M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

A Potpourri of Lit'ry Observations
by Richard H. Cracroft

Thanks for your lively conversation about and comments on the several book lists and the Readers' List of Most Influential Books. I've enjoyed them, well, most of them.

Several of you reminded me that Margaret Atwood is Canadian; I forgot. I hereby solve the problem by adopting her (vicariously)-we LDS do it all the time.

Several others sent in their tardy nominations for "Most Influential Books." Sorry, but there's no more room at the inn for your fascinating selections. One or two of you faulted me for 1) calling Walden a novel; and 2) for liking Walden-but I think it ought to be on any list; fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, sports; it is a wonderfully refreshing and spiritually uplifting book (if you read it under pressure return to it and be refreshed).

Some of you said you would like to see W. Somerset Maugham's personal list of favorite novels: Here it is:

W. Somerset Maugham's Ten Greatest Novels*

1. Tom Jones, Henry Fielding;

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen;

3. The Red and the Black, Stendhal;

4. Old Man Goriot, Honoré de Balzac;

5. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens;

6. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

7. Madam Bovary, Gustave Flaubert;

8. Moby Dick, Herman Melville;

9. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoi;

10. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

*from A Passion for Books, edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1999; you might be interested in an updated edition of the book Good Reading: A Guide for Serious Readers, 21st Edition, edited by J. Sherwood Weber [New American Library, 1980]).

I think it is a pretty good list; personally, I love each of the books he lists, and have taught most of them at one time or another--though I might order them a bit differently. What do you think? Certainly there's nothing definitive about his list. Make your own.

Lists abound: Here is a list, recently published by Orem, Utah Public Library:

Orem Library's Best

"Ten big, thick wonderful books as recommended by Anna Quindlen":

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell;

Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray [one of my all-time favorites]

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy

Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann [another of my all-time favorites]

Can You Forgive Her? Anthony Trollope [his Barchester novels are all wonderful!]

Sophie's Choice, William Styron

Underworld, Don DeLillo

Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

It is as good a list as any to begin a reading list for the rest of 2001. Though here is another interesting list:

The Ten Books One Would Save in a Fire (If One Could Save Only Ten)*

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoi

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

Middlemarch, George Eliot

Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

The Collected Plays of William Shakespeare

The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

*from Anna Quindlen, in A Passion for Books, edited by Rabinowitz and Kaplan, 1999, p. 173.

(Think how much we could read if we muted all of the t.v. commercials and read during the break.)

One of you asked about my reading habits: I have read for anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours every night for the past 50 years-it adds up to 6-8 books a month. Yes, during my first (and second) mission, as well. I have a list of forty or so (church) books I read during my mission-all sent to Austria and Switzerland by my mother, who also sent many books to my investigators and those I baptized; mother encouraged my reading-even when she knew I was doing it by flashlight at 1 a.m. (she silently replaced the batteries for me). One midnight, when I was sixteen or so, she asked me to read her a particular tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, when my bursts of laughter brought her to my room; she laughed so hard at the tale that she fell on her knees; then, having second thoughts, she said, "it's a classic, so it must be all right." And it was.

Whenever I wanted to get a chuckle out of her thereafter, I would simply mention that wonderful, bawdy old tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, and we would both break out in shared laughter.

Thirty Great World Novels (from Other Nations than the U.S. and Great Britain This month I'm (ouch!) sticking out my neck once again (see my audacious lists of British and American novels in my January and February "Classic Corner" columns in Meridian). Here, then, is another subjective and arbitrary list gleaned from others' lists and my own interests and reading over the last half-century. I have pared from the list two dozen novels that I think are very good; but I have kept in mind the charge by the Proctors: that these books should form a list from which readers might select books they may wish to read or purchase for their personal libraries.

I have made no attempt to list the best books from or to attempt to represent the literatures of every country. Of course I have omitted some great books. I present here, my hat in my hand, and with no claim to having been comprehensive, a modest list of selected novels which seem to me-and others--to be "uplifting, of good report, and praiseworthy," for a variety of (literary, cultural, and spiritual) reasons, and which endure as being among the best and the most intellectually and culturally influential novels in the West (the Occident) in the past three centuries.

These are some of those "core" books which, along with many on the lists of American and British novels-and those listed by readers in the March column--are part of the shared Great Conversation among educated people everywhere-touchstones of our literary culture. Let me know where you find egregious omissions-and you shall:

18th Century Continental Novels (and Earlier):

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote (1505-15). Spanish.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Voltaire. Candide (1759)

19th Century Continental Novels:

Balzac, Honoré de. Old Man Goriot (1834). France.

Dostoevski, Feodor. Crime and Punishment (1856). Russia.

--. The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

Dumas, Alexandre. The Count of Monte Cristo (1844). France.

--. The Three Musketeers (1844).

Flaubert, Gustav. Madame Bovary (1857). France.

Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831). France.

--. Les Misérables (1862). France.

Stendhal. The Red and the Black (1830). France.

Tolstoi, Leo. War and Peace (1866). Russia.

--. Anna Karenina (1877).

20th Century Continental Novels:

Camus, Albert. The Stranger (1946). France.

Kafka, Franz. The Trial (1937). Czechoslovakia.

Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon (1941). Hungary; England.

Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks (1901). Germany.

--. The Magic Mountain (1924).

Pasternak, Boris. Dr. Zhivago (1958). Russia.

Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. The Little Prince (1943). French.

Wiesel, Elie. Night (1960). Rumanian Jew, holocaust survivor; now U.S. citizen (often classified as U.S. author).

20th Century Latin-American Novels:

Borges, Jorge. Labyrinth (1962). Argentina.

Fuentes, Carlos. The Death of Antonio Cruz (1964). Mexico.

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1970). Colombia.

20th Century Far-Eastern Novels:

Tanizaki, Junichiro, The Makioka Sisters (1957). Japan.

Kawabata, Yasunari, Snow Country (1969). Japan.

20th Century African Novels:

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart (1958). Nigeria.

Paton, Alan. Cry, The Beloved Country (1948). South Africa.

20th Century Middle East, About:

Thomas Edward Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1935). England.

Next month: The Best Mormon Novels.

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