A semiotics-obsessed English major navigates a love triangle with a charismatic but manic-depressive biology major and a spiritually searching friend during and after their senior year at Brown University in the early 1980s.
Books mentioned in The Marriage Plot (58)
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger: “Heidegger's Being and Time — course reading list”
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans: “her favorite book in the world at the time, Ludwig Bemelmans's Madeline”
Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare: “In English, they were reading Henry IV, Part 2”
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino: “a girl ... was smoking a clove cigarette and reading Invisible Cities”
Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac: “reserve reading that included everything from Balzac's Sarrasine”
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “a seminar on the eighteenth-century novel (Pamela, Clarissa, Tristram Shandy)”
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope: “She used a line from Trollope's Barchester Towers as an epigraph”
The Confessions by Augustine of Hippo: “Parts of Saint Augustine's Confessions, especially the information about his self-pleasuring youth”
On Deconstruction by Jonathan Culler: “they read Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction”
Phaedrus by Plato: “In Plato's Phaedrus, the speeches of Lysias the Sophist and of the early Socrates”
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon: “What did Saussure's Writings in General Linguistics have to do with Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49?”
The Drama of Atheist Humanism by Henri de Lubac: “The Drama of Atheist Humanism by Henri de Lubac — course reading list”
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “"Suicide is a trope," ... "You've got The Sorrows of Young Werther"”
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: “Mitchell picked up a copy of A Moveable Feast at St. Mark's Bookshop”
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot: “grabbed something—anything, The House of Mirth, Daniel Deronda—to restore herself to sanity”
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: “a brief examination of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility”
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis: “a cache that included The Imitation of Christ, The Confessions of St. Augustine”
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray: “"I guess you don't like Vanity Fair," Madeleine said”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: “the pages about agrarian reform in Anna Karenina”
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce: “Mitchell ... pulling out his Finnegans Wake”
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville: “You ever read Moby-Dick?”
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: “a brief examination of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility”
The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche: “From reading the same paragraph of The Anti-Christ he'd already read three times?”
The Aspern Papers by Henry James: “he drove off, parked on a dead-end street, and read The Aspern Papers with a flashlight”
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: “grabbed something—anything, The House of Mirth, Daniel Deronda”
The Stranger by Albert Camus: “People had been hoping for The Stranger, which they'd already read in high school”
Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross: “Merton's Dark Night of the Soul (also invoked in a letter: "the Dark Night of the Soul")”
The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer: “Mitchell took a book from the shelves, Francis Schaeffer's The God Who Is There”
A Confession by Leo Tolstoy: “A Confession was a book like that. In it, Tolstoy related a Russian fable...”
Auguste Comte and Positivism by John Stuart Mill: “Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings — course reading list”
Born Again by Charles Colson: “an English edition of Charles Colson's memoir Born Again”
The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich: “Tillich's The Courage to Be — course reading list”
The Role of the Reader by Umberto Eco: “In Week Four, Zipperstein assigned Umberto Eco's The Role of the Reader”
Writing and Difference by Jacques Derrida: “The week after they read Eco, they read portions of Derrida's Writing and Difference”
Writings in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure: “What did Saussure's Writings in General Linguistics have to do with Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49?”
Maxims by François de La Rochefoucauld: “(epigraph) People would never fall in love if they hadn't heard love talked about”
Couples by John Updike: “the first edition of Couples, belonging to her mother”
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “She had read Longfellow's "Hiawatha" that way”
H. M. Pulham, Esquire by John P. Marquand: “She'd read H. M. Pulham, Esquire by John P. Marquand”
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser: “In Sister Carrie, Dreiser had Carrie live adulterously with Drouet”
Paradise Lost by John Milton: “B a Rhodes scholar who published a monograph on Paradise Lost in the Milton Quarterly”
Pearl: “a so-so paper on the linking words in Pearl”
Bus Stop by William Inge: “Dee Michaels, who played the Marilyn Monroe part in a campus production of Bus Stop”
The Vietnamization of New Jersey by Christopher Durang: “interesting bits from The Vietnamization of New Jersey and Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago”