NEWS FLASH: I AM A COMPLETE DORK. I have been waiting for the perfect night to organize my books in my new study/office, and tonight was the night. It’s quite pleasant to have to go though all of your books and decide where to put them; how they relate to each other. Does Zora Neale Hurston go beside Richard Wright or Djuna Barnes? Or beside Kate Chopin, maybe? Where the hell do I shelve that wretched book by Richard Brautigan that made me want to stab myself in the neck with a spoon if only it would put a stop to the self-congratulatory weirdness? I could have sold it back to any of our many local independent book shops, but I never get rid of my books. It’s a rule, I just can’t.
There is one glittering exception to this, though: John Steinbeck, the depressing dullard. I would find it hard to feign any outrage or sadness if his entire oeuvre were burned on the streets. In fact, I would raise a glorious cheer and run for a gas can. I haaaaate him. The Fucking Pearl, my ass.
So I wound up taking an inventory of the books I have, but have not yet read–The Alexandria Quartet is one example, but give me a goddamned break. Did anyone actually read it? Then there are those other books widely recommended by friends, critics, and the entire effing canon, but which I have not yet read. I consistently feel like a fraud–after all I am a card-carrying member of the Future Literary Critics of Zembla.
Here’s the rub: I don’t think it’s really all that tragic not to have read certain things. One of my best friends (also in a literature doctoral program) has never read Catcher in the Rye. But why bother now? Catcher in the Rye will never be as good to the reader in her mid-to-late twenties as it is to the reader in her mid-to-late teens, am I right? The same can be said for anything by Jack Kerouac or Jean-Paul Sartre. The worst thing you can do with their books? Re-read them.
Having said all that, I now offer the top five books I haven’t read but should (in no particular order):
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (just bought and may actually read)
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
And five you might not have read, but should (again in no particular order):
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight - Vladimir Nabokov
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
History of Danish Dreams - Peter H?eg
The Spider’s House - Paul Bowles
Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
The Alexandria Quartet . . .Did anyone actually read it?
Guilty as charged, ma’am. It’s a marvellous sequence by a seriously underrated (in Britain) writer. Certainly well worth it.
dude! i can’t believe you haven’t read stranger in a strange land yet! i thought i gave it to you after i read it (as i often do with my books which is why i have so few). but perhaps i gave it to old crookedletter. i can’t member.
I’ve given The Alexandria Quartet a try several times. I just can’t do it. Even sitting in Cairo bored out of my mind with intentions to go to Alexandria, I couldn’t do it. Now the books sit on one of my shelves looking forlorn and unloved between Lonely Planet Middle East and Motoring with Mohammed.
Nick-I knew someone would zing me on that one! I have alays had the best intentions, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Mel-don’t hate me when I say that it was indeed me you gave it to. I started it, but…um…sorry! I will eventually read it, swear.
Kate-Motoring with Mohammed? Is that like the Muslim version of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
why nto alphebetize by authar? jesus taht picture is madaning. its too smal to read any of teh spines! evan this is mosly imposable.
dude i sooooo agre abot keruoc an salenger. same wiht — ahem — john irveng. an evan as a tenager i culdnt stand satre.
sebastien kinght is onea teh few nabakoves i culdnt get through. but i mosly stoped reding im aftar i trned 30 anyhow. so the hel whit it.
catch-22 is fun. i recamend it.
by dint of horeioic efert i fuoght my way thorough a whoale page of falknar once an whan i regained conscuosnes i swoare off im forevar.
heinlein only evar wrote two truly lousy novels. staranger is one of em. ur not misin much.
im curantly gobblign up teh entire aubrey/maturin series. hahahaaa!
“Where the hell do I shelve that wretched book by Richard Brautigan that made me want to stab myself in the neck with a spoon if only it would put a stop to the self-congratulatory weirdness?”
The kitchen, obviously.
H.H.H.- you stopped reading Nabokov when you turned thirty? Was is some kind of self imposed penance for something you’d done when you were younger? But really, he is one of my great joys. So funny! So clever! Such wonderful sentences! I am swooning right now.
And re Irving, yeah, I know. But I did go through a phase of reading A Prayer for Owen Meany every summer, and crying at the end every time. What can I say, I am such a girl.
And what are you currently gobbling?
Z- hyuk hyuk. You’re funny. But doesn’t your joke imply that you think I should put myself and my books in a situation where I would be more likely to stab myself in the neck with a spoon? That’s not nice.
Eeessh, the wonderful world of book organisation. You should get onto The Pedant about this, she loves it, loves it! She’s going to kill me.
xxB
Hee. It takes just the right personality to really love book organization when it would be so much easier to alphabetize… But why do I take it to mean that P. doesn’t really love it so much after all?
mabe i just ovardosed on nabekov whan i was yungar but i just dont feel like it anymoare. part of it is that he dosnt like any of is characters except prof pnin. also my tastes have gotan more frivelos whit age.
im gobalin these. wondarful books.
Oh, but who wouldn’t love Prof. Pnin? Come on! I KNOW him, I swear (Clarabella and Mel, it’s like a Russian emigre version of DFF. You must read this book!)
I love his characters in general, but what I really love in him is structure and language and his (yes, so cocky) trickery. It makes me sweat a little.