Summer reading ideas: Not!
Right now, as my fingers stumble across the keyboard, the top story at the ArtJournal site is from the Telegraph in the UK, specifically a video of short interviews with prominent Brit writers who confess their sins: The classic books they haven’t read. Go ahead, click the link! It’s only 3 minutes or so, and really, it’s worth it, because it will make you feel better about some secret reading omission of your own.
The Bible, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, Shakespeare, Catch-22, Ulysses, On the Origin of Species … The big books spool out, unread. As I watch the guilty rat on themselves, my favorite is playwright Michael Frayn, who suggests that he hasn’t read ANYTHING and is “in a state of perpetual embarrassment.” Which is exactly how I feel. Not that I haven’t read anything (and frankly, come on, the erudite Mr. Frayn has read a lot), but even if I’ve read it recently, important details have begun to leak out of my brainpan immediately. Was that book really great, or does it simply leave the impression of being really great…? More than regretting books not read, I regret books not remembered.
But OK. I’ll play. The book I’m most embarrassed that I haven’t read. Hmmm. Suddenly there are so many to choose from! Let’s see: Crime and Punishment. It is so big, it is so important, it is so daunting, and I know almost as much about it as books I’ve actually read and forgotten! But still… Hey, that feels better. Your confession below?
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There are so many confessions not having to do with books that frankly, not reading books seems like such a mild infraction. I have read Crime and Punishment. It changed my life when I was 18. On the other hand, I haven’t read War and Peace or Moby Dick or very much of Plato’s original works. There are just too many important works that I don’t even know about that to try to think of what I haven’t read is starting to give me a headache, or more accurately a soul-ache to the extent that I’d rather think about the great omissions that I do know about–not flossing, not fermenting my beans, not growing my own food, not making my kids take more music lessons, not exercising, not traveling more, not taking the advice of any number of smart people on what I should have read…
Comment by Megan — July 23, 2008 @ 7:20 am
I tried to read “Crime and Punishment,” but got hopelessly confused by the characters’ names seeming to change, depending on who was talking to/about them. How provincial of me. I haven’t even tried to read “War and Peace.” Every summer, I think: this will be the year I do it! I do have a copy of “Anna Karenina” on my nightstand. Does that count for anything? And why are Russian authors the ones who make me feel guilt-stricken? I haven’t read anything by Camus, either, but I’m not losing sleep over that. So many issues to ponder, so little time…
Comment by Kristi! — July 23, 2008 @ 9:37 am
I also have a copy of “Anna Karenina” sitting in my “to read” pile, along with three or four books written by various friends that I bought out of a sense of obligation, but have never cracked the spine. What’s embarrassing about “Anna Karenina” is why I asked for a copy of it a couple of Christmases back: I’d read an interview with Ethan Hawke in Entertainment Weekly where he said it was the one book everyone should read. I’m adding to my reading list based on what the star of “Gattaca” has to say. Sad, really.
Comment by Grant — July 23, 2008 @ 10:53 am
I have a confession: I’m not embarrassed by any of the hundreds and hundreds of books I haven’t read (Crime and Punishment, Moby Dick, Ulysses, Catch-22, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina among them; I have read Wuthering Heights). That’s not to say I don’t want to read many of them, of course. I would just rather take pride in the books I have read. And in the fact that I read at all. Some people don’t.
Which brings me to what I am embarrassed by: that my fiancee doesn’t read. Actually, he does read, but only books he’s read before. Since we have been together (more than 10 years), I think he has read fewer than five books, and only one of them, Kitchen Confidential, was something he hadn’t previously read — and he stopped two chapters short of finishing that. I gave him a reading assignment — Life of Pi — just last week, so we’ll see if he can finish a new book. My fingers are crossed.
So, I agree with Megan, there are greater things to confess — even if we’re just talking book-related confessions — than not having read the right books.
Comment by DeAnn — July 23, 2008 @ 11:03 am
Well, the true confession is big books started but never completed. “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” I’ve made it through about two-thirds of “Beowulf” and just lost track. “Ulysses.” I’m into “War and Peace” right now and truly enjoying it; I’m confident I’ll finish. “The Confessions of St. Augustine” (although I’ve completed “The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini” twice). I’ve made it through most of Dante’s “Inferno” but haven’t climbed out of the pit and into “Purgatorio” or “Paradiso.” Milton’s Paradise is still lost to me. Plato and Aristotle remain skimmed, not truly read; I’ve managed just a small number of The Federalist Papers. One that I’m happy to say I’ll never pick up again: “Remembrance of Things Past.” Over the years I’ve tried it a half-dozen times, and it does nothing but irritate me: It’s like watching paint dry. On Proust, I give up. What a liberating feeling!
Comment by Bob Hicks — July 23, 2008 @ 11:40 am
O man, this is getting good. But now I’m thinking, I’m not embarrassed about not reading “Crime and Punishment” as much as I’m embarrassed that I haven’t read the Fantagraphics reprints of Krazy Kat comics. Because I know I REALLY want to read about Krazy and Ignatz…
Comment by barry — July 23, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
Never read Jane Austen. Not a word. (Sticks chin out and dares folks to take a poke at it….)
In one of his academic novels, David Lodge writes about a dinner party game where each person has to name a classic they haven’t read, and they get one point for each person at the table who *has* read it. In other words, the more commonly-read the book, if you haven’t read it, you win. The fellow who wins in this particular scene hasn’t read “Hamlet.” Alas, he also hasn’t been given tenure, and he is refused it on the grounds that…yes…he hasn’t read “Hamlet.”
Comment by Shawn — July 23, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
(Okay, like a schmuck I just clicked through to the original story and realized that I was repeating a yarn that was in it….wait….I think that means I win!)
Comment by Shawn — July 23, 2008 @ 6:05 pm
I haven’t read a word of Dostoyevsky (sp?). Don’t intend to; don’t feel bad either, so perhaps that doesn’t count. Though I have read a great short novel about him, Leonid Tsypkin’s “Summer in Baden-Baden,” and I’ve read everything I know of by Nadine Gordimer, who said he opened “the awesome mysteries of human behavior” for her. (But so did Chekhov, and I’ve read him.) Still, won’t read Dostoievski (sp?). I’ll never finish “Finnegans Wake” (sp?) and at times feel bad about that. I’m with Bob on Dante, but like Milton and think about reading “Paradise Lost” again with all the frenzy over the 400-something anniversary this year. And I’m with Bob on Proust, although I’ll likely dig in there once in a while; though, again, I read “My Year of Reading Proust,” by I can’t remember who at the moment and loved that. (I hope I haven’t stumbled on a pattern here.) And I’ve never bookended “Don Quixote” (sp?) either, but keep the Carlos Fuentes recommended Tobias Smollett (sp?) translation at hand, in case. I have read all 160 chapters of “Epitaph of a Small Winner,” by Machado de Assis, several times actually, and that makes me a small winner in reading in any event.
Comment by Vernon Peterson — July 23, 2008 @ 6:13 pm
I confess, I have never read a work by a Beat writer that was good. I could try to make that my summer goal, but it just wouldn’t be worth it. “Howl?” Overrated. “On the Road”? Sucks. The whole point of the writing seems to be to make the educated reader say, this character is actually a real person and they really did get drunk and stay out all night and write boring run-on sentences. Man, how relevant, how worth my time. Grown men drinking and writing run-on sentences and taking uppers and hitchhiking and writing about it and then, hey, So-and-so came in and we went to the barn and met some people and did some stuff, but So-and-so is really Some-other-person, which makes you say, wow, Some-other-person really went to the barn and met some people and did some stuff. So that’s my confession — never read a good Beat writer.
Comment by Cy Russ — July 23, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
I have never read The Bible. I mean, I know the story. I know how it TURNS OUT. But, my God, it’s so LONG, you know? I have also never read Philip Roth, despite attacking his reputation at parties. And - this is the worst- I have not read any Willa Cather. Not a single word. Books I have lied about reading: Moby-Dick, Infinite Jest, the second half of Ulysses, Algebra 4, and The Pearl. I actually wrote a book report on The Pearl, having not even cracked it. I got a B. I’m kind of proud of that.
Comment by Chelsea — July 23, 2008 @ 7:13 pm
Chelsea, those are all VERY long books you’ve lied about reading (or not read in the case of the Bible), and almost no one could ever catch you out on them. Or maybe I’m just saying I personally couldn’t catch you out on them, because of the forgetting problem. I have one other MAJOR problem: I can never remember how ANYTHING ends. OK, I remember how Moby-Dick ends, but that’s just because I’ve seen the Gregory Peck-as-Ahab movie many times. And I know that Othello is going to end badly, but really I have a total blank spot for conclusions… Is there a doctor in the house?
Comment by Barry — July 23, 2008 @ 7:43 pm
I have never made it through Leviticus.
But that’s because it’s named for my tribe and I’m inordinately fond of it…..
Comment by Shawn — July 23, 2008 @ 8:20 pm
Oh, and I forgot: I’ve never read “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (though I HAVE read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”) I did recently read a very nice essay on Gibbon (can’t remember the author, of course!) that praised him for the quality of his prose and the way he could tuck a sophisticated joke inside a carefully constructed paragraph, bringing two or even three meanings to the crescendo. The essayist’s examples were charming.
Comment by Bob Hicks — July 23, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
Oddly enough, I’m currently reading War and Peace AND The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (zipping through the first after having started it last week; badly bogged down about 2/3 of the way through the second after slogging manfully most of the way there in March). Polished off Gravity’s Rainbow in January (after having failed to finish it twice in decades past). This is in fact the year I decided to take care of some long-neglected big books — Proust is next, and possibly Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. Finally read Anna Karenina a few years ago, did a lot of Dostoevsky and all of Moby Dick in college — Ulysses TWICE. Now that I’ve thoroughly pissed everybody off, I’ll go to my Hall of Shame: I’ve never read a single Henry James novel, I failed to finish The Great Gatsby in high school and never went back, and my other never-reads include On the Origin of Species and On the Road. (I have read On Beyond Zebra, though. . . .)
Comment by David Loftus — July 23, 2008 @ 10:58 pm
I like the idea of switching back and forth between “War and Peace” and “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” — two pages here, two pages there…
Comment by barry — July 24, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
I’m pretty much used to the idea of switching back and forth between war and peace.
Comment by Vernon — July 25, 2008 @ 7:28 am
I have two copies of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Crossing” sitting on my bookshelf. I taught passages in a class about the US/Mexican border and even gave the book as a gift(twice). Read it? No.
Comment by rachael — July 25, 2008 @ 9:30 am
Rachael, that is GOOD: To have taught a book you haven’t read? I think we may have a winner!!!
Comment by Barry Johnson — July 25, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
barry wrote “I like the idea of switching back and forth between ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ — two pages here, two pages there….” Actually, Gibbon is pretty neglected these days: I’m switching between W&P and Daniel Martin (for my book discussion group’s meeting in August) right now — 50 pages to the former per 20 pages of the latter. But does anybody remember when Snoopy assayed to tackle W&P by reading one word per day? I remember that series, but I don’t remember how it ended up.
Comment by David Loftus — July 26, 2008 @ 1:34 pm
Yeah, Rachael wins. David, you had me worried at first that you misunderstood the assignment. But I’m with Chelsea on the Bible. Except for reading parts of a bad translation when I was a teen. I think I was trying to find out what all the fuss was about. Thankfully, it helped in that I was only slightly more than clueless come Western Civ class my freshman year of college. So how does someone brought up in a secular household and public schools begin to understand the very basics of all things Western thought? Architecture, paintings, music, philosophy? Literature? War AND peace? I worry about my boys in that the only bible story they know is from a hand-me-down book of David and Goliath, and really, what little boy wouldn’t like the story of the little guy who nails a giant with a rock between the eyes? What teen doesn’t want to do that to a parent? Come to think of it, I have read Oedipex Rex. But only seen a play version of Medea. God help me.
Comment by Laura — July 26, 2008 @ 7:33 pm
I, on the other hand, have read a barrel full of Bible. Them’s great stories, and they really are crucial to understanding Western art and thought. Plus, there’s a big fun factor. When I was a kid my Baptist church had a dapper little preacher who sported a pencil mustache and played the saxophone. He was a hell of a performer — used to stand at the far side of the dais and start marching to the other side, yelling, “I’m going to Hell! I’m going to Hell! I’m going to Hell!” (I capitalize “Hell” because in these circles Hell was no metaphor; it was a real place.) Then, having reached the far end, he would “convert” himself by turning on his heel, marching back the other way, and shouting, “I’m going to Heaven! I’m going to Heaven! I’m going to Heaven!” Great stuff.
And remembering my teenage self, I can’t say enough about Wednesday night baptism ceremonies, which were full immersion and often featured young ladies dressed in nothing but loose white gowns. It was wet T-shirt contests before we’d ever heard of wet T-shirt contests, and my, did it bring out a keen sense of holiness in the horny young toads of he congregation. The Bible’s great for that sort of thing.
One day the saxophone-playing preacher hopped in a car with the honky-tonk church pianist, leaving his wife and kids behind, and headed off into the sunset, never to be seen in our town again. A few years later I read “Elmer Gantry.”
As I say, the Bible: Great stuff. And I mean that truly. Even beyond the sex.
Comment by Bob Hicks — July 26, 2008 @ 7:52 pm
I read the Bible cover to cover the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college; it was a nice break from my summer job, which was scraping the rust off the interior of ocean-going barges for Sause Brothers in Coos Bay. I’d been a congenital nonbeliever, but felt I should be up on what everybody else raved about, and Bob is right, there are some great stories, although there are some slow parts. Favorite book has to be Ecclesiastes, of course. Favorite verse? Deuteronomy 10:16, which in the King James version is rendered “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.” My knowledge of the Greeks — theatrical and philosophical — however, is woefully bleak, despite having acted in two productions over at Keith Scale’s Classic Greek Theatre.
Comment by David Loftus — July 27, 2008 @ 7:09 am
You folks are too funny; since when is NOT reading something a competition, unless of course you are running for president and sort of getting elected on the grounds that you’ve never read anything and are proud of it. Laura of course gets the first prize for wittiest confession, no surprise there. And like Bob, I have read the Bible, both books as well as the apocrypha but then I had to, having been a religion major in college. Where I also read Moby Dick in one weekend and can’t remember anything about it at all, except that there was this white whale and this guy with a harpoon, and a book and a half of Temps Perdu in French if you please, in which language it is considerably better than in its various lousy English translations, though I say this without having read any of them. But speaking of the French…we were, weren’t we? the novel I’ve never been able to finish is Madame Bovary, ever. Anna Karenina makes a hell of a lot more sense to me, I read it every five years or so. (That ends Barry, since you ask, with Anna’s suicide; you may have seen the ballet?) At the moment I am finishing Penelope Fitzgerald’s At Freddie’s, which I commend to the attention f all who are interested in the theatah, dahlings (very funny) and re-reading Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which is very funny indeed.
Comment by Martha Ullman West — July 29, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
[...] the past few weeks we’ve talked about movies and we’ve talked about books, specifically books we were embarrassed to admit that we hadn’t read and then a little later movies that moved us to the max. Reading David Barnett’s book blog in [...]
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