Okay,
last week was true confessions for me: the Important Works I had not read that
I should read. (In case you’re wondering, both The Road and Beloved have
many vocal fans…okay, Faulkner and Shakespeare, too. In fact, someone spoke up
about each of my neglected books, adding to my guilt.)
To
show that I’m not a dolt, here is my list of classic books that I have read
that I feel immense passion for, that affected me deeply and profoundly, that I
can’t imagine my life being the same without.
All in my humble opinion, of course.
And I think I’ll stick to pre-WWIish or so, though I may fudge a little
bit.
1. Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville. I had purposefully skipped this one during college/grad
school, afraid of TMI about whales, and yet that’s one of the many things I
loved most the summer I spent reading it, whales and obsession and the
post-modern tricks that were so post-modern that Melville used them even before
modernity. One of the greatest books, ever.
There’s probably a reason that this book came to mind first.
2. “The Wasteland” and “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot. Yes, I’m already breaking my pre-WWI rule—even
though Eliot said, “It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.” I read “The
Wasteland,” unsupervised, in a terrible American lit high school class where
the teacher gave us a list of Great Writers and we picked through them
independently through the semester while he read magazines at his desk, and I
had no idea what was going on here, but I thought it was something
important. When I got to college, I saw
how right I was. I have a recording of
Eliot reading “The Wasteland” that I often listen to when I fall asleep, and I
feel that the words are imprinted on my soul. (Yes, yes, some people call this
recording “melodramatic,” but I happen to love it.) Okay, throw in “The Hollow Men,” too, which
even my high school brain could figure out.
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Does
the inclusion of this book really need any explanation? I came to it for the romance in my early
teens and read it now for the wicked humor and its dark reality of the Way
Things Are (I mean, Were, because surely women’s lives are lived in a perfectly
fair world now).
4. The Portrait
of a Lady by Henry James. I read this first my freshman year of college and
have a little notebook from the time with handwritten “Important Quotations”
that is filled with lines from this book.
When I reread it a couple of summers ago, I saw why: what a psychological study, what a depth of
mind—examined, and examining. What
frustrating sorrow. What an achievement.
5. “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman. Another
one that passed quickly through my head in that terrible high school lit class,
then caught me in college, but was a deep and true revelation one perfect
summer afternoon, read out loud while lying in a hammock under a tree.
6. The
Adventures of Huck Finn by Mark Twain.
Why do they let kids read this book? I loved Tom Sawyer and couldn’t wait for this “sequel” when I was ten. Oops.
Reading it as an adult was, ahem, a little bit of a different
experience. I’m not sure it’s possible
to understand American without reading this book.
7. Wuthering
Heights by Emily Bronte. The
landscape, the passion, the wails across the moors, the story of a story, the
passion, the passion. Let’s not forget that
people are always people first, even back in the olden days when everyone was
wearing all that buttoned-up, stiff clothing, sitting around parlors drinking
tea.
8. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I read this for class at least three times in
college, and it wasn’t until the last time that I sunk into its depths. Or, rather, its depths sunk into me. I think it makes for a great sequence to read
Heart of Darkness, then watch “Apocalypse
Now,” then reread Heart of Darkness then
watch “Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse,” about the making of the
movie. Then reread Heart of Darkness.
9. “Dover Beach” by Matthew
Arnold. Well…I hope the kids still
read this in their survey courses (if that’s what they’re called), but I’m not
sure it’s still considered the must-read it was back when I was in college. But what a potent message for the impressionable
young writer, especially one who lived in a dorm room overlooking a lake,
listening to the waves each night?
10. Toss-up:
Anna Karenina, Middlemarch,
Thomas Hardy, Ibsen, Chekhov! All works that
were influential enough on me to make this list—yet none feels 100 percent
deserving of its own entry the way the others do. Yet I ache at the thought of excluding any of
them. Remember what Eliot said about
rules?
11. I’m not sure Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is this type of classic, but I
don’t think anyone can really understand women without reading this book. (Watching “Sex in the City” is NOT a
substitute!) I still can’t forgive Amy
for burning Jo’s manuscript, and it still annoys me that Jo was able
to!
I
know there are many, many books I haven’t included and might if I wrote this
list on a different day. I know that I
cheated with some on the WWI cut-off and not on others that would make this
list with an expanded or different timeline.
I know I’m supposed to have Shakespeare on this list or Homer. I know my list reflects my American
background and schooling. But there is
something bracing about winnowing, about pushing to think which books go on the
shortest possible list, which classic books changed my life profoundly, making me who
I am, which books would be the absolute last I would toss into the fire.
