I have some interesting additions to my list of a half-dozen crimes-and-punishments novels for 2011. (See my previous posting where I explain that the list of a half-dozen serves as the foundation upon which other authors and titles will be added.)

Fred, someone I enjoy hearing from because he knows quite a bit about good literature, offers the following short list:

Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov; Eliot Pattison — Skull Mantra; Arthur Conan Doyle — The Hound of the Baskervilles; Michael Gregorio — Critique of Criminal Reason; Agatha Christie — Nemesis; and P. D. James — A Mind to Murder

Steven, another person I enjoy chatting with because he is such a discriminating reader with wide-ranging interests, offers the following authors and titles:

Homer — The Iliad; Wilkie Collins — The Moonstone; Agatha Christie — And Then There Were None; Daniel Defoe — Moll Flanders; Victor Hugo — Les Miserables; and Alexander Dumas — The Count of Monte Cristo

Note 1: I have already made a trip to the university library where I grabbed copies of The Moonstone and The Count of Monte Cristo; my community library will be reserving copies of Skull Mantra, Nemesis, and A Mind to Murder. So, it looks as though my semester break and the beginning of the new year will be filled to overflowing with tons of good reading. And, I look forward to commenting upon my reading experiences.

Note 2: I am grateful to both Fred and Steven for helping me expand my personal challenge.

Note 3: Finally, please understand that the polls remain open for others to offer their recommended list of a half-dozen crimes-and-punishments novels. Bring ‘em on!

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

re: Reading Challenge (Part 2)

List the ten most influential books in your life.

So, without further elaboration or foundation, and without excessive deliberation except to note that this becomes something like an autobiographical exercise, I offer my humble list with the briefest of explanations for each title:

The Holy Bible: As a child, I lived in a Christ-haunted fundamentalist home where the church and the Bible were the foundations upon which many of my early thoughts were formed. I cannot claim to have read the Bible from cover-to-cover, but it has always been a powerful force (positively and negatively) throughout my life.

Nancy Drew Mysteries: (Note: Even though including series of books may stretch the rules of the exercise, I cannot avoid including the Nancy Drew Mysteries.) Continuing on the childhood perspective, I lived in a home where there was neither money for nor parental interest in books, so I spent a lot of time reading the hand-me-down Nancy Drew mysteries that I received from my cousin.

Classics Illustrated: (Note: I must again stretch the rules.) I suspected at an early age that there were important reading adventures waiting for me in books, but the “big people’s books” at bookstores and libraries would have to wait while I satisfied by reading interests by buying and reading many dozens of Classics Illustrated comic books. In some ways, the “real” books by Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville, and Charles Dickens never improved upon or erased my “first impressions” obtained through Classics Illustrated.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: This was one of my first book purchases. I had skipped the school cafeteria lunch for a while and used some of the secretly hoarded lunch money to buy paperback copies of several “big people’s books.” For better of worse, Upton Sinclair’s novel of immigrant life in Chicago remains one of my indelible memories: I still remember the slaughterhouse scenes.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare: This may not count as a “book” in the spirit of the exercise, but Hamlet was (when I first saw Richard Burton in the title role) and it remains one of my most cherished experiences with literature.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett: Again, this may not count as a “book,” but my first reading of Beckett and my subsequent involvement in a college production of Godot serve as important milestones in my development as a discerning reader of dramatic literature.

Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by Scott Berg: Even though I had not yet learned much of value about Hemingway, Wolfe, and Fitzgerald (graduate school was still far away), Scott Berg’s study of the Scribner editor remains one of my most fond memories. By reading about Perkins, I began to learn valuable lessons about writers, editors, and publishing.

The American Experience (Trilogy) by Daniel Boorstin: During deployments aboard U.S. Navy ships (because of my 25 year career in uniform), I spent a lot of time reading. For some reason, which is too complicated (or perhaps too obscure) to explain here, Boorstin’s three books (again stretching the rules of the exercise by include a trilogy) had a profound effect on my understanding of American history.

The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (edited by David V. Erdman): When I was introduced to Blake while I was in graduate school, my ability to read and understand literature was, as if by some mystical power, immediately transformed.

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor: To understand the immense effect of Wise Blood upon me, you would need to hear me talk for hours about how my reading of O’Connor’s works became the turning point in my personal and professional life. But time and space are too limited here, so instead I refer you to my comments about the Bible and Blake because those should help you guess at my need to include O’Connor’s novel (and her short stories) on this list.

* * * * *

Update:

Courtesy of Patti Abbott, here is the link to her blog where you can also scroll down to view other bloggers’ lists.

You can also view Steven Riddle’s list by visiting his blog at this link.

Terry Teachout’s list can be viewed at this link.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

Ten Influential Books

The Temptation of the Impossible:

Victor Hugo and Les Misérables

Mario Vargas Llosa

John King, translator

Princeton University Press

232 pages

Hardcover $24.95

978-0-691-13111-5

Here, in this compelling book, readers can enjoy the fascinating encounter between two literary giants: Mario Vargas Llosa and Victor Hugo. Intriguing and entertaining in its approach—part literary criticism, part biography, and part personal essay—The Temptation of the Impossible is Vargas Llosa’s consistently perceptive tribute to Hugo’s Les Misérables. For Vargas Llosa—Peruvian novelist, journalist, and literary critic—Hugo’s 1862 novel is a brilliant if not always flawlessly executed portrayal of “a world blazing with extreme misfortune, love, courage, happiness, and vile deeds.”

Hugo’s development of characters and themes are central to Vargas Llosa’s analysis, but for the Peruvian critic it is Hugo’s narrative style that remains essential to appreciating the novel. The narrator, says Vargas Llosa, is most remarkable for his “omniscience, omnipotence, exuberance, visibility, and egomania. He knows everything that happens during the time of the novel, those eighteen years that begin on an October evening in 1815, when the ex-convict Jean Valjean enters the inhospitable town of Digne, and end that night in 1833 when Jean Valjean dies in his small house in the Rue de L’Homme Armé, with Marius and Cosette by his bedside, in the glow of Bishop Myriel’s candlesticks.”

Vargas Llosa boldly though not wholly persuasively argues that a great novel—especially Hugo’s gargantuan tale of Valjean, Cosette, Marius, Javert, and the other characters—can make “us feel dissatisfied with what exists, and gives us an appetite for unreality that can influence our lives in many different ways and affect the wider world.” Many literary critics will disagree that novels function as catalysts for changing an individual (much less the world), yet Vargas Llosa argues so passionately that even dissenting critics will admire his zealous and thorough reasoning.

Hugo’s novel, while extraordinarily popular in the nineteenth century, unfortunately attracts few contemporary readers. It is perhaps too long and discursive. Many potential readers, in fact, are more familiar with the spectacular musical than with Hugo’s book; the Schönberg-Boublil box-office phenomenon opened in September 1980 in Paris for an eight-week season and has shown little signs of fading from the limelight. Nevertheless, for any student of world literature who is interested in an important and hugely readable, one-stop critical analysis of Hugo’s canonical novel, Vargas Llosa’s fascinating book is the perfect destination for an evening or two. Readers may not be persuaded of the greatness of Les Misérables, but they will be entertained and edified by Vargas Llosa’s infectious enthusiasm.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

Review – The Temptation of the Impossible

Paul Johnson—the celebrated journalist, historian, and author of many books including the personally recommended Intellectuals, The Birth of the Modern, and The Quest for God—once again challenges and delights inquisitive readers with Creators: From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney.

Johnson begins his book by presenting readers with the key questions: What does it mean to be a creator who transcends “the proscribed parameters of art and leave[s] an indelible mark” on the stage of human history? Can we “define this level of creativity, or explain it?” And if we “cannot define it any more than we can define genius,” how shall we go about understanding creators and their contributions?

Johnson answers these questions—not through definition, explanation, or abstract analysis—but through a more effective, entertaining, and concrete strategy: illustration and example.

He gives us essays in which we meet (or, as may be the case for many readers, revisit) some of the greatest creators in the history of world culture: We encounter singular writers—Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, T. S. Eliot, Victor Hugo, and Mark Twain; we visit ground-breaking visual artists—Dürer, J. M. W. Turner, Picasso, and Hokusai; we meet up with imaginative innovators from a variety of other fields—musician and composer J. S. Bach; fashion designers Christóbal Balenciaga and Christian Dior; architects A. W. N. Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc; and cultural trendsetters and business geniuses Louis Comfort Tiffany and Walt Disney.

What distinguishes Johnson’s essays most is the intellectual vigor of his research and observations, the impressive fluidity of his prose, and the ambitious boldness of the thematic premise which dominates Creators: Johnson’s subjects (and the rest of the world’s important creators) have become giants in their fields because of courage, curiosity, and industriousness; in fact, without the courage to overcome obstacles—the influences of antecedents, the oppression of cultural restraints, and the frustrations of socioeconomic barriers—and without the curiosity and industriousness to seek out new and different strategies for the creative expression to which they were completely committed, those who would strive to be uniquely significant creators would instead be doomed to mediocrity, banality, and redundancy.

Filled with keen insights, Creators is a book which I most highly recommend. But perhaps you are wondering if this book is really something you would enjoy. If you enjoy a reading experience that is marked by thought-provoking discoveries, and if you are interested in more thoroughly understanding the geniuses to whom we have throughout history consistently turned for enrichment and inspiration, then Creators is most assuredly a book you will want to read and share with others.

Copyright © 2009 Good Books

My Book Review Archives #20