A Passion for Books Read online

  I like also to roam around in the General Catalogue of the Oxford University Press, a publication that costs you nothing and is rich with peculiar treasures. There is nothing quite like these endless book titles and brief descriptions to produce in the reader a gentle, serene amazement at the quantity of extraordinary matters, from Acrocephaly and Acrocephalosyndactyly to the Zla-ba-Bsam-’grub, that have engaged the minds of our fellow human beings. Here we find Galen’s On Medical Experience, with this bit of useful information: “Since the original Greek text of this work was lost, except for two small fragments, this ninth-century Arabic translation is the earliest known complete version.” Who follows Galen? Why, no others than Gall, Alice and Crew, Fleming, whose Flat Tail is described as “The story of a beaver during the second and most interesting year of his life, told with imagination and accuracy.” What a brave and perennially new world this is that can contain cheek to cheek such creatures as Galen and Flat Tail!

  Books about people who lived lives fantastically different from my own I have found excellent for the bedside. I like to read about the Middle Ages; you may prefer Polynesia or even more alien climes, such as William Faulkner’s Southland. Books of popular science please me, but there are few writers today who have the liveliness and wit of Eddington, Jeans, and H. G. Wells. (Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us and Guy Murchie’s Song of the Sky are delightful exceptions.) Nonacademic books about words and language are first-rate for me, but this may be a narrow professional interest.

  As for novels, give me no profound Russians, no overlucid Frenchmen, no opaque Germans. Give me solid Englishmen of the nineteenth century or early twentieth—William De Morgan, Wilkie Collins, George Borrow, Charles Reade. (I omit Dickens and Thackeray as too obvious.) Above all give me Trollope, from whom I have received so much pleasure that I would willingly call him another St. Anthony; Trollope, who breaks through the time barrier and teleports the horizontal reader instantly to a divinely settled, comfortable, income-taxless vanished world. His half a hundred novels are good for five years of bedside reading. Of those who minister to the tired, night-welcoming mind, Trollope is king. He never fails to interest, but not too much; to soothe, but not too much. Trollope is the perfect novelist for the bedside.

  The New Lifetime Reading Plan

  BY CLIFTON FADIMAN AND JOHN S. MAJOR

  Clifton Fadiman’s The Lifetime Reading Plan was first published in 1960, with revised editions in 1978 and 1986. It was but one gem in a lustrous career promoting reading and the joy of the printed word. The New Lifetime Reading Plan, written with John S. Major, the bare list of which is presented here, was published by HarperCollins in 1997. What is so interesting about the entire enterprise is the assertion, made with Fadiman’s customary confidence born of many decades of immersionin literature, that even in an age in which books are published in avalanche-like numbers, only a few endure and deserve special attention. The list is enlightening and enjoyable, but the comments on each title by the authors are even more joyous to anyone who loves books.

  Anonymous, ca. 200 B.C.E. (Scribe Sin-Leqi-Unninni, ca. 700 B.C.E.), The Epic of Gilgamesh

  Homer, ca. 800 B.C.E., The Iliad

  Homer, ca. 800 B.C.E., The Odyssey

  Confucius, 551–479 B.C.E., The Analects

  Aeschylus, 525–456/5 B.C.E., The Oresteia

  Sophocles, 496–406 B.C.E., Oedipus Rex; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone

  Euripides, 484–406 B.C.E., Alcestis; Medea; Hippolytus; The TrojanWomen; Electra; The Bacchae

  Herodotus, ca. 484–425 B.C.E., The Histories

  Thucydides, ca. 470/460–ca. 400 B.C.E., The History of the PeloponnesianWar

  Sun-tzu, ca. 450–380 B.C.E., The Art of War

  Aristophanes, 448–388 B.C.E., Lysistrata; The Clouds; The Birds

  Plato, 428–348 B.C.E., Selected Works

  Aristotle, 384–322 B.C.E., Ethics; Politics; Poetics

  Mencius, ca. 400–320 B.C.E., The Book of Mencius

  Attributed to Valmiki, ca. 300 B.C.E., The Ramayana

  Attributed to Vyasa, ca. 200 B.C.E., The Mahabharata

  Anonymous, ca. 200 B.C.E., The Bhagavad Gita

  Ssu-ma Ch’ien, 145–86 B.C.E., Records of the Grand Historian

  Lucretius, ca. 100–ca. 50 B.C.E., Of the Nature of Things

  Virgil, 70–19 B.C.E., The Aeneid

  Marcus Aurelius, 121–180, Meditations

  Saint Augustine, 354–430, The Confessions

  Kalidasa, ca. 400, The Cloud Messenger and Sakuntala

  Revealed to Muhammad, completed 650, The Koran

  Hui-neng, 638–713, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch

  Firdausi, ca. 940–1020, Shah Nameh

  Sei Shonagon, ca. 965–1035, The Pillow-Book

  Lady Murasaki, ca. 976–1015, The Tale of Genji

  Omar Khayyám, 1048– ?, The Rubaiyat

  Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321, The Divine Comedy

  Luo Kuan-chung, ca. 1330–1400, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

  Geoffrey Chaucer, 1342–1400, The Canterbury Tales

  Anonymous, ca. 1500, The Thousand and One Nights

  Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469–1527, The Prince

  François Rabelais, 1483–1553, Gargantua and Pantagruel

  Attributed to Wu Ch’eng-en, 1500–1582, Journey to the West

  Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533–1592, Selected Essays

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 1547–1616, Don Quixote

  William Shakespeare, 1564–1616, Complete Works

  John Donne, 1573–1631, Selected Works

  Anonymous, published 1618, The Plum in the Golden Vase ( Chin P’ing Mei )

  Galileo Galilei, 1574–1642, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

  Thomas Hobbes, 1588–1679, Leviathan

  René Descartes, 1596–1650, Discourse on Method

  John Milton, 1608–1674, Paradise Lost; “Lycidas”; “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”; Sonnets; Areopagitica

  Molière, 1622–1673, Selected Plays

  Blaise Pascal, 1623–1662, Thoughts (Pensées )

  John Bunyan, 1628–1688, Pilgrim’s Progress

  John Locke, 1632–1704, Second Treatise of Government

  Matsuo Basho, 1644–1694, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

  Daniel Defoe, 1660–1731, Robinson Crusoe

  Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745, Gulliver’s Travels

  Voltaire, 1694–1778, Candide and other works

  David Hume, 1711–1776, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

  Henry Fielding, 1707–1754, Tom Jones

  Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in, 1715–1763, The Dream of the Red Chamber (also called The Story of the Stone)

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1778, Confessions

  Laurence Sterne, 1713–1768, Tristram Shandy

  James Boswell, 1740–1795, The Life of Samuel Johnson

  Thomas Jefferson and others, Basic Documents in American History, edited by Richard B. Morris

  Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist Papers, 1787, edited by Clinton Rossiter

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, Faust

  William Blake, 1757–1827, Selected Works

  William Wordsworth, 1770–1850, The Prelude ; Selected Shorter Poems; Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772–1834, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; “Christabel”; “Kubla Khan” ; Biographia Liter-aria;Writings on Shakespeare

  Jane Austen, 1775–1817, Pride and Prejudice; Emma

  Stendhal, 1783–1842, The Red and the Black

  Honoré de Balzac, 1799–1850, Père Goriot; Eugénie Grandet; Cousin Bette

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–1882, Selected Works

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804–1864, The Scarlet Letter; Selected Tales

  Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805–1859, Democracy in America

  John Stuart Mill, 1806–1873, On Liberty; The Subjection of Women

  Charles Darwin, 1809–1882
, The Voyage of the Beagle; The Originof Species

  Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, 1809–1852, Dead Souls

  Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849, Short Stories and Other Works

  William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811–1863, Vanity Fair

  Charles Dickens, 1812–1870, Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield;Great Expectations; Hard Times; Our Mutual Friend; The Old Curiosity Shop; Little Dorrit

  Anthony Trollope, 1815–1882, The Warden; The Last Chronicleof Barset; The Eustace Diamonds; The Way We Live Now; Autobiography

  The Brontë Sisters 79A. Charlotte Brontë, 1816–1855, Jane Eyre 79B. Emily Brontë, 1818–1848, Wuthering Heights

  Henry David Thoreau, 1817–1862, Walden; “ Civil Disobedience”

  Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, 1818–1883, Fathers and Sons

  Karl Marx, 1818–1883, and Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895, The Communist Manifesto

  Herman Melville, 1819–1891, Moby Dick; Bartleby the Scrivener

  George Eliot, 1819–1880, The Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch

  Walt Whitman, 1819–1892, Selected Poems; Democratic Vistas;Preface to the first issue of Leaves of Grass; A Backward Glance O’er Travelled Roads

  Gustave Flaubert, 1821–1880, Madame Bovary

  Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, 1821–1881, Crime and Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov

  Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1828–1906, War and Peace

  Henrick Ibsen, 1828–1906, Selected Plays

  Emily Dickinson, 1830–1886, Collected Poems

  Lewis Carroll, 1832–1898, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass

  Mark Twain, 1835–1910, Huckleberry Finn

  Henry Adams, 1838–1918, The Education of Henry Adams

  Thomas Hardy, 1840–1928, The Mayor of Casterbridge

  William James, 1842–1910, The Principles of Psychology; Pragmatism;four essays from The Meaning of Truth; The Varieties of Religious Experience

  Henry James, 1843–1916, The Ambassadors

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844–1900, Thus Spake Zarathustra;The Genealogy of Morals; Beyond Good and Evil; other works

  Sigmund Freud, 1856–1939, Selected Works, including The Interpretation of Dreams; Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; Civilization and Its Discontents

  George Bernard Shaw, 1856–1939, Selected Plays and Prefaces

  Joseph Conrad, 1857–1924, Nostromo

  Anton Chekhov, 1860–1904, Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; The

  herry Orchard; Selected Short Stories 102. Edith Wharton, 1862–1937, The Custom of the Country; The Age of Innocence; The House of Mirth

  William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939, Collected Poems; Collected Plays; Autobiography

  Natsume Soseki, 1867–1916, Kokoro

  Marcel Proust, 1871–1922, Remembrance of Things Past

  Robert Frost, 1874–1963, Collected Poems

  Thomas Mann, 1875–1955, The Magic Mountain

  E. M. Forster, 1879–1970, A Passage to India

  Lu Hsün, 1881–1936, Collected Short Stories

  James Joyce, 1882–1941, Ulysses

  Virginia Woolf, 1882–1941, Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; Orlando; The Waves

  Franz Kafka, 1883–1924, The Trial; The Castle; Selected Short Stories

  D. H. Lawrence, 1885–1930, Sons and Lovers; Women in Love

  Tanizaki Junichiro, 1886–1965, The Makioka Sisters

  Eugene O’Neill, 1888–1953, Mourning Becomes Electra; The Iceman Cometh; Long Day’s Journey into Night

  T. S. Eliot, 1888–1965, Collected Poems; Collected Plays

  Aldous Huxley, 1894–1963, Brave New World

  William Faulkner, 1897–1962, The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying

  Ernest Hemingway, 1899–1961, Short Stories

  Kawabata Yasunari, 1899–1972, Beauty and Sadness

  Jorge Luis Borges, 1899–1986, Labyrinths; Dreamtigers

  Vladimir Nabokov, 1899–1977, Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak, Memory

  George Orwell, 1903–1950, Animal Farm; 1984; Burmese Days

  R. K. Narayan, 1906– , The English Teacher; The Vendor of Sweets

  Samuel Beckett, 1906–1989, Waiting for Godot; Endgame; Krapp’s Last Tape

  W. H. Auden, 1907–1973, Collected Poems

  Albert Camus, 1913–1960, The Plague; The Stranger

  Saul Bellow, 1915– , The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog; Humboldt’s Gift

  Aleksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918– , The First Circle; Cancer Ward

  Thomas Kuhn, 1922–1996, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

  Mishima Yukio, 1925–1970, Confessions of a Mask; The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

  Gabriel García Márquéz, 1928– , One Hundred Years of Solitude

  Chinua Achebe, 1930– , Things Fall Apart

  An ordinary man can . . . surround himself with two thousand books . . . and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.

  —AUGUSTINE BIRRELL

  Comfort Found in Good Old Books

  BY GEORGE HAMLIN FITCH

  For more than thirty years, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, George Hamlin Fitch wrote a weekly column for the Sunday book page of the San Francisco Chronicle. In this extraordinarily touching piece—first published in the Chronicle and later collected in Fitch’s 1911 book, Comfort Found in Good Old Books—he writes of the comfort he found in reading after the death of his son and of why it is so important to have favorite books: “So may you come into the true Kingdom of Culture . . . and may you be armed against the worst blows that fate can deal you in this world.”

  Nothing Soothes Grief Like Sterling Old Books— How the Sudden Death of an Only Son Proved the Value of the Reading Habit

  For the thirty years that I have spoken weekly to readers of the Chronicle through its book review columns, it has been my constant aim to preach the doctrine of the importance of cultivating the habit of reading good books, as the chief resource in time of trouble and sickness. This doctrine I enforced, because for many years reading has been my principal recreation, and I have proved its usefulness in broadening one’s view of life and in storing up material from the world’s greatest writers which can be recalled at will. But it never occurred to me that this habit would finally come to mean the only thing that makes life worth living. When one passes the age of forty he begins to build a certain scheme for the years to come. That scheme may involve many things—domestic life, money-getting, public office, charity, education. With me it included mainly literary work, in which I was deeply interested, and close companionship with an only son, a boy of such lovable personal qualities that he had endeared himself to me from his early childhood. My relations with my son, Harold, were not those of the stern parent and the timid son, as Edmond Gosse has depicted with so much unconscious pathos in his “Father and Son.” Rather it was the relation of elder brother and younger brother.

  Hence, when only ten days ago this close and tender association of many years was broken by death—swift and wholly unexpected, as a bolt from cloudless skies—it seemed to me for a few hours as if the keystone of the arch of my life had fallen and everything lay heaped in ugly ruin. I had waited for him on that Friday afternoon until six o’clock. Friday is my day off, my one holiday in a week of hard work, when my son always dined with me and then accompanied me to the theater or other entertainment. When he did not appear at six o’clock in the evening I left a note saying I had gone to our usual restaurant. That dinner I ate alone. When I returned in an hour it was to be met with the news that Harold lay cold in death at the very time I wrote the note that his eyes would never see.

  When the first shock had passed came the review of what was left of life to me. Most of the things which I had valued highly for the sake of my son now had little or no worth for me; but to take up again the old round of work, without the vivid, joyous presence of a companion dearer than life itself, one must have some great compensations; and the chief of the
se compensations lay in the few feet of books in my library case—in those old favorites of all ages that can still beguile me, though my head is bowed in the dust with grief and my heart is as sore as an open wound touched by a careless hand.

  For more than a dozen years in the school vacations and in my midsummer holidays my son and I were accustomed to take long tramps in the country. For five of these years the boy lived entirely in the country to gain health and strength. Both he and his older sister, Mary, narrowly escaped death by pneumonia in this city, so I transferred them to Angwin’s on Howell Mountain, an ideal place in a grove of pines—a ranch in the winter and a summer resort from May to November. There the air was soft with the balsam of pine, and the children throve wonderfully. Edwin Angwin was a second father to them both, and his wife was as fond as a real mother. For five years they remained on the mountain. Mary developed into an athletic girl, who became a fearless rider, an expert tennis player, and a swimmer, who once swam two miles at Catalina Island on a foolish wager. She proved to be a happy, wholesome girl, an ideal daughter, but marriage took her from me and placed half the continent between us. Harold was still slight and fragile when he left the country, but his health was firmly established, and he soon became a youth of exceptional strength and energy.

  Many memories come to me now of visits paid to Angwin’s in those five years. Coming home at three o’clock on winter mornings after a night of hard work and severe nervous strain, I would snatch two or three hours’ sleep, get up in the chill winter darkness, and make the tedious five-hour journey from this city to the upper Napa Valley, in order to spend one day with my boy and his sister. The little fellow kept a record on a calendar of the dates of these prospective visits and always had some dainty for me—some bird or game or choice fruit which he knew I relished.