell _Noble House_ --- part of his "Asian Saga", not sure if it has aged well --- if a person could read only one of these, I'd recommend _King Rat_, based on his experience in a Japanese prison camp in WWII.
- Hesse _Steppenwolf_ --- that Hesse is no longer read saddens me deeply, and not just because this makes _The Glass Bead Game_ less likely --- his thoughts on the difficulties of interpersonal relationships resonate even now
- Knuth _Literate Programming_ --- I _really_ wish this style f programming would gain traction and that there would be more instances of taking famous programs and re-writing as a Literate Program, e.g., http://literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf
- Knuth _Digital Typography_ (and not just because I have a reward check)
- Knuth _Mathematical Writing_ --- if you do any work in math, you probably already have a copy --- if you don't, you probably need one
- Dewdney _The Planiverse_ --- response to the classic _Flatland_, this has a real charm and despite the dated computer technology, has held up well
- Walter jon Williams _Hardwired_ --- an amazing cyberpunk novel, part of which was published in _Omni_
- Steven Brust's _Jhereg_ --- one of my favourite fantasy novels, which I've been reading since picking it up in a Waldenbooks when I was in high school, waiting for the last two books, and esp. glad of these since they made the "Paarfi Romances" exist --- anyone who enjoys Alexandre Dumas and fantasy should read _The Phoenix Guards_
- C.J. Cherryh's _Regenesis_ --- her entire Alliance--Union series is amazing and books are so varied pretty much everyone will find something which appeals
- Trevanian _The Eiger Sanction_ and _Shibumi_ --- not sure if this and _Shibumi_ have aged well or no, but the latter was a big part of my childhood
- Ben Franklin's Autobiography --- read presidential biographies to my kind in chronological order as a trial and regret not continuing with the actual project: biographies of important persons in chronological order
- Sanora Babb's _Whose Names Are Unknown_: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1197158.Whose_Names_Are_... (ob. discl., that was my mention)
Other books which only I mentioned:
- Hal Clement _Space Lash_ now available in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/939760.Music_of_Many_Sph... --- I recommend folks read it in reverse chronological order, starting at the back, then working to the front and bailing when things get too quaint/old-school/golden-age.
- H. Beam Piper "Omnilingual" --- this should be a part of the middle school canon, lightly updated version at: http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html
- _Foxfire_ --- a classic series what predated the "Maker" movement
- Tolkien's _The Fall of Arthur_
- Knuth _TeX: The Program_
Books which were sufficiently striking that I have made a note of them to get to read (hopefully this will work out better than _The Black Swan_ which I found annoying)
- _Visual Thinking in Mathematics_
- _Hardcore VisualBASIC_ --- still a bit bummed that I managed to miss this and MacBasic....
- _Phoebe and her Unicorn_ --- getting this for my daughter
- _Harmony with Lego(R) Bricks_ --- book on music improvisation
- Ornamental Origami
Note that a number of books weren't actually mentioned, e.g., Isaac Asimov's _Book of Facts_
- I’m not a literary scholar, but this seems like a great use case for ChatGPT. I’ve used it for music explorations and found it surprisingly good at providing context and interesting suggestions. I tried your idea with The Grapes of Wrath and it surfaced Whose Names Are Unknown, with a thoughtful explanation. Obviously it’s qualitative, but you can shape the prompt to reflect your taste and still get some worthwhile discoveries.
[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/68150654-bebc-8010-ad4b-050f5b39d4...
- I don't know how Mr. Steinbeck still enjoyed his fame and legacy while being found as a major benefitciar of intellectual misconduct, and obviously belittle women.
When he was writing the grapes of wraith, he was reading Sanora Babb's manuscript from his publisher friends. He was already an established writer, and managed to publish his own work heavily borrowed the structure and major plot from Sanora's work.
And obviously, no publishers are willing to publish Snora's work, because Mr. Steinbeck is telling them he is writing one that is very similar (which is obvious, because he is essentially copy the book's story line). Ms. Babb's work is only published in 2004, 70 years later after its original completion in 1930s.
I think Mr. Steinbeck probably deserve being stripped of his Nobel prize for this blatant misconduct.
- > I have never even once heard this accusation.
There's some information in the William Souder Biography of Steinbeck that came out last year. Though it wasn't presented as a clear-cut case of plagiarism there were definitely questions. He'd apparently had access to her manuscript for "Whose Names are Unknown" and he and Babb were traveling the migrant worker camps in Central California working on stories for various publications. They did appear to cross paths. I've yet to read "Whose Names are Unknown" to see how similar it might or might not be to "Grapes of Wrath".
