Not sure where on the list I would put them, but one of either Wolfe's The Right Stuff or Mitchner's Space. Probably the latter though I enjoyed the former much more.

Catch 22
The Maltese Falcon
Dog Soldiers
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Grapes of Wrath

I think "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy would be interesting to explain the last century. Especially considering it was written in 1888.

I submit John Steinbeck's "The Winter of Our Discontent" and "The Grapes of Wrath" as two of the century's greater works.

Babbit (or, Rabbit, Run?), Homage to Catalonia, 1984 (Gulag Archipeligo or Diary of Ann Frank? do some things require non-fiction?), A House for Mr. Biswas (or Satanic Verses?), I Am Charlotte Simmons.

Personally, thumbs down on Atlas Shrugged.

Great question.

Mark

The Jungle
Atlas Shrugged
The Catcher in the Rye
Stranger in a Strange Land
American Psycho

Allan, I think the specification was "works of *fiction*."

.. For some reason, I find myself wanting to nominate books I haven't read but know by reputation (or read so long ago, I still only know them by reputation).

Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Wright, Black Boy

Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.

Updike, Rabbit Angstrom (cheating)

Achebe, Things Fall Apart

.. The glaring problem with the list is the absence of a female novelist; I adore Woolf, for instance, but I doubt I could present her as explaining very much. The question asks for "social novels" in effect.

(Note that the question asks for fiction.)

Inherit the Wind (although it may be cheating as it's thinly fictionalized history) gets to what has more recently called the American red/blue split.
1984, as the emblem of the fear of the totalitarian state; it illuminates both WWII and the Cold War.
I'll agree with other posters and take The Grapes of Wrath.

oops

Take out Guns of August.

Substitute: All's Quiet on the Western Front

Take out Power Broker

Substitute: The Right Stuff

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, brilliantly dramatizes the ways in which people (and particularly, I think, people in late-20th-century America) rely on entertainment, chemicals, and other stimuli to try to deal with certain fundamental human conditions (loneliness, existential dread, etc.). It also shows how technology and entertainment, often developed to facilitate interpersonal communication, have tended to result in greater isolation and solipsism. There's tons of other stuff related to authority and autonomy and politics and lots more. An extremely rich book that, I think, would help people understand what it was like to be alive around the dawn of the 21st century.

JR by William Gaddis is a wonderful black comedy about corporate greed and materialism and the struggle between art and profit. It's very cynical -- consider, for example, the scene where a character glues a quarter to his windowsill and watches his upstairs neighbor spend hours trying to retrieve it with chewing gum on a fishing line -- but it's also beautiful and, in some ways, uplifting. The Recongitions and A Frolic of His Own are excellent, too, but JR probably fits what you're looking for the best.

Animal Farm
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Stranger in a Strange Land
something that deals with the end of colonialism
something that shows the evolution of the middle east

"Invisible Man"

Homage to Catalonia
Slaughterhouse 5
American Pastoral (the culture wars/60s and aftermath)
The Grapes of Wrath
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (explaining Gen X/Y experience)
Goodbye Columbus/or Dos Passos (immigrant experience)

For me:

Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath
Heller's Catch 22
Ellison's Invisible Man
Rybakov's Children of the Arbat
Miller's Death of a Salesman (I know it is a play, but it is fiction)

Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy.
Grapes of Wrath
All Quiet on the Western Front

To MAM: I think Invisible Man may be a better example than To Kill a Mockingbird (are there any votes for The Color Purple?). It is a close call.

Love in the Time of Cholera
Catch-22
1984
Cryptonomicon (my geek pick here; substitute runner-up Foucault's Pendulum if you find it too much so)
The Satanic Verses

ooh Great Gatsby, too!

The Great Gatsby
Native Son
Once an Eagle
American Psycho
Fight Club

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1984 by George Orwell

To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm
Atlas Shrugged
The Grapes of Wrath

all of which, thankfully, I was forced to read in school. I hated it at the time but I love the fact that I'm so much better-read than my peers.

I keep wanting to respond, "[insert title]?!?! but that book is terrible!"

Anyway, Don DeLillo's Underworld probably deserves a mention. My favorite book mentioned so far was Infinite Jest, but I don't think that really answers the question of the post.

Animal Farm
Catch-22
1984
Fight Club
Lord of the Flies

1984
A Brave New World
Camp of the Saints
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Lord of the Rings Trilogy

I'm going to interpret the question as asking for those books which explain the 20th C as experienced by Americans. If I were to view the century through the eyes of a European, I'd pick very different works (switch WWI for the civil rights movement, for example). I don't think it's possible to do both.

As I see it, these are the defining experiences of the 20th C for Americans:

1. Great Depression: The Grapes of Wrath or All the King's Men.

2. WWII: I'm sure there must be one, but I can't think of it now.

3. Korea and Vietnam: Catch-22 (yes, I know it's about WWII, but I think the theme works much better for the two later wars).

4. The Civil Rights Movement: Invisible Man or To Kill A Mockingbird.

5. The Cold War: 1984.

I second the suggestion to try the same exercise in film. It's also interesting to name the 5 most influential works of non-fiction.

Something in the Gulag Archipelago, The Killing Fields or Hotel Rwanda line is probably necessary to explain the century, I lean towards The Killing Fields but I'm not married to it

I'd throw one of the end of the 20th century handbooks of cultural literacy on (various names as it is a genre although several are named Handbook of Cultural Literacy). It should be one of the more extensive ones which gives an overview of what we considered to be the important parts of the past which created the (20th century) present.

An environmental scare book. You can go with a classic like Silent Spring or one of the extremes like We Almost Lost Detroit, either will demonstrate a major chunk of the evolving worldview we labored under during the 20th Century.

Taylor's Principals of Scientific Management. The impact of 'scientific management' cannot be underestimated, it has permeated our culture.

Waiting for Godot

Catch 22

The Sun Also Rises

Lolita

Great Gatsby

Dang fiction, well that means I can keep Gulag Archipeligo &Principals of Scientific Management but have to find something else for enviroscare and past which we found important to create the present (20th century).

explain the past century

Donald Rayfield in Stalin and His Hangmen says that Stalin, a voracious reader, had a 'naive and even weird' interpretation of fiction. The Devils, or The Possessed, by Dostoyevski is about about a radical nihilist who would murder thousands to create happiness 'for those who come after.' Stalin may have taken this not as (?) moral satire but, as it were, a companion volume to 'How to Do Plumbing.' Such a book would explore the pathologic narcissism erupting on what is often called the the death of God, above 'the fiction of Freud,' that so 'explains' the twentieth century. The role of narcissism is perhaps even seen in your discussion of the meaning and application of the Constitution.

The 20th century was radically transitional. The state of humanity and its institutions in the beginning is sharply distinct both qualitatively and quantitatively from the state of humanity and its institutions in the end.

We entered the 20th with the modest accumulation of millenia of human development: barely mechanized industry that was based on burning stuff to boil water and agriculture still based more or less on horses pulling stuff through fields. We passed through an epoch a decade, and left the 20th as something else entirely different.

The only book I've ever read that captures the accelerating pace of change that stitches it all together is Accellerando, by Charles Stross.

As for the rest, the best you can hope for is something that snapshots one aspect or another.

As for Atlas Shrugs, yeah, I think it has a place on the list, explaining much about where we find ourselves.

Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

In no particular order:

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh - perfectly captures the last dying gasp of the old world as it is consumed by an encroaching modernity.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - not Nabokov's best but it is in many ways the most quintessentially post-war American novel.

Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes - an almost perfect novel which demonstrates how the history of the entire world collides together into a chaotic mix resulting in the conflicted tensions underlying latino identity.

The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch -- a significant milestone in the history of the novel and, like , a probing look at the arrival of modernity.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera -- I'm too close to this book to even attempt a single sentence summation.

"Invisible Man" is, I believe, much better than "To Kill A Mockingbird", b/c it is so rooted in existentialism, which, in many ways, explains the absurdity of America's racial journey from the perspective of the oppressed.

It was Eyore all along.

Aren't books that do explaining the wrong books to think about when discussing literature at the high school level.

You'd do much better to search for books that define or exemplify and then let the students discover explanations.

emsl:
Rybakov's Children of the Arbat

That's not a bad one as far as explaining, but not a great one.
Somebody mentioned Nabokov (Lolita is great but I am not sure what it would explain on this kind of a short list). I submit Invitation to a Beheading by the same author. It's a great explanation of totalitarianism while also dragging in some Kafka world.

Mario Vargas Llosa was mentioned too. I would add The War of the End of the World or Conversation in the Cathedral for the mentality and tragedy of the developing world (even though the first title treats events of the 19th century).

Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman. The great novel of WWII, written by the great Russian journalist who covered the war. Extraordinary.
In Search of Lost Time - Proust.
The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom.
Judge on Trial. Ivan Klima, great novel on justice in an unjust society.
Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, or Augie March, by Bellow.

I think maybe we've missed the original point of the post.

Lord of the Flies deserves more love, in my opinion. It is a remarkable exposition of the fundamental Hobbesian nature of our humanity. It fully reveals the political economy of our deep tribalist instincts and how much of a struggle it is for humanity to raise itself above those instincts even given a pretense of civilization and rule of law.

C.D. Payne, Youth in Revolt
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Anything by Danielle Steel
Phillip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint
James Glassman, Dow 36,000

Widmerpool -

You mentioned Bolano's 2666. How was it? I just recently read By Night in Chile and absolutely loved it.

something that deals with the end of colonialism
something that shows the evolution of the middle east

Naguib Mahfouz' Cairo Trilogy. My favorite is Palace Walk, the first of the lot — which I included in my list for these very reasons.

Eric Henriksen:
In no particular order:

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh - perfectly captures the last dying gasp of the old world as it is consumed by an encroaching modernity.

How about The Cherry Orchard then ?:-)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - not Nabokov's best but it is in many ways the most quintessentially post-war American novel.

I actually think it's one of the best, but I am not sure what it really explains about the century or especially America (the fact that it was read in Teheran notwithstanding). For the century I would still go with his Beheading.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera -- I'm too close to this book to even attempt a single sentence summation.

Would be a good one in reflecting the spirit of a certain place and period, but less so in the explaining department. Still good.

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

The River Temoc,

I disagree with you strongly. I think Orwell did a masterful job of predicting and identifying the institutions and mechanisms of "thought control" that modern totalitarian government would employ within 1984, evocatively allowing a more simple reader to identify personal real-life examples of "News Speak" and "Ministries of Love".

By the way, it would really help to get a better understanding of what it means to "explain" a century.

I would say you're going for a novel which has a strong sense of the time and place, that really makes the external conditions in which the characters live come alive, and also which gets inside the head of the characters and has extremely true-to-life characters devoid of anachronisms.

To explain the century is to make it so that the reader of the future can understand the answers to some of the questions of "How could people have lived that way? How could so many have made the choices they did? What were they thinking? Why did history take the turns it did? How did the choices and beliefs of individuals come together to create the conflicts and movements that shaped history during those years?"

AndrewK (mail):
In any case, I suggested Lolita on a balanced list as helping to explain radical individualism, obsession with youth and sex, and the sloughing off of traditional mores leading to an id-dominated century and the reinvigoration of masculine tyranny in relationships. It also hits on megalomania and middle-class isolation.

All of that is controversial, but the sexual revolutions are a huge part of the 20th century.

I don't think Lolita is the right one to explain the sexual revolution. It played a role in obscenity censorship, yes.

The Good Soldier Švejk-Jaroslav Hašek

I second this one. Probably the funniest of all the entries listed that I am familiar with.

ys -

I am especially fond of The Cherry Orchard. Much better than Uncle Vanya in my opinion. But I was restricting myself to novels.

I didn't mean to suggest that Lolita is in any way an inferior work; just not his best. My favorites are Pale Fire and Ada or Ardor. I suggested this work for much the same reason Bearing mentioned above. It has something to do with how Nabokov managed to make all the hallmarks of Americana so inexplicably strange and foreign when viewed through the eyes of HH. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting as done by Francis Bacon.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being just fits so perfectly with my view of the overriding theme of the twentieth century: dissolution of the past and the subsequent longing for certainty which cannot be entirely sated by seeking refuge in the past or projecting our hopes into the future. It's an existential account of the human condition in the 20th Century.

A couple of oft-mentioned books are not really 20th century. Heart of Darkness was published in 1902. Parts of In Search Of Lost Time were published before 1900.

oops...

"dissolution of the past" should read "dissolution of history"

When it comes to Conrad, Heart of Darkness is the obvious choice, but what about The Secret Agent for the whole nihilism-terrorism-revolution theme? Under Western Eyes might be an even better choice, but it's been many years since I read it.

ys -

By the way, I agree with you that Invitation to a Beheading is both a wonderful novel and an entirely apropos choice for this little exercise. Bend Sinister would be another great choice for much the same reasons.

Eric Henriksen:
It has something to do with how Nabokov managed to make all the hallmarks of Americana so inexplicably strange and foreign when viewed through the eyes of HH. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting as done by Francis Bacon.

I submit that's how Nabokov himself saw it, minus HH's special proclivities (although Francis Bacon is a bit of an exaggeration here). But that's based on psychology of the viewer and falls short in the broader explaining department, in my view.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being just fits so perfectly with my view of the overriding theme of the twentieth century: dissolution of the past and the subsequent longing for certainty which cannot be entirely sated by seeking refuge in the past or projecting our hopes into the future.

I admit I don't understand what you mean here, even though some of Nabokov's and Lightness of Being's experiences have been my own.

Anderson:

Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.

Since it's not been mentioned again once since you nominated it, I am going to guess that I am one of the few here who have read it. (I've never actually met anyone else who has heard of it, let alone read it, until now, in fact).

I'm curious as to why you think it would be a good choice? I was very disappointed by it; I ordered it from bookfinder.com because it was very much along the lines of the novel I was (and am) working on and the synopses I read sounded like it was a great novel.

But I found the formatting (like how he doesn't use quotation marks) distracting and distancing from the story, for one thing. (Not that I'm down on experimental stuff or breaking away from convention as a rule or anything, but in this case I found it made me feel like I was reading a book from an alternate reality where they don't use quotation marks rather than one where Hitler did escape to South America, and I think that's not the right feeling to give the audience for this particular book). And the ending (no spoilers) seemed abrupt for no particular reason, like it was that way just to be that way rather than as an important part of shaping the narrative.

(And, BTW, I'm okay with ambiguous or abrupt endings, too, when done well. I loved the ending of John Sayles' film "Limbo," for instance. Well, okay, I loved it after being P.O.ed about it for an hour or so...)

Anyway, I just didn't find much there. But since I don't know anyone else who has (or is interested in) reading it, I've never had the chance to ask someone who liked it what they thought was good.

So, I'm asking. :^)

Unintended Consequences - lightly fictionalized sociopolitical history of self-defense law, culminating in the mindset of the pro-RKBA (and related subjects) crowd, both where we ended up and expect it all to go.

Fahrenheit 451 - a similar but broader depiction of the reversal of core principles thru the century, the general acceptance thereof, and the individual struggle to return to philisophical roots.

Lord Of The Rings - exemplifies self-reliance and self-sacrifice serving family, country and principles.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes - depicts the enthusiasm and fantasies of the unbridled quintessential American mind.

Also, very much agreed forebearance is an underappreciated and underexcerised moral virtue.

Is this, not to hijack the thread, a failure of humility as a noted virtue, or a lack of admission of or perspective on one's own failures? A learned skill or intutive one?

Great question, this was really fun to think about and to read.

I second Sometimes a Great Notion. Definitely portrays the uncertainty with ourselves that has been such a strong characteristic of our age. Second half of the century, anyway.

I second On the Road. It captures the naïve hope we had that we could live only in the present and care only about poetry and friends and all would be well. (I haven’t read it for a while, so that may be a very sloppy summary.)

I guess I have to agree that Catcher in the Rye explains us pretty well (I am not worrying about any definitions here, just going by gut). Narcissism, straight up. (Disguised as adolescence—and you could say our society is valiantly trying to keep that disguise alive!)

My suggestion is Howard’s End. Written in 1910 (I just checked), I think it explains the ascendance of the feminine point of view in Western culture during the 20th century. I suppose it’s politically incorrect to assert that there is such a thing as the feminine point of view, but I will assert it anyway, in honor of Mr. Forster.

(I think the novel also explains some things about changes in English society during the 20th century, but I am not very knowledgeable about that.)

The feminine point of view is symbolized by the house itself (called Howard’s End) and by the thoughts and feelings of Margaret, most famously those in the Only Connect passage (in which she is thinking about her new husband):

“It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

Widmerpool -

Thanks. I can definitely see how Bolano would be something of an acquired taste. I recently read Night in Chile--after hearing good things about him for the last decade--and the novel entirely lacks paragraphs and contains some sentences which have to be measured in pages. Slow reading but very rewarding.

Thanks for the heads up on Littell. I've never heard of him.

I second McCall -- which 20th century?

For a first cut, I'd split it into pre-WWII and postwar.

For prewar (and taking solely a western perspective), Waugh's 'Black Mischief,' Karel Capek's 'R.U.R.'

For postwar, Robert Coover's 'The Public Burning.'

For a non-western view, Amos Tutuola's 'The Palm-wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-wine Tapster in the Dead's Town.'

(As a bonus, with 3 of these 4 you get to enjoy the finest English stylists of the century.)

Plus, my compliments to those high school students. I cannot imagine myself, at their age, asking such a question about the 19th c.

Add my vote to Atlas Shrugged, and put in my vote for the 21st Century book: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

Exodus
Night
1984
Atlas Shrugged
Invisible Man

1. The initial rapture with collectivism in all its variants, and then in spite of its repeated failures, leading inexorably to the horrific killing fields of Cambodia: why we couldn't learn and (even still now) refuse to let go of the vision - Atlas Shrugged, Honorable Mention: 1984

2. The rise and fall of technocracy: Atomic power, the moon landing, and then the retreat. - The Lord of the Rings. Honorable mention: 2001, A Space Odyssey

3. The transformation of art from celebrating life, to cataloging its futility. - Lillian Hellman, The Childrens Hour.

4. The baby-boom culture: how those who were the first in history to be born into a world of plenty, and the Pax Americana, became irresponsible and lazy narcissists. - The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (not really a work of fiction)

5. The American Century and American Exceptionalism: how a people who could care less about the rest of the world ended up running it, and became the cause of all its faults. - The Ugly American. Honorable Mention: The Bridges of Toko-Ri.

The Man Who Was Thursday -- GK Chesterton

The Complete Far Side (or any of the other collections) -- Gary Larson

Atlas Shrugged is informative, not for its content so much as its illustration of Americans' love of fantasy designed to appeal to people's emotional and ideological instincts.

That said, here's what I would put on the list:

Manchild in the Promised Land (Actually a memoir, but written like a novel)
The Brothers K
Infinite Jest
The Stranger (cliche, I know, but I've looked at others' lists. 1984? Brave New World? Catcher in the Rye? Really?)
(American Psycho might fit.)
A Lesson Before Dying

Jer:

Good call on the Mishima.

I knew I needed to keep at least one spot in reserve:

Conrad's "Nostromo" (with "Under Western Eyes" close behind)

IMO the only absolute must book for a list like this is 1984.

Winds of War plus War and Remembrance

Captures the zeitgeist of WWII better than any other work of fiction. Rich in detail, very, very accurate to the actual history. Heck, even people from this decade can get a much better feel for those times by reading that duo than any other avenue I can think of.

Eagar,

"How to explain to the kiddies the optimism before 1914?"

There is optimism still - we're stubborn buggers. Yes, we can!

I'm not sure people are getting the distinction between "explain" and "exemplify."

"'To those who come after, When man is no longer wolf to man, Remember us with forbearance.'

Forbearance is a deeply under-appreciated moral virtue."

Indeed. Though given how man was to man in the 20th Century, wolf might be an improvement.


"All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."

- Mark Twain

I'd put Don Delillo's "White Noise" on the list.

We're in a different century from when I taught (public) high school English, and I recognize that the audience is presumably bright, mature students who are soliciting suggestions, but I still have to say that some of the books put forth surprise me. Lolita?

The major addition that comes to mind that I haven't yet noticed on the list is All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren.

"'To those who come after, When man is no longer wolf to man, Remember us with forbearance.'

Forbearance is a deeply under-appreciated moral virtue."

Indeed. Though given how man was to man in the 20th Century, wolf might be an improvement.

Lay off the wolves, you species-ist vandals.

"Animal House" described the atmosphere that incubated all of those who have brought so much turmoil to this great nation.

Sen. Blutarsky... Gaia knows what this guy wrought upon us.

Niedermayer... Went to Vietnam, got fragged by his own men, probably burned huts and loved the smell of napalm in the morning.

Otis Day... now we gotta sit through that noise every time some NBA team goes on a 6-0 run and we get a timeout.

Marmalard... caught in Watergate scandal... 'nuff said.


Otter... a Beverly Hills gynecologist... Cut his teeth hustling a dead coed's roommate, and now probably contributes to the Governator's campaign.

Boone... took over at Rolling Stone... and wrecked it.

D-Day... whereabouts unknown... but anybody playing the "William Tell Overture" on their throat can't have come to any good.

The Horse's Mouth--a truly great book.

I would argue, however, that it doesn't really qualify for the assignment, again on the grounds of its theme and insights being universal. It's a splendid, experiential portrait of what it means to be an artist. Wouldn't this story be the same in any era? Or did I miss something important in the book? (always a possibility!)

Oh! Network. I watched this again last year and was astonished at not only how well it holds up but also how much of it has come true. It is absolutely chilling. Thirty years ago we took this movie as an outrageous, edgy satire. Now it seems real.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie - culture of celebrity

Rhinoceros - Eugene Ionesco - how Nazism, fascism and communism got their foothold (does theatre fall under fiction?)

Thank you, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse - wealthy America, race, the red scare and the decline of the British empire in one comic romp

Stranger in a Strange Land - free love, mystic mumbo jumbo and the rise of the police state

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

In no particular order (and yes, I know it's six):

Brazil
Lord of the Flies
The Seventh Seal
Into the Woods
Atlas Shrugged
Eat the Rich

In a million years, there will be one event of the 20th Century remembered, if there are those to remember it:

Apollo

No list that purports to explain that Century can credibly omit her most important event.

Individualism v. collectivism was a western preoccupation. It hardly mattered to a Chinese peasant and would have puzzled a Russian one, who was already a member of a collective before the October Revolution.

To me the main thrust of the century was that in 1900, all the modern people were white Europeans and their descendants; and by 2000 there were about as many modern non-westerners as westerners.

So now, Mr. Anderson, what are you going to do? Pick 5 and assign them to everybody in the class?

Are the favorite books here ones that were on your draft list?

"So now, Mr. Anderson, what are you going to do?"

Eagar?

I would add "Ship of Fools" by Katharine Ann Porter. I can't quite explain why, but I think it should be on the list.

A short piece on the individualist/totalitarianism divide without any of the east-west baggage would be Tolkein's Leaf by Niggle. It does an amazingly good job of demonstrating how superficial our view of events is.