A new challenge: basic reading

[Charles]

In a recent blog post I bemoaned (not for the first time) the state of contemporary literature. I said that “Story telling is as old as the human race. Glimpses like this into the way it was once practiced fill me with contempt for most of what I see now being published. How many writers even know of these ancient roots, much less how to tap them? I suppose every generation of writers feels this way at times, and that the good stuff is all in the past where we have enough perspective to recognize it. I don’t care. I’m tired of trying to keep afloat in a sea of garbage.”

The original post is http://ocotilloarts.com/blog/?=2441

So. What are those stories which tap the ancient roots? Here is my list of some. There will be others.

James Joyce. Ulysses
Carlo Emilio Gadda. That Awful Mess On the Via Merulana
Arthur Conan Doyle. the Holmes canon
William Faulker. the body of work
William Blake. the body of work
Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises
Richard Brautigan. Trout Fishing In America
Charles Dickens. Bleak House
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment
Herman Melville. Moby Dick
Henry David Thoreau. Walden

Something, whatever it is, ties these works together. What is it?

If you have read or are reading more than two of these, friend me, either here or on http://www.facebook.com/Charles.Brownson

Anyone want to take up the challenge -- either to read or to answer the question?

[Doreen]

Charles, IMHO, what ties all of these works together is that they are all by male authors.

[Doreen]

However, Charles, I notice that you are reading Timothy Egan's biography of Edward Curtis. I have just started Egan's book about the great American dust bowl, "the Worst Hard Time" and am really liking it. Re: Edward Curtis, I highly recommend The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins.....a fascinating novel based on Curtis...which has some of his photos interspersed throughout the text.

[John]

I have read the Holmes canon (with the exception of His Last Bow, on my near-term TBR pile) and Bleak House (twice!) as well. I read Brautigan in high school (think: Jimmy Carter) at the urging of a friend who was a rabid fan; I recall nothing of the book now.
I am not a fan of novels generally; most of my reading is either non-fiction or mystery. I don't see "recent" fiction as "a sea of garbage" so much as stories to which I cannot relate.

[Joan]

I think the connecting factor is that all of these works address the problem of living a moral (or meaningful) life in an amoral world.

[Barbara]

Hmmm...that is a very interesting connection, Joan. Just based on the ones I've read -- Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Melville, Thoreau, Hemingway and Brautigan-- I think you're right.

[Charles]

Joan wrote: "I think the connecting factor is that all of these works address the problem of living a moral (or meaningful) life in an amoral world."

I'm glad I asked the question, because I hadn't thought of it in quite this way. Whether the world is amoral or not seems to me not the issue so much as trying to live in a right relationship to it. The original post concerned an "original condition of humankind" -- probably to go farther with that would lead into a very different discussion.

[Charles]

But there is another question which I've inadvertently raised. Wanda objects that there are no women on the list. I posed the problem to some others and got the same objection. Since it was personal list culled from my own significant books and was not intended to be thorough or representative this took me quite aback. People seemed to think I was saying that there were no women authors who exhibited these qualities. That would be quite wrong, and I was shocked.

There's worse. I thought I was being accused of being a closeted don who disdains all but Dead White Men. I was hurt. But this was a personal list, and I have to admit that personally there are very few books by women on my significant books shelf. In fact, none. In fact, as I look at all my shelves, outside the mystery genre I own very few books at all by women.

I strongly resist any explanation I can think of for this, including ones which are not simply critical of me.

Since this is a book discussion and not philosophy or sociology or politics, I wonder if this matter could be turned on its head. What are the books on your significant books shelf which address this question of how to live rightly?

[Barbara]

Great question, Charles. Doing a cursory look over my shelves just now, I spotted Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop as well as My Ántonia. I think I would definitely put these in the category of your definition. Tolstoy's novels and most of his other writing seems to be in the same line.

[Doreen]

Charles, I am sorry I was the first to respond to your very deep and searching question with the 'woman author' card. It was just that I noticed it at once, and didn't take the time to think through the question. I like your point of "living in a right relationship to the world", and the first author I thought of on my shelves was a woman, Flannery O'Connor. But Graham Greene dealt with this...and a contemporary, Richard Ford, asked this question constantly in his Frank Bascome novels, especially Independence Day. I'll go thru my journals of books read and try to come up with more.

[Charles]

This is becoming really interesting. My Antonia might have been on my shelf -- if I'd owned a copy. Greene's entertainments, as he called them, appeal to me in this way. I hadn't thought of Flannery O'Connor, but I do once you point her out. All old friends in a new light.

[Carol]

I gave a quick perusal of my shelves
I have Eudora Welty
Pearl S Buck
Anthony Trollpe

[Doreen]

Charles, I think Joseph Conrad fits into your category.....

[Charles]

Conrad definitely. Think of the uses that have been made of The Heart Of Darkness, Apocalypse Now not least of all. The Secret Agent.