December 02, 2007
Top Twenty Books Nobody Reads
Some of the readers here may know that I'm in the middle of writing The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, the latest in the series by Regnery. (If you have any suggestions, warnings, requests, heads-ups, by all means send them along; part of the appeal of such books is their debunking of commonly knowledge that happens not to be true. I have a very nice "adjustment" of our view of the great but irascible Galileo, written by an admirer of his named Einstein. Also a nice refutation of the "fact" that the Christians hijacked an old pagan holiday for Christmas; you see what I mean.)
In any case, the project has plunged me back into books I haven't read in a long time, and that's been really refreshing. It has occurred to me that old books have their own sort of stock market. For several centuries, stock in John Donne was about a penny a poem, then Coleridge bought a little, and T. S. (Kingmaker) Eliot bought a lot, and Donne surged to the heights of the Poetry 500 list, though in recent years he's begun to fade a bit. Byron stock was untouchable throughout the nineteenth century, particularly in Deutschland, but now he's a good buy and ready for some reevaluation.
So that has set me to wondering if I could come up with a top 20 list of great underrated or underread books. The problem these days would be in limiting them to 20. My criterion is not greatness simply, or oblivion, but the degree to which a book has been neglected and doesn't deserve to be. Here's the list:
20. Plutarch, Lives. The old educational staple; even newspapermen used to know a little about what Plutarch said about Pericles or Fabius Maximus. You can hardly find a clearer and quicker introduction into how the ancient Romans and Greeks lived and thought.
19. Samuel Johnson, Rasselas. Voltaire's Candide is as inferior to this book in thought and feeling as it is the more famous. Johnson is to Voltaire as the wise is to the wiseacre.
18. Joseph Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture. A neglected critique of modernity from an oddly lyrical Thomist angle. It's a book that can help change your life.
17. Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics. A series of witty meditations upon modern science, Marx, Freud, Darwin, you name it, from the point of view of a very Italian narrator who was there when it happened -- the Big Bang, the Last of the Dinosaurs, the condensation of the galaxies.
16. Francois Mauriac, Viper's Tangle. Flannery O'Connor in France.
15. Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. This novel falls between the cracks. It is too late for the zany semi-novelistic embracing of all things strange and wonderful -- it isn't Pickwick, and it isn't Nicholas Nickleby. It's too early for the brooding masterpieces, like Bleak House and Dombey and Son. Still, it is a great book with memorable characters: the drunken nurse Sairy Gamp, the "spiritual" hypocrite Mr. Pecksniff, the cheerful Calvinist with a bad conscience, Mark Tapley. And it's his only novel set partly in America.
14. The Book of Wisdom. Johannine theology, 150 years before the Gospel of John. It's a fascinating challenge to the Greek world: if you want Wisdom, we know not just where you need to go, but to whom.
13. Henryk Sienkiewicz, By Fire and Sword, The Deluge, Pan Michael. A trilogy of novels about the Polish defense of Europe in the late 1600's; the account of the miracle at Krasna Gorya (spelling?) is unforgettable.
12. Sigrid Undset, The Master of Hestviken. Every bit as powerful as the far better known Kristin Lavransdatter.
11. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. I'm not sure that this book is genuinely neglected, but it was so prescient, and it examines so shrewdly the worth of tradition and hierarchy, that I feel it deserves a place on the list. It is balm for all those who detest grand intellectual systems for reconstructing human relations.
10. Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered. It's the greatest literary work of the Catholic Reformation; it tells the story of the storming of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. Doesn't apologize for it, either.
9. Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book. The masterpiece of twelve dramatic monologues by the man who perfected the genre.
8. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso. A mad Italian romp across the continents -- knights in wild search of fancy helmets, beautiful maidens from China, glory in battle, Hector's armor, flying horses, and whatnot. Once upon a time, like Tasso, read by everybody. Particularly by Cervantes; without Ariosto, there's no Don Quixote.
7. John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice. Actually, any of four or five works by Ruskin could qualify here. He can veer into sentimentality, but there was no Victorian who knew better the playfulness of the Gothic, and none who saw more clearly what was lost, if much was gained, by the Industrial Revolution.
6. The Quest of the Holy Grail. Not the account in Malory, but one of his sources, written in Old French by a Cistercian monk. A great tale told superbly, and with profound theological insights into sin and repentance, and the mysteries of what eye hath not seen, nor tongue uttered.
5. Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale. If you want the single most stunning final scene in the history of theater -- and a coup de theatre unlike any other -- this play delivers it. If you have a heart, be ready to feel it wrung. Similar to the far better known Tempest, but in some ways superior to it, and more ambitious.
4. The United States Constitution. No comment.
3. Pearl. This poem, the greatest in English for sheer technical virtuosity, is also a moving narrative meditation on death and bereavement, and hope in the Lamb. Read it in the original if you can work through the crazy Midlands dialect; otherwise the Marie Borroff translation is the one to get.
2. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot. This novel seems to have become the forgotten one of the Great Five (Brothers K, Crime and Punishment, Notes, Devils). That's too bad; it can hold its own with the greatest works of just about anybody not named Dostoyevsky.
1. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene. C. S. Lewis: "I never met a man who said he used to like The Faerie Queene." It's the longest poem in English (26,000 lines), possibly the greatest (Paradise Lost and The Canterbury Tales are the only competitors), and by no means an easy read for us nowadays. Hawthorne used to read it to his daughters by the fireside, but that was back in the day when people enjoyed poetry. The poem is about -- what is it not about? Love, sex, the body, the soul, the nation, the Christian faith, matter and spirit, justice, courtesy, time and eternity. It has the greatest ending of any poem I have ever read -- almost an ending fit for all poetry, the end of ends.
Naturally, I've indulged some idiosyncrasies here. Do you have any other candidates?
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Who wrote/translated number 6?
Posted by: Sawyer | Dec 2, 2007 6:55:38 PM
When someone asks me about my favorite telling of the Arthurian legends, I immediately suggest they read The Complete Tales of Chretien de Troyes. My wife and I read them to each other. Much better than Mallory. I was reading Orlando Furioso but stopped last year. I need to pick it up again. It was lots of fun. I am half-way through volume I. The Idiot remains my favorite of the major works of Dostoevsky.
Great list.
Posted by: Neil Gussman | Dec 2, 2007 7:27:30 PM
I just got Master of Hestviken & am looking forward to it. Undset's Gunnar's Daughter was quite something, too, though nothing is likely to replace Kristin in my heart...
Posted by: Annie | Dec 2, 2007 7:37:23 PM
"You can hardly find a clearer and quicker introduction into how the ancient Romans and Greeks lived and thought."
Rather, how the aristocracy of the ancient Romans and Greeks lived and thought. One of the reasons that Plutarch's type of history has faded from popularity is because it gave one a view of only a tiny slice of classical civilization. I'd say those wanting to know how the ancient Greeks lived would be better off reading Xenophon's Oikonomikos.
Posted by: Christopher Culver | Dec 2, 2007 7:40:51 PM
For some reason I've thinking a lot lately over the last few weeks about what books to read over the several (God willing) decades I have left, and I had a number of these books on my list already, but there were some I had never heard of before. Thanks for the help.
I actually read The Idiot in high school AP English, although I have to confess it didn't make that much of an impression on me and that the main things I remember were Myshkin's occasional anti-Catholic diatribes (and the related scene in which a character proves her essential shallowness by marrying a - gasp! - Polish nobleman). One scene I do remember vividly in a good way, however, is the one in which each character reveals the worst thing he has ever done.
Posted by: James Kabala | Dec 2, 2007 7:47:05 PM
Thanks for mentioning Orlando Furioso! I read part of it during a Comp. Lit. course I had to take at Berkeley. I loved it and I was tickled by every scene. It was one of those inane "We-have-to-teach-freshmen-how-to-write-an-essay" kind of courses, but our prof (a woman) was studying Italian comedy of the period. We did some forays into the Commedia dell'Arte genre as well. Quite memorable.
Posted by: Clifford Simon | Dec 2, 2007 9:19:24 PM
I'm not sure I have any genuine candidates, but I loved Calvino's "Invisible Cities" and found, "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" to be delightfully frustrating!
The one I would nominate as a potential candidate for the list is Irina Ratushinskaya's "Grey is the Colour of Hope".
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Dec 3, 2007 12:29:30 AM
I'm nearly forty, and have for the first time read "Histories" by Herodotus. It was never on any of my high school or college reading lists, and I only remember reading about the book one time, and that in passing, in a text book for a highs school literature class. Surely this is an undervalued book. This book is worth 10 bucks even if only for the conversation between Xerxes and his advisor about death inescapable.
I suppose another undervalued book might be Steinbeck's "In Dubiuos Battle" Many people read "Cannery Row" and "Grapesof Wrath", and. it seems to think they've done Steinbeck.
Posted by: Matt Karnes | Dec 3, 2007 12:36:46 AM
In the Classical section, I nominate by Thucidides. It seems like it has all the problems of politics and international relations that the world has ever known stuck between those pages, with the fundamentals of historical method, the essentials of real-world strategy, and loads of positive and negative moral exemplars thrown in for free. I've got a fantastic edition called The Landmark Thudicides edited by Robert B. Strassler, which is particularly useful for the invaluable maps. I got the book as an unexpected gift from my grandfather, but I only happened to read it because I took a Greek History elective in college.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 3, 2007 1:07:19 AM
Let me add, Dr. Esolen, that I love the idea of lists of undervalued works. It's a wonderful way to get one thinking about what one ought to be reading.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 3, 2007 1:11:02 AM
Sorry. I nominate History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. I'm sure the rest of his works are worth reading as well, though I've been told they're a little hard to get your hands on...:-)
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 3, 2007 1:14:41 AM
Ten, at least, though in no order:
1. Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard. I'm given to understand that this was a powerhouse somewhat before my time, but as it stands I've so far been unable to find a single peer who's heard of the thing, much less read it. This is a shame.
2. Alexander Pope, The Dunciad. The Rape of the Lock has reached saturation. Even "Windsor Forest" and the Essays on Man and Criticism come up with tolerable frequency. Why should the most brilliant and elaborate of all his productions (however collaborative parts of it may have been) be doomed merely to be alluded to?
3. The works (any works) of Sir Thomas Browne. That they're "difficult" is no excuse.
4. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies. Maybe I'm overvaluing this one because I found it so delightful, or because the character of Miss de Pizan is so intriguing. I don't know. All I do know is that I haven't met a Feminist yet (in the university student/faculty sense) who wouldn't be improved as a person by reading it.
5. Christopher Smart's poetry; specifically Jubilate Agno and A Song to David. Given the vortex of form-based curiosity created by such popular poets as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, Smart's general absence is irritating, if not yet criminal.
6. Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer. The Monk and The Mysteries of Udolpho still get bandied about with relative frequency (even The Castle of Otranto persists), but Melmoth seems to have nowhere to lay his head. The Faustian concept is as popular as ever, though, so why should this be so?
7. Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. I'm not going to put this on the level of the Decameron or the Heptameron or any other erons or iads or ions that it apes in so many baffling, creepy ways. It remains true, however, that Poland is arguably an important part of European history; Potocki is of enormous importance to Poland's literary world; The Manuscript is his masterpiece. I guess it's hard to get jazzed about Poland these days, but it should not be the case that librarians and booksellers ask me if I'm sure I don't mean The Wide Sargasso Sea (I am sure).
8. Lautreamont (Isidor Ducasse), Maldoror. Something of a paradox. The book is so miserable and blasphemous and weird that nobody should really read it, but its importance to various artistic movements that followed it is as profound as it is stupid.
9. Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World. The Oprah Effect has propelled Gabriel Garcia Marquez to the top of the Latin American heap, whether he deserves it or not (and I tend to think that he doesn't, especially), more or less drowning out earlier and frankly better material produced by the likes of Carpentier, Borges or Cortazar. Carpentier in particular, and this novel especially, are of extraordinary importance to the development of the continent's literary flavour.
10. Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard et Pecuchet. As much as I like Madame Bovary (which is in no danger of obscurity just yet), and as much as I'd like to see everyone reading Salammbo, it's the general lack of B&P that rankles. As a survey of the period's authoritative opinions on a variety of topics the book has great value, but its merit also extends into its darkly comic delivery and its lampooning of "experts" and the culture thereof.
I also would have said that there's room on that list for Chesterton, but I don't think he's actually being neglected anymore to the degree that he once was. Still further I had hoped to include a plug for The Heliand, but I don't know if it's actually really neglected at all. It just seems like the sort of thing that would be.
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 3, 2007 2:56:46 AM
In my own line of work, there are a number of books from which everybody quotes but which few have read from cover to cover, and which fewer still have understood.
At the top of the list stands "On War" (Vom Krieg) by Karl von Clausewitz, the treatise which has governed the shape of war for the last two hundred years, yet the best most people can do is remember "War is policy continued by other means"--and even then they get it wrong by substituting politics for policy.
A close second would be "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, which likewise yields nifty soundbites ("To win without fighting is the acme of strategy") for those who do not really understand because they have not read.
Then there are a few modern classics which simply go unread altogether. At the top of the list ought to be Edward N. Luttwak's "Strategy", which condensed and systematized Clausewitz's principle for the modern era; and Martin van Creveld's 1991 book, "The Transformation of War", which predicted with uncanny accuracy the position in which we find ourselves today.
In the realm of politics, few people have read Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America", or Burke's "On the French Revolution", or most lamentable of all, for Americans, "The Federalist" by Hamilton, Madison and Jay.
In more recent times, who's actually read any work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Perhaps the most significant writer of the last half of the 20th century, and his books are glorified doorstops for most people.
Which puts me in free association mode, fuguing on Russian authors:
Tony is right that few people read "The Idiot". More of them read "Brothers Karamazov", but not many really understand it, and most come away with nothing more than a dim memory of the Story of the Grand Inquisitor". "Crime and Punishment", for that matter, always garners a sage nod when mentioned at parties, but you know everyone is saying, "I've really got to read that some day"). Turning to the other great Russian novelist, how many people have actually gone through War and Peace cover to cover, including the historical digressions? I thought so. And while more people actually do read Anna Karenina, how many come off feeling sorry for Anna, instead of wondering, "What does she see in a jerk like Vronsky?"
Pushkin is the Russian author who is least read in this country, more's the pity, but he is a poet, and his works (so my wife and daughter tell me) can only really be appreciated in the original.
And then there is Pasternak's "Dr. Zhivago"--everyone's seen the movie, few even know there was a novel. The movie was actually pretty good (and would have been better without Julie Christie), but the book is sublime, and there is no way the poems, in many way the heart of the book (even if mostly contained in an appendix) could ever be put on film.
This is a fun game, which could go on forever, but in a way it really can be depressing.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 3, 2007 5:10:02 AM
I want to LOUDLY second Chretien de Troyes, particularly Erec and Enide. This is wild, vivid writing. Really, though, all of his Romances are amazing. I only discovered them last year, but they made a powerful impression.
And I would say that The Heliand IS neglected. Try to find a cheap copy (in America). That's a pretty good sign that it's not being widely studied.
I'd be reluctant to call anything by Shakespeare "underread", but certainly Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece don't attract as much attention as the sonnets.
Posted by: Tom | Dec 3, 2007 7:25:39 AM
>>A close second would be "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, which likewise yields nifty soundbites ("To win without fighting is the acme of strategy") for those who do not really understand because they have not read.<<
During my term as union local president--after we got our heads handed to us in a fact-finding--I used this as a Bible in negotiations. Between that and learning how to play Texas Holdem, everything went smoothly after that.
Posted by: Bobby Winters | Dec 3, 2007 7:26:10 AM
Just out of curiosity, what is your opinion of the Tolkien version of Pearl (or Orfeo, for that matter)?
Posted by: Tom | Dec 3, 2007 7:30:26 AM
Stuart,
Tolstoy, for me, is always tied to when I first read the two great works. I read the majority of Anna Karenina over three days while I was in bed with a serious case of bronchitis my freshman year in college. I have since re-read it. And both times my impression was not that Vronsky was a jerk (though Kitty was well shot of him!) but that he was a fool. I place Anna as the villain, not her poor deluded Vronsky.
War and Peace (word for word, plus notes in the Norton Critical edition!) I read as an "escape" during my final year at college while doing my clinical rotations. I remember less about it, not having re-read it yet. But I do remember the wonderful reading chair I had at the time, wedged into the corner of my bedroom. And I think I need to re-read it every time I put on a Dmitry Hvorostovsky CD.
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Dec 3, 2007 8:14:29 AM
Tony,
Thanks for the reading list. I would add:
Julius Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs
Two books a lot of folks talk about, but many fewer actually have read. The latter use to be very popular, but I doubt many read it any more. In a review, Mark Twain called it "The best [memoirs] of any general's since Caesar." Twain, of course, had some part (how much is disputed) in helping Grant write it, so a little bragging seems to have been taking place there, but it is still a great work.
Off topic a little, my daughter (8) made up a joke last night about Santa Claus. I joked that she might be able to find a job as a writer during the writer's strike. She then asked about it, and that led me to talk about how comedians don't write their own jokes and then how Presidents don't write their own speeches. That led to my pointing out the Lincoln didn't need a gag writer or a speech writer. And that led to the Gettysburg Address. She then asked what that was, and I told her. I then added that she would learn it in school, and that is when (tying back a little to the topic), a cold chill went down my back as I realized she probably wouldn't learn it in school. I then told her that I would teach it to her.
Posted by: GL | Dec 3, 2007 8:37:31 AM
I wonder, does anybody read Herbert any more? I rather think not, but they ought to.
Dr. Esolen, if not for your translation of Tasso, I would never have read Jerusalem Delivered. In fact, I just re-read it a few weeks ago. Thank you for taking on that important work.
Posted by: Kevin | Dec 3, 2007 9:08:05 AM
I'm pleased to see Plutarch's Lives heading the list. He is a "dessert island" author. If I could take with me but one of the ancients for companionship, edification, and entertainment he would be Plutarch of Chaeronea.
Pity there isn't space to include, along with the Lives, his essays, commonly called "Moralia."
His writings on friendship are sore needed in contemporary America.
In his "How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend" Plutarch argues that we need friends not merely for companionship, but as truth-tellers. Indeed, for Plutarch, a friend laboring to profit you, rather than please you, acts as does God, who gives us daily blessings whether we be mindful of them or not.
His observations, in the Lives, regarding how the great men of history handles (or mishandled ) money stands as a reprove to modern materialism. And he directs us to God as the source of all bounty [again from "How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend"] writing: "I am varily persuaded the Gods confer several benefits upon us which we are not sensible of, upon no other motive in the world than the mere pleasure and satisfaction they take in acts of kindness and beneficence."
A pagan, who, as far as we can tell never heard of Christ, Plutarch in one sentence in his essay "On Brotherly Love" summed up Chistian moral teaching: "The body, that is so intimately united to the soul, if the soul suspend a careful influence from it, will not be forward to assist it in its operations; it may rather spoil and cross them. "
* * *
If I could add one author that every educated man should, but likely doesn't know, he would be the Roman architect Vitruvius. Not necessarily all (his advice of how to select the best sand for mortar is of interest only to historians and those in the building trades) but especially Book 3 and Book 4. We all know there is something horridly wrong with most of the architecture of the last 50 years, but most laymen can't tell you what is it. Read Vitruvius and you'll understand that modern architecture is ugly not because it fails to copy beautiful architecture of the past (were that the case there were no room for creativity and architecture would cease to be an art and become merely the applied science of copying). Modern buildings are ugly because they are untrue. Truthful architecture Vitruvius teaches (as did Ruskin and he is a "must" for the list as another writer who understood the "moral" aspect of design) is architecture that orders the physical space in a manner that reflects the divine order of the univere.
Posted by: David Trumbull | Dec 3, 2007 9:11:36 AM
Excellent suggestions! Keep them coming, keep them coming. I need to make up a reading list for myself, too. Keep them coming.
For Quest: the Penguin translation by P. M. Matarasso. Excellent all around, with solid and sensible notes.
Honorable mentions (or, in some cases, "why didn't I think of that yesterday?"):
1. Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the River Drina. Worth fifty State Department papers on the Balkans.
2. Virgil, Georgics.
3. Newman, The Idea of a University.
4. Edward Banfield, The Unheavenly City. A great work of steely eyed sociology. My favorite chapter title of all time: "Looting for Fun and Profit."
5. The Cloud of Unknowing. Zen title, Christian mysticism, post-Scotus style.
6. Verga, I Malavoglia (The Medlar-Tree). Better than anything I've read of French realism.
7. Gogol, Taras Bulba.
8. Goncharov, Oblomov. A sweetly comic novel of the late 19th century. Refreshing, if you've read too much Turgenev.
9. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion. One of the two or three best books on art I've ever seen -- also useful for literary sorts.
10. Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). A classic -- read in Europe, but I don't meet anyone who's read it in America.
Posted by: Tony Esolen | Dec 3, 2007 10:09:50 AM
I wish I could remember the particular survey that revealed this, but the dirty little secret among English professors is that a large number of them have never read Ulysses.
Posted by: RLS | Dec 3, 2007 10:38:15 AM
I was about to suggest Manzoni myself. I discovered it last year. Wonderful.
I think Erasmus needs to be on this list. I've only read one or two of his Colloquia, but I know his Praise of Folly is definitely worthwhile.
Posted by: Kevin Jones | Dec 3, 2007 11:09:03 AM
As a Protestant, I would add a couple of books from our Apocrypha (my Catholic and Orthodox brothers' canon) which very few Protestant's read: Judith and First Maccabees. (You may note a martial bent to my readings.) This is the first fall in four years when I did not read the latter, along with excerpts of inter-testament history from Josephus in my pre-Advent and Advent readings.
Posted by: GL | Dec 3, 2007 11:18:45 AM
Richard Weaver's "Ideas Have Consequences": lots of folks quote the title, but not as many seem to have actually read it.
Posted by: Rob G | Dec 3, 2007 11:25:10 AM
I was anticipating that I would score 20/20, but I only scored 18/20, since I had read 2 of these.
Posted by: GUNNY HARTMAN | Dec 3, 2007 11:42:02 AM
I would add the epic poem Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo to your list. It was written before Orlando Furioso and ended abruptly with Boiardo's death.
Ariosto picked up all the disparate plot threads and continued telling the story for an additional 28 years to please the patrons of both poems: the noble house of Este.
Today Orlando Innamorato has finally been fully translated into English from the original Italian. Charles Stanley Ross is the translator and it is available from Parlor Press. Previous editions were abridged and the third book by Boiardo had not been included. Be sure to get the Parlor Press edition.
Many of the characters and events mentioned in passing in Orlando Furioso are based on its predecessor Orlando Innamorato.
Together both poems comprise an amazing tapestry of action/adventure scenes of chivalry. Think of it as a medieval soap opera with multiple plot threads going on simultaneously and just when you get to a climax, you are left hanging and taken to another storyline. When we last left Rinaldo he was...
It is great stuff and these poems served to inspire not only Cervantes, but Shakespeare as well. Shakespeare stole liberally from Ariosto. In Much Ado about Nothing there is a scene lifted from the fifth canto in Orlando Furioso. Shakespeare used Hero/Margaret and Claudio/Don John in a similar structure to Ariosto's Ginevra/Dalinda and Polinesso/Ariodante.
The only thing I would advise new readers to these classic poems is to skip or skim the homages to the Este family that read like Biblical begats. Those lengthy passages were included to flatter their patrons, but have no real bearing on the overall story.
Linda McCabe
Posted by: L.C. McCabe | Dec 3, 2007 11:47:44 AM
The old T-shirt was right: so many books, so little time!
Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is an excellent, albeit flawed, science fiction novel with Christian themes. (A sequel I have not read is apparently awful, and Miller's own life ended in a way that makes complicated the novel's conclusion.)
Nick Milne: Actually, many feminists have adopted Christine de Pizan as one of them (inaccurately, I assume).
Posted by: James Kabala | Dec 3, 2007 11:57:03 AM
any recommendation as to a translation/edition of Plutarch's Lives?
Posted by: J. Caudell | Dec 3, 2007 12:12:32 PM
I'd suggest Suicide of the West by James Burnham as a book that does not have nearly the audience it should have. Burnham's observations about the state of the Western mindset, although he was writing at a time when Communism was the greatest threat, are still very much on target today. This is something he wrote in 1964:
"The most important practical consequence of the guilt encysted in the liberal ideology and psyche is this: that the liberal, and the group, nation or civilization infected by liberal doctrine and values, are morally disarmed before those whom the liberal regards as less well off than himself."
I do believe we are still struggling with this very problem today, forty-three years later.
Posted by: Will | Dec 3, 2007 12:19:28 PM
Will, I think Burnham is the author of one of my favorite quotes: "Peace without strength is the peace of the graveyard."
Posted by: Rob G | Dec 3, 2007 12:27:11 PM
A Canticle for Leibowitz was good (one of the few here I can honestly comment upon...) -- but based on the first however many pages I read before dropping it, I agree that the sequel is probably not worth your time.
My favorite obscure author is Charles Williams. All Hallows' Eve, Descent into Hell, The Place of the Lion... any takers? :-)
(My personal favorite is probably actually The Greater Trumps, but at least the first two of the three listed above are likely more important works...)
Posted by: Firinnteine | Dec 3, 2007 12:33:14 PM
When I read the remark on the literary stock market, I recalled having seen it somewhere before. After grabbing a few college texts off the shelf, I found a similar comment in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. I don't know whether that book counts as a great neglected work or not, but, now that it's been recalled to mind, I can say it's certainly worth reading.
Additionally, thanks to everyone who has helped remind me that just when I thought I was beginning to be well-read, I'm really not.
Posted by: V-Dawg | Dec 3, 2007 12:36:35 PM
Truthful architecture Vitruvius teaches (as did Ruskin and he is a "must" for the list as another writer who understood the "moral" aspect of design) is architecture that orders the physical space in a manner that reflects the divine order of the univere.
Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World takes up the issue of moral design with tremendous effectiveness and aplomb. It used to be required reading, or so my father tells me. Nowadays? The mania over copyright law and its enforcement is wholly uncongenial to the work, though the rising "open source" movement could learn a thing or two from Papanek, perhaps.
T.H. White's The Once and Future King has more or less vanished from the public reading radar, and is rarely (if ever) taught.
Whatever happened to Anthony Trollope?
E.F. Schumacher wrote some wonderful things. Most remember him as that "small is beautiful guy," if they remember him at all. Has A Guide for the Perplexed had a new edition in the last ten years? The last twenty?
I have a soft spot for C.S. Forester (who wrote substantially more than just Hornblower), so I'd like to see The African Queen or Brown on Resolution be more popular than they are.
Thomas B. Costain's histories of the English monarchy are spectacular stuff (particularly the Plantagenets sequence). Most don't even know the man's name anymore. The same goes for pretty much everything Will Durant (and his wife) ever wrote.
And what of Eric Hoffer?
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 3, 2007 12:38:48 PM
Nick Milne: Actually, many feminists have adopted Christine de Pizan as one of them (inaccurately, I assume).
I'd be interested to see just what they've made of her. Also slightly worried, but interested.
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 3, 2007 12:41:58 PM
"Whatever happened to Anthony Trollope?"
I read Trollope for the first time this past summer. Great stuff. Ever hear of a book called "The Gentleman in Trollope" by someone called Letwin or Netwin? It always looked like an interesting read to me, but I never bit the bullet. Maybe after I read more Trollope, I shall.
Posted by: Rob G | Dec 3, 2007 12:49:28 PM
Here, here! for Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi...I've just started it, and its fantastic so far. As for the great works of European literature, you know Dr. E, that I have to mention the national Portuguese epic, the Lusiads, which for those who've never heard of it, is the grand retelling of Vasco De Gama's discovery of a sea route to India, complete with a pantheon of pagan gods serving its Christian vision.
I'm not sure how popular Xenophon's Anabasis is for classics majors but its a fun read for anyone interested in a true story of bravery and determination.
The other honorable mentions I'd offer is the poet Osip Mandelstam, a Russian who is wonderful even in translation, and the South African poet Roy Campbell.
His output is uneven, yet his early work especially yields plenty of magnificent poetry unlike anything that was being written at the time. I'd suggest his shorter lyrics in the collection Adamastor, and his translation of the mystic poems of St. John of the Cross.
Posted by: windmilltilter | Dec 3, 2007 1:02:32 PM
Dr. Esolen mentioned Mauriac in his original twenty. I'd agree, and would suggest that anyone who likes Mauriac and Bernanos ought to give Julien Green's "Each Man in His Darkness" a go.
Posted by: Rob G | Dec 3, 2007 1:08:46 PM
Spiritual books from which everyone quotes but no one has really read (Orthodox Edition):
1. The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2. Philiokalia
3. Lives of the Desert Fathers
4. John of Damascus, "On the Sacred Images" and
5. Theodore Studites, "On the Holy Icons"
6. The Pedalion ("Rudder")
7. John Chrysostom, "On the Priesthood"
8. Basil the Great, "On the Holy Spirit"
9. Maximos the Confessor, "Orthodox Catechism"
10. Nicholas Kabasilas, "Commentary on the Divine Liturgy"
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 3, 2007 1:38:57 PM
>>>Thomas B. Costain's histories of the English monarchy are spectacular stuff (particularly the Plantagenets sequence). Most don't even know the man's name anymore. <<<
Got a paperback boxed set for Christmas when I was ten. I still have it.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 3, 2007 1:40:03 PM
I had a dozen, but they've all been listed. I guess I'll have to settle for seconding Firinnteine on Williams, Ethan Cordray on Thucydides generally, and GL on Caesar and Grant. And I'll add that although all of the books mentioned (or rather, all of those with which I am familiar) are magnificent, Spenser's The Faerie Queen still deserves the top spot. Good call, Dr. Esolen.
Posted by: NJI | Dec 3, 2007 1:40:29 PM
>>>Ethan Cordray on Thucydides generally<<<
Don't overlook Herotodus' "Histories", which are not only surprisingly modern in their outlook, but a smashing good story as well.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 3, 2007 1:53:46 PM
>>>Gogol, Taras Bulba.<<<
Ripping Cossack adventure! By a guy who knew a few.
>>>Goncharov, Oblomov. A sweetly comic novel of the late 19th century. Refreshing, if you've read too much Turgenev.<<<
You'll never consider yourself slothful again.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 3, 2007 1:57:07 PM
I want to second The Leopard and add two others.
First, something by Christopher Dawson deserves to be on the list, perhaps Progress and Religion.
Second, The Richard Trilogy by Paul Horgan is a great piece of literature that deserves a wider readership.
Posted by: kbdsj | Dec 3, 2007 2:05:06 PM
I want to second Stuart's citation of The Federalist Papers, and recommend the paperback with introduction by Garry Wills. It is unsurpassed as a glimpse into the character and climate of US politics, as well as an example of what political propaganda has since degenerated to. With that, I strongly recommend The Killer Angels by Michael Sharra, a thin veneer of novelising over the drama of the Battle of Gettysburg.
One more of a more modern publication: Mary Stewart's The Merlin Trilogy. She humanizes the Arthurian legend in ways I've not seen in any other rendering.
Posted by: Franklin Evans | Dec 3, 2007 2:29:55 PM
Gah. That should have been "...of what political propaganda has since degenerated from." Sorry.
Posted by: Franklin Evans | Dec 3, 2007 2:31:36 PM
>>If I could add one author that every educated man should, but likely doesn't know, he would be the Roman architect Vitruvius.<<
David Trumbull's note here reminds me of Christopher Alexander's four-volume The Nature of Order which I recently started. He seems to be making the same point, though with a more elaborate metaphysical theory. It's definitely worth reading, and--unlike, I expect, Vitruvius--he provides plenty of photographs and sketches to illustrate his points.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 3, 2007 2:52:21 PM
>>Don't overlook Herotodus' "Histories", which are not only surprisingly modern in their outlook, but a smashing good story as well.<<
Certainly. One may forget the details of Athens' naval strategies after reading Thucydides, but I doubt anyone will forget Herodotus' account of how the Indians collect gold.
Teaser: it involves giant ants.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 3, 2007 3:10:23 PM
>>>Thomas B. Costain's histories of the English monarchy are spectacular stuff (particularly the Plantagenets sequence). Most don't even know the man's name anymore. <<<
Got a paperback boxed set for Christmas when I was ten. I still have it.
Wow, I read the Costain's History of the Plantagenets when I was about sixteen. Ten! You must have been a prodigy.
Posted by: Brian Schuettler | Dec 3, 2007 3:18:08 PM
Anything by Caryll Houselander, one of the most neglected Catholic spiritual writers. The Reed of God is one of her best.
For fiction, The Scent of Water, by Elizabeth Goudge. For poetic prose, and for a Christian way of dealing with suffering, especially mental suffering.
Posted by: Antonia | Dec 3, 2007 3:48:42 PM
I'm not very widely-read, though I would very much like to be!- just thought I'd second the recommendation of Walter M. Miller Jr's 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', which I thought was excellent.
Posted by: Luke Perera | Dec 3, 2007 4:23:14 PM
How about "The Declaration of Independence"? Is it still read by many? I read it to my wife recently (1st time for her, 3rd or 4th for me). She remarked, "Wow, they had real reasons for leaving England. That's neat to know."
Posted by: Josiah A. Roelfsema | Dec 3, 2007 4:24:24 PM
You literary folks may not be aware, but there are technical classics too. No nerd (or just anyone who wants to purify his mind) ought to die without reading these. Unsurprisingly, many are neglected, all the more because of their (reputed) nature. You may never realize how delightful, and how easy!, they really are.
My list of underrated technical classics:
(3) Silvanus P. Thompson (d. 1916), Calculus Made Easy. The so-called "higher" math comes in such an incomprehensible package in our schools, it's as if they just want a "weeder" to narrow the competition into engineering and medical school, in place of an instrument for actually teaching it. Especially Ch. I and II are recommended even if the rest is not to your interest.
(2) Aristotle, Organon. From back in the day when Philosophy was the discipline for the Everyman, dealing with the Everyday, as opposed to "expert" subjects and their associated cult! The master Philosopher gives us logic, grammar and more in a delightful little series that even a child* could read.
*Well, at least the Categories, Propositions, and Prior Analysics... only when I got to the Posterior Analytics is when it actually got thick enough to wear me down. But children did read and master this in the Trivium if I'm not mistaken. (Warning: the Oxford translation, while excellent in other ways, botches the logical statments in a puzzling manner now and then.)
And the number-one neglected technical work, by the farthest strech imaginable:
(1) Newton, Principia.
Not required, or even recommended, in ANY physics undergradutae or graduate program ANYWHERE! Oh, the shame. Are they afraid of his theism? Or is it just the general disdain of our intellectual history?
Posted by: Clifford Simon | Dec 3, 2007 4:42:16 PM
Josiah, I did read the entire Declaration in high school, as well as the Constitution (with the amended sections in italic or strike-out). They were in the back of all our history books.
Posted by: Clifford Simon | Dec 3, 2007 4:47:41 PM
Thomas Costain also wrote a good book called The Silver Chalice that was set during the Acts of the Apostles period. It was made into an movie starring a young Paul Newman that is said to be extremely bad, although I have never seen it myself. Candor requires me to mention that Bill Clinton once claimed it was one of his favorite books as a child, but don't let that deter you.
Henryk Sienkewicz's With Fire and Sword trilogy, which I have not read, has already been mentioned, but I wonder if anyone even still reads his more famous Quo Vadis? I liked it a great deal when I was younger. I also enjoyed Lloyd Douglas's The Robe, although in retrospect it was probably the weakest of the three from a literary point of view. I have seen both of the movies based on these books, and they are mediocre, but the books are good.
P.S. Our Lady's shrine in Poland is at Jasna Gora, although a Google search does turn up a place called Krasna Gora, now in Ukraine. I don't know which one had a miracle, but the former seems more likely. James Michener's Poland, by the way, although likely not on the same literary level as With Fire and Sword, is a good read.
Posted by: James Kabala | Dec 3, 2007 5:41:35 PM
One final note: Costain also wrote a book on Attilla the Hun that for some reason I did not like and never finished, but others may disagree.
Posted by: James Kabala | Dec 3, 2007 5:43:00 PM
>>Not required, or even recommended, in ANY physics undergradutae or graduate program ANYWHERE! Oh, the shame. Are they afraid of his theism? Or is it just the general disdain of our intellectual history?
<<
I remember trying to read it when I was an undergrad. The math and physics are hard and the notation is different. I've since read extracts of it in David Bressoud's second-year calculus book. I would say that we are interested in results and there are quicker ways to get to those results. While there is great value to seeing the workings of a great mind, it's hard to do that and cover the syllabus.
Posted by: Bobby Winters | Dec 3, 2007 6:13:49 PM
"In more recent times, who's actually read any work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Perhaps the most significant writer of the last half of the 20th century, and his books are glorified doorstops for most people."
I've read virtually every word he's ever written – and the magnificent Dr. Zhivago (and "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina") to boot – and most of that while still in high school.
Having not become a practicing Christian until my mid-twenties, the works of Solzhenitsyn, and Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" were undoubtedly the seminal books in shaping my outlook, instilling in me a an acute awareness and absolute abhorrence of the totalitarian mentality in any guise, whether from the left or the right, whether from the elitist oligarchy or the populist mobocracy.
For a most under-rated or neglected book, how about almost anything by Joseph Conrad? I read "Nigger of the Narcissus" in 12th grade and was absolutely stupefied at the sheer magnificence of the prose.
I would suggest that "underrated" or "meglected" needs to be defined more rigorously here. Tony originally suggested the "top 20"; it seems now that folks are simply listing obscure works that are personal favorities, regardless of whether they even remotely approach a "top 20" status or not. (Which is not to say that all the suggestions here are anything other than fascinating -- I've never heard of many of the items brought up here!)
Clifford rightly mentions technical works; I could likewise mention some historical ones. The problem is that such works tend to date in content in ways that fiction does not. They may still remain of interest or value, but for reasons of their historical influence rather than their content per se. E.g., I've read Galileo's "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems" and "Discourse on Two New Sciences", Boyle's "Sceptical Chymist", etc., but one cannot recommend them as texts for understanding modern science.
Another problem is the suggestion of works which one "likes" in the sense of "one agrees with [them]." Clifford rightly brings up Aristotle's works on logic; how many here besides me have read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" or "Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science," both absolutely indispensible classics of philosophy? Or Descartes' "Discourse on Method," Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," or Leibniz's "Monadology"? Or (to throw a real bomshell in here) Darwin's "Origins of Species"?
Posted by: James A. Altena | Dec 3, 2007 6:18:29 PM
"... how many here besides me have read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" or "Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science," both absolutely indispensible classics of philosophy? Or Descartes' "Discourse on Method," Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," or Leibniz's "Monadology"? Or (to throw a real bomshell in here) Darwin's "Origins of Species"?"
Well, don't expect me to raise MY hand! (Although I did struggle to get through Kant and Hume in college). If tangents are to be pursued, then I like the one raised by Stuart Koehl (neglected classics of Eastern Orthodoxy). I'd enjoy seeing similar lists for Roman Catholicism and classical Protestantism.
Posted by: Bill R | Dec 3, 2007 6:28:52 PM
"Don't overlook Herotodus' "Histories", which are not only surprisingly modern in their outlook, but a smashing good story as well."
Stuart, while I agree that Herodotus' Histories is an excellent story and probably a good way to introduce people to history as fun, I would still recommend Thucydides for the list based on his quality as a historian. It may be a matter of personal preference, but I believe his approach to writing history is better as far as the actual discipline of history goes. Hence my recommendation that he be added to the list of "great" underrated/underread books.
I think I'm going to have to back James Altena up in the request for a more rigorous definition - are we talking good works generally, or good in the sense that they best fulfill their intended purpose? In the one sense, Herodotus might be legitimately part of the list; in the other, Thucydides has a much stronger claim.
Oh, and James... I have (although I have to admit that Darwin cost me some effort). Philosophical works are often read, or at least excerpted... the problem (and their qualification for this list) is that people find them difficult to read, so they don't actually read for the purpose of learning... they read (or rather skim) to get it out of the way Which, in effect, means they don't actually read them.
Posted by: NJI | Dec 3, 2007 6:58:27 PM
It's good to see that Costain is still fondly remembered by some, at least. The Silver Chalice is indeed very good, Bill Clinton and Paul Newman aside (not that there's anthing wrong with Paul Newman, it's just that the film was not great; Simon Magus, for example, is played by Jack Palance), and the Attila book, The Darkness and the Dawn is good as an adventurous potboiler sort of story, but loses some of its luster when compared to his more serious works.
That said, though, one novel in particular of his (and it's just fiction, not historical) stands on par with the rest of them. Son of a Hundred Kings details the strange and uncertain life of one Ludar Prentice, a boy who suddenly appears in Halifax one dark afternoon with no knowledge of his identity or destination. The only clue that exists is a message written on the boy's shirt stating his name, informing the reader that he is on his way to a small Ontario town to meet his father, and closing by enjoining those reading the shirt to show him kindness. The problem: the man he's supposed to meet has just taken his own life...
Definitely recommended for those looking for a diversion simultaneously light and weighty. The Tontine also fits this bill.
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 3, 2007 8:03:07 PM
That Costain novel sounds a bit inspired by the celebrated true story of Kaspar Hauser (which creeped me out to no end when I was a child).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser
Posted by: James Kabala | Dec 3, 2007 9:16:31 PM
The Idoit is my second favorite book. The first is the Brothers Karamozov. Both books had a profound effect on me, but the Idoit riped through my heart. While Myshkin is a positively good man, a Christ figure, facing a dark work, I could help but feel some sort of repulsion to him. I was actual ashamed of it until I realized that even Christ called sinners to repentance. Myshkin never does, he goes along with everything offering a repugnant form of resignation.Is this really love?
Posted by: Samuel Fugarino | Dec 3, 2007 9:28:14 PM
how many here besides me have read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" or "Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science,"
For the record I've read all three of Kant's Critiques, but I'm struggling to match up the second title with any work of Kant's. Is it an unusual translation of some title?
Posted by: Matthias | Dec 4, 2007 12:59:11 AM
Matthias,
The German title is "Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft," which I translated in a straightforward manner. In his revision of the English translation by Paul Carus, James Ellington used the fuller subtitle "Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that will be able to come forward as science" and accompanied it with an extensive interpretive essay in a volune titled "Philosophy of Material Nature," which is a more paraphrastic rendering of the German short title.
Posted by: James A. Altena | Dec 4, 2007 4:20:25 AM
How about Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"? It is kowtowed to all the time, but has anyone actually read it? Magnificently quotable and very funny too at times.
Posted by: Mark Forster | Dec 4, 2007 5:52:37 AM
>>>How about Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"? I<<<
I read it for pleasure in Gibbon's style, which was a strong influence on my own when I was younger. But as history, while his achievement was great in its day, it has largely been superseded, while his anti-Christian bias (to say nothing of his unwarranted denigration of the Byzantine Empire, are fatal flaws rendering it less than useful to those wanting to know about the subject; at the same time, it is so wonderfully written that the unwary or ignorant reader could easily find himself seduced into believing Gibbon's thesis in favor of pagan virtue over Christian decadence.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 4, 2007 5:58:12 AM
And here are a couple of other famous histories which no one has ever read these days:
Motley's Dutch Republic famous for its last line "As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets." It is a wonderfully dramatic account of the Dutch Protestant revolution against the wicked Catholic Spanish (with Philip II as the arch-villian).
And Carlyle's History of the French Revolution which requires a detailed prior knowledge of the French Revolution before you can make any sense of it at all.
Posted by: Mark Forster | Dec 4, 2007 6:03:56 AM
But as history, while his [Gibbon's] achievement was great in its day, it has largely been superseded, while his anti-Christian bias (to say nothing of his unwarranted denigration of the Byzantine Empire, are fatal flaws rendering it less than useful to those wanting to know about the subject
I would totally agree with Stuart Koehl's assessment but history has its own history, and Gibbon's work is essential to understanding the development of ideas about the very long period he covers.
Posted by: Mark Forster | Dec 4, 2007 6:11:50 AM
>>>And here are a couple of other famous histories which no one has ever read these days:<<<
Phillipe Braudel's "The Mediterranean"
Johan Huizinga's "The Autumn of the Middle Ages"
Ronald Syme, "The Roman Revolution"
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 4, 2007 6:19:22 AM
Suggested follow-up: what are the ten WORST books which EVERYBODY reads...? (That is, which are on many syllabi and have become part of common "highbrow" culture.)
Posted by: Joe Long | Dec 4, 2007 8:52:45 AM
James, thanks. It was the "modern" that threw me. Yes, I've read it. Thanks for bringing back the memories.
Posted by: Matthias | Dec 4, 2007 9:38:42 AM
>>>Suggested follow-up: what are the ten WORST books which EVERYBODY reads...? (That is, which are on many syllabi and have become part of common "highbrow" culture.)
James Joyce, "Ulysses" (Nobody actually reads this, because it is unreadable; nonetheless widely considered the greatest novel of the 20th century)
D. H. Lawrence, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (Manages to make pornography untitilating)
Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita" (Nabokov wrote many great things; this isn't one of them)
Norman Mailer, "The Naked and the Dead" (Most overrated war novel of all time)
Alice Walker, "The Color Purple" (same color as Barney the Dinosaur, come to think of it)
Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring"
Jean Jacques Rousseau--almost anything
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 4, 2007 10:06:26 AM
Suggested follow-up: what are the ten WORST books which EVERYBODY reads...? (That is, which are on many syllabi and have become part of common "highbrow" culture.)
This is a good question, though its usefulness might be marred by regional considerations. Up here in the Frozen North, for example, students are expected to choke down Margaret Atwood from the cradle to the grave, more or less, however terrible she may be both aesthetically and morally. I don't imagine this particular problem exists in the United States, though I've heard that her Handmaid's Tale is becoming a popular choice for undergraduates.
The novel is poorly-written drivel that's about as pernicious morally as a book can be without becoming parodically monstrous (like Lautreamont's Maldoror, mentioned above). Contains all the ingredients for the perfect "raises issues, really makes you think" book; ruthless oppression of women, squelching of free inquiry, patriarchal Christian theocracy, etc. etc.
Thinking of other examples of terrible books that keep getting taught is more difficult. While work of real quality can generally be agreed upon by most, works that are held to be simply terrible carry with them a more likely possibility of emotional or visceral involvement. For my own part I think the persistance of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love is inexplicable and appalling, and that Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman could easily stand to be chucked. Such utterances carry with them the weight of heresy, though, so it would not be well for me to insist upon them.
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 4, 2007 10:18:14 AM
Windmill Tilter:
How are you doing! It's been a while since we've seen you here. I agree with you wholeheartedly about Camoens and The Lusiads. Everybody used to read it; Camoens was once considered a writer of the same stature as Cervantes, Tasso, and Ariosto, and just a notch below Milton. It should certainly have made my initial list, and it would have been about 10th or 11th on it....
Posted by: Tony Esolen | Dec 4, 2007 10:22:30 AM
Take heart! Some of us have read Quo Vadis, and the Silver Chalice, and Gulag, and War and Peace! I like the Robe, but don't think it qualifies as a great book - it's too flip and 20th-century in its idiom and social relationships.
I'd like to put in a good word for Silas Marner. Yes, I know everyone hated being made to read it in school, probably because it seems to be assigned at too young an age to appreciate it. Its tale of redemption by God's working through natural friendship and love, and among very ordinary and prosaic people, is too subtle for many until they are a little older. Marner was not included in my school's reading list, but I read it on my own, and loved it.
Posted by: Antonia | Dec 4, 2007 4:56:54 PM
At St. John's College, freshmen read long selections from Herodotus, Thuycididies, and Plutarch. They also read large parts of the Organon of Aristotle.
Juniors read Newton's Principia...(they told us we would have to know calculus but couldn't waste class time on mechanics, get a book called Teach yourself Calculus if you needed it...). Juniors also read Kant, and most of the other philosophical works mentioned by the poster who mentioned Kant.
Sophomores when I was there, freshman now, read Darwin in lab (ie science class.)
Seniors read the Constitution and the Federalist papers, and a lot of Supreme court decisions too.
Just thought I would put in a plug for my alma mater. (mata? why? mother is mater, right?)
Back to work
Susan Peterson
Posted by: Susan Peterson | Dec 4, 2007 5:09:22 PM
Susan,
Many, many years ago, I strongly considered attending St. John's. Events in the life of my family necessitated my staying closer to home, but I have no doubt that I missed a wonderful opportunity.
Posted by: GL | Dec 4, 2007 5:13:35 PM
I find that I've read 8 of these, although some I've only read in part, and will get back to eventually.
20. Plutarch, Lives--I'm engaged in a project where I'm reading the books on the St. John's College reading list, and I've read Lycurgus and Solon.
10. Torquato Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered.--Got this for Christmas one year. An enjoyable romance.
9. Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book.--A complex portrait of a crime. Some passages are notable for Browning's heavy accentual, almost Anglo-Saxon rhythms marked by heavy alliteration.
8. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso.--Read only in part. As I recall it was another enjoyable romance.
5. Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale.--In graduate school I took Shakespeare with Gary Taylor, one of the co-editors of the Oxford Shakespeare, and we read all of Shakespeare in 13 weeks. It's been a fair number of years since the class, so my memory of the play is pretty bad.
4. The United States Constitution.
2. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot.--I read it in high school, which was over 40 years ago. I was going through my rebellious period in a Catholic high school so Mishkin's anti-Catholicism appealed to me. I haven't read it since, and may read it again.
1. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene.--This is utterly amazing. Northrop Frye says that Spenser isn't musical, but when I was studying for the comprehensive exam I read parts of it while walking around DC, and could hear it being sung. The words sound a definite melody inside the head. I had a similar experience back in the 60s when reading Pound's translation of Cavalcanti. I could hear a soprano voice singing the poems. The entire book, all 1000 pages of it, is worth reading.
Posted by: Thomas Hart | Dec 4, 2007 8:36:10 PM
Till We Have Faces??!!
That no one has even mentioned it means it needs to be on the list.
Posted by: Matthew N. Petersen | Dec 4, 2007 8:37:33 PM
Anything by Alice Thomas Ellis, the British Flannery O'Connor.
Posted by: Mrs. B | Dec 4, 2007 10:29:10 PM
>>Till We Have Faces??!!
That no one has even mentioned it means it needs to be on the list.<<
Mr. Petersen, you have shamed me. You are entirely, excruciatingly correct.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 4, 2007 10:29:25 PM
Till We Have Faces -- oh yes, absolutely. I'll add The Great Divorce, too.
Posted by: Tony Esolen | Dec 5, 2007 7:25:32 PM
Would Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town be worth considering? They've been pretty good about making people read it up here (it's practically treason not to), but I can imagine that it might have vanished from other parts of the world. Such a vanishing would be tragic.
Additionally: the works of Saki.
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 5, 2007 9:57:10 PM
But I think The Great Divorce is fairly widely read, at least in Christian circles.
Posted by: Maclin Horton | Dec 6, 2007 10:21:54 AM
I second Grant's Memoirs(I have, in fact, read them and highly recommend them to anyone who wants to know what American Midwesterners are really like) and I would add the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Posted by: Christopher Johnson | Dec 6, 2007 2:33:11 PM
I wish I could spend about 80% less time glued to a computer and use the time for all these tantalizing reading assignments.
Posted by: Gina | Dec 6, 2007 2:53:05 PM
>>Would Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town be worth considering?<<
I'm afraid so, seeing as I've never heard of it before.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 6, 2007 5:58:45 PM
Keep in mind that Twain may have had a considerable hidden hand in the production of Grant's memoirs (which would go a long way toward explaining their status as one of the finest examples of that genre ever penned).
Posted by: James A. Altena | Dec 6, 2007 7:22:00 PM
>>>Keep in mind that Twain may have had a considerable hidden hand in the production of Grant's memoirs (which would go a long way toward explaining their status as one of the finest examples of that genre ever penned).<<<
Actually, when you compare Grant's "Military Memoirs" with his wartime dispatches, they are very similar in style. I believe he wrote most of them himself, despite his advancing throat cancer. Twain may have edited and arranged the materials, but the writing appears to be all Grant. Like Julius Caesar, Sam Grant affected the bluff, straightforward prose of soldier--which turned out to be the perfect style for the work he was writing, much better than the florid prose popular both in Caesar's and Grant's own times.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 6, 2007 7:58:41 PM
I'm afraid so, seeing as I've never heard of it before.
Well, I can't recommend it enough. It's like coming home to an old friend. Similar in tone to Chesterton or Saki or P.G. Wodehouse, if you're into that kind of thing (Leacock was friends with the first two, actually; writing an article on the obnoxious fad of trying to find out about the "real man" behind the "public image" of various famous personalities, he once informed his readers that, in private, Chesterton was secretly very thin).
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 6, 2007 8:13:53 PM
Nick Milne,
I've requested it via interlibrary loan. Apparently, my local public library doesn't keep any Stephen Leacock around, so around these parts it isn't just me who's neglecting them.
But how could I resist someone who would toss off that Chesterton quip? :-)
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Dec 8, 2007 7:49:23 PM
Metamorphoses by Ovid.
Posted by: Patrick Molloy | Dec 9, 2007 12:19:11 AM
Stuart,
I cannot claim to have read any military memoirs by generals from before the American Civil War other than Caesar's. Two questions: Was Twain correct in his assessment that Grant's was the best since Caesar's and are there others written in between those two which you would recommend?
Thanks,
GL
Posted by: GL | Dec 9, 2007 7:54:04 AM
>>>I cannot claim to have read any military memoirs by generals from before the American Civil War other than Caesar's. Two questions: Was Twain correct in his assessment that Grant's was the best since Caesar's and are there others written in between those two which you would recommend?<<<
Nobody of the modern era can match Grant's scope, insight, or prose. It is interesting that MacArthur never wrote his memoirs, and Patton and Rommel both died before they could. Montgomery's are tendentious in the extreme, Ikes are pedestrian at best. Of the Germans, theirs deal almost exclusively with war at the operational level, not that of a strategic commander. Almost all are partisan to some extent, being exercises in apologia pro bellum sua. But they are fascinating all the same. Guderian's give great insight into the development of German armored warfare doctrine, its early successes, and why it went wrong. Manstein's provide a view inside the mind of an operational genius. Mellanthin provides a staff officer's perspective of outstanding German commanders in action. On the American side, both Gavin and Taylor's works are excellent, but focus exclusively on the airborne forces--a very narrow sliver of the war.
In summation, then, between Caesar and today, no major military commander has written as compelling and excellent a military biography as Ulysses S. Grant--an American original.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Dec 9, 2007 8:55:58 AM
>>Till We Have Faces??!! That no one has even mentioned it means it needs to be on the list.
I'll second -- er, fourth that remark.
Posted by: DGP | Dec 9, 2007 10:20:49 AM
Ethan:
Excellent! I hope you find it congenial to your tastes. Feel free to e-mail me (nmilnewa -at- uwo -dot- ca) if you have any comments or reactions you feel like sharing.
Posted by: Nick Milne | Dec 9, 2007 3:30:46 PM
The Master of Hestviken is a much better story than Kristen. It's really a man's Kristen. Probably the best Catholic novel ever written. You can't finish it without being ennobled.
No one has mentioned Zoë Ouldenberg's great duology, The World Is Not Enough & The Cornerstone. Perhaps the most vivid novels ever written about the time of the Crusades. They're strong medicine at times--if you're a man, read it in bed next to your wife. ;-)
Posted by: Chris Ryland | Dec 9, 2007 4:40:54 PM
I just about fell on the floor when I saw that Plutarch was at the top of your list of books nobody reads...because we are doing something about that. Our free online homeschool curriculum project (with more than a couple of thousand subscribers on the Yahoo list) recommends Plutarch for every student of about ten and up. In fact, since 2002 we've also provided (somewhat informal) vocabulary and context notes on the same website, for the benefit of the students and their teaching parents who (most of them) have never read Plutarch either. http://www.amblesideonline.org/PlutarchSch.shtml It's a project close to my heart. Maybe we will raise up a new generation of people who at least have heard of Plutarch.
And just to note, our curriculum also includes The Once and Future King and Manzoni's The Betrothed, in our Year 7 and Year 8 respectively. Utter rebels, we are.
Posted by: Mama Squirrel | Dec 10, 2007 7:12:14 AM
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