Filling in the Gaps -- What I Said and What I Read

Back in April, I joined a group of readers who, at Moonrat's suggestion made lists of 100 books to "fill in the gaps" in their reading lists. I am such a fickle reader that I knew it was unlikely I'd work my way through my own list with any consistency. There's a list of books I've read in 2009 at the sidebar and clearly, I have a short attention span. What was I thinking when I read The Iliad (not on the list) instead of The Odyssey? On the other hand, Proust, Pynchon and Wallace were no walk in the park.

Nevertheless, here's the list of 100 I came up with April with the books I've read since then in bold font:

1. The Odyssey, by Homer
2. The Oresteia, by Aeschylus
3. Oedipus the King, by Sophocles
4. Medea, by Euripides
5. The Aeneid, by Virgil
6. The Confessions, by Saint Augustine
7. The Divine Comedy, by Dante
8. The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli
9. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
10. Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
11. Plays and Poems, William Shakespeare
12. Paradise Lost, by John Milton
13. The Misanthrope, by Moliere
14. Pensees, by Blaise Pascal
15. Phaedra, by Jean Racine
16. Candide, by Voltaire
17. Faust, Parts One and Two, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
18. Cousin Bette, by Honore de Balzac
19. The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal
20. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
21. The Haunted Pool, George Sand
22. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
23. Essays, Matthew Arnold
24. The Stones of Venice, John Ruskin
25. Marius the Epicurean, by Walter Pater
26. On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
27. The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope
28. The Picture of Dorian Gray
29. Middlemarch, by George Eliot
30. Dead Souls, by Nikolay Gogol
31. The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
32. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
33. The Tales, by Anton Chekhov
32. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass
33. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
34. The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
35. The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
36. Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
37. Baltasar and Blimunda, by Jose Saramago
38. In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust (I've read volumes 1 - 3)
39. Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre
40. The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir
41. The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, Essays by Albert Camus
42. Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
43. Howards End, by E.M. Forster
44. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
45. Ulysses, by James Joyce
46. Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, by Samuel Beckett
47. The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
48. The Complete Stories, by Franz Kafka
49. Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann
50. The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil
51. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass
52. The Master and the Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
53. Collected Stories, by Isaac Babel
54. The Cancer Ward, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
55. Hunger, by Knut Hamsun
56. Barabbas, by Par Lagerkvist
57. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera
58. Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges
59. Canto General, by Pablo Neruda
60. A House for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul
61. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
62. Foe, by J.M. Coetzee
63. Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie
64. Under the Volcano, by Malcom Lowry
65. Surfacing, by Margaret Atwood
66. The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
67. My Antonia, by Willa Cather
68. The Making of Americans, by Gertrude Stein
69. Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser
70. Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
71. The Cantos, by Ezra Pound
72. Collected Stories, by Katherine Anne Porter
73. The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
74. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
75. Herzog, by Saul Bellow
76. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
77. The Recognitions, by William Gaddis
78. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
79. Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
80. Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue, by Philip Roth
81. Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels, by John Updike
82. Angels in America, by Tony Kushner
83. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
84. The Sea, The Sea, by Iris Murdoch
85. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard
86. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
87. The Emigrants, by W.G. Sebald
88. The Age of Reason, by John-Paul Sartre
89. American Pastoral, by Philip Roth
90. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
91. War and Peace, by Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
92. Walden Pond, by Henry David Thoreau
93. Selected Works, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
94. Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
95. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
96. Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirov
97. Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson
98. Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth
99. A Mercy, by Toni Morrison
100. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

I suppose it's time to revisit and revise this list -- at least so I can replace some of the titles I'll probably never read with some I already have.

Somehow I've gotten it into my head that in January there may be a big online reading of Roberto Bolaño's 2666. Anyone interested?

What I've Been Reading and Thinking

There's a funny thing that happens to me when I read great literature. I wonder if it happens to anyone else. I become mute. I feel incapable of communicating with other people in any meaningful way. I live in my head and I immerse myself in more literary work that knocks me out. The author who first got to me this way was Marcel Proust, but David Foster Wallace just about finished me off.

I want to come back to this blog and to be present here and so to kick start myself, I'm going to try and make a little sense of the literary trip I've been on. The list of books I've read since I last posted has gotten too long to go into much detail about each book, so rather than do that I'm going to give a single thought on each. Let's see if my recent foray into Twittering can help me cut to the chase.

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

This is the third of the seven volumes of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The more I've read of him, the easier he is to read and the more awe inspiring he becomes. Once I finish Sodom and Gomorrah I'll be a little antsy because only the first four volumes of the newest translation have been published. I recently acquired Lectures on Literature by Vladmir Nabokov and among the seven fabulous lectures published from Nabokov's nearly twenty years teaching at Wellesley and Cornell is one on Swann's Way, complete with photos of the marked up book and class notes. Reading the notes of one master on another is exhilarating.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

I'd not read any Muriel Spark but after reading this story, I'm a devotee. Fortunately, Muriel Spark was prolific and left many novels and short stories behind. Her work is funny and she was a woman ahead of her time who lead a fascinating life.

Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

Mike Henry from Lighthouse Writers Workshop once said that Humboldt's Gift made him want to become a writer. I now know why. I read this book after reading The Adventures of Augie March, a novel that is now one of my favorites of all time. Saul Bellow was one of the finest American novelists who ever lived.

Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill

I loved Mary Gaitskill's novel, Veronica and I thought her story collection, Bad Behavior was brilliant. This new collection of short stories had a couple I loved, but it was a little uneven. Mary Gaitskill is a writer who makes my stomach tighten up into a knot. Her characters are damaged and the stories are raw. She scares me a little and I like that.

The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles

Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus -- all surprisingly engaging and readable. The plays help to fill in my educational gaps and they help me to finally understand all the references in Woody Allen movies.

The Iliad by Homer

I confess to putting this one down at about the halfway point, which was still quite a bit of reading. I've seen "Troy" and I get the gist of the story. Don't get me wrong, it is a great story and it too helps to fill in referential gaps, but at times it reads like a gigantic inventory of the names of every character involved in the Trojan War.

Columbine: A True Crime Story by Jeff Kass

This book (and another with a similar title) came out in April, ten years after the Columbine High School shootings. With distance and perspective, it's clear there were some inaccuracies that colored the original reporting on the killers. They weren't the victims of bullying they were first made out to be. Could anyone have predicted what they did? Based on what I read, I don't think so. I was surprised to learn that Harris and Klebold were actively planning the details of their attack on Columbine for over a year, which was ultimately what I found most chilling.

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton has a way of making sophisticated topics accessible to anyone, which I suppose is my way of saying that he can dumb down a discussion about Proust or philosophy and make them interesting to me. In this book, he's taken the problems of unpopularity, not having enough money, frustration, inadequacy, a broken heart and difficulties and offered consolation via the teachings of Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The Consolations of Philosophy is an entertaining and educational form of CliffsNotes for the aspiring philosophy student.

Love My Rifle More Than You by Kayla Williams

This memoir was written by an Iraq veteran and Arabic translator who wrote the book while still in her twenties. Much of Williams' story is told around her frustration at the enlisted chain of command, frequently feeling she was taking orders from people who weren't very smart and about the sexual dynamics within the military. Any woman who has ever worn a uniform knows that to most of young male co-workers, she's either a bitch or a slut. The author talks about her experiences in Iraq, witnessing death and carnage and the toll that it takes, but it was her struggles as a woman that broke me down. I cried. The woman who wrote this book doesn't have perspective on her experiences yet and although she doesn't know it, she's got a lot of growing up left to do. She comes across as smart, tough, strong and a little cocky at times. I know her. I was her.

Erasure by Percival Everett

Dan Wickett at Emerging Writers Network did an excellent series of posts on each of the many works in Everett's oeuvre. Here is his post on Erasure. Erasure is about a black academic whose novels are obscure and considered inaccessible. In a bout of frustration, in one sitting he writes out a parody of the kind of black novel he disdains. It's full of stereotypical characters and street jargon. He sends it to his agent and to his shock, the publishing industry goes crazy for it. Percival Everett is one of the most prolific postmodern writers you've probably never heard of. Read him.

Halfway House by Katharine Noel

Set in a small town in New Hampshire, Halfway House tells the story of a teenage girl's sudden psychotic break with reality and the turmoil her mental illness brings to each of the four members of her family. Mental illness is treated with compassion and fidelity and Ms. Noel is a gifted writer.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

Of this debut short story collection I will only say that it's superb. If you are a fan of the form you must read this book. Here's what the New York Times Sunday Book Review thought of it.

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore is one of the finest short story writers writing today and in October I'll be fortunate enough to attend a writers studio event with her. Moore's stories are funny and they're sad. They're about ordinary people and they're usually in the midst of tragedy of some sort. Her characters are ordinary people. This interview in the Guardian provides a good sense of Moore and her work.

This Lovely Life by Vicki Forman

This poignant memoir is the most difficult book to write about. Vicki Forman is a writing professor and a blogger I came to know through her words before the book was published. This post at The Rumpus was my favorite of the reviews I read. Vicki gave birth to twins at 23 weeks and the story of what happened is about loss, grief, hope, struggle and ultimately about acceptance and love. There was so much that touched me personally and gave me a second chance with the time and the distance I now how to relive the loss of my own child in 1990. This story is tragedy and it's triumph and it poses questions about medicine and the law. It makes us take a hard look at what medicine can do, what we should do and who makes those decisions.

Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice

I so loved Carleen Brice's debut novel that I wasn't sure how I could love Children of the Waters as much as I did Orange Mint and Honey. After finishing this novel in two sittings, I found there was nothing to worry about. Carleen outdid herself. The book's chapters alternate between two half-sisters with very different experiences and backgrounds. Brice handles both sides of a silent conversation about race that for most of us is remains a one-sided dialog. I feel like I often times am Trish -- the white character who, despite having black friends and family she loves will never be able to experience things from their perspective. Brice forces the sisters to work through the often unrecognized issues that in what some are calling a "post-racial" age, almost everyone continues to struggle with. Brice has again given us the fantastic Denver backdrop that she writes like no one else does. Children of the Waters is a great story that's beautifully written.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This is Water by David Foster Wallace

The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

It's here that I will cease my brief treatment of books. In my last post, I talked about my decision to join thousands of other readers to read Infinite Jest this summer and read it I did. I finished it within the first two weeks of the event and went on to tackle the remainder of his work (I've still got 2 1/2 books left). Millions of words have been dedicated to discussing Infinite Jest as well as his first novel, Broom of the System, his short story collections, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and Oblivion, his essay collections, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster and his exploration of the scientific concept of infinity, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity.

Through Infinite Summer, online friendships have been made and an incredibly brilliant incites made in some of the smartest blog posts I've ever read. I found myself reading so many of them, nodding and saying "yes, I thought that too", but unable to contribute in any more coherent way. You'll note the title, This is Water listed among the books I read. I'd read this in its original form some time ago. You see, it was never intended as a book by Wallace, who took his own life at the age of 46 last September and it was published posthumously. It was originally delivered by Wallace as the commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 and you can read it in its entirety here. In light of the release of the book, it's quite possible you won't be able to find the speech on line much longer, so if you haven't read it and if you haven't read any of David Foster Wallace's work, I urge you to do so.

Reading Infinite Jest changed the way I look at literature and it made me stop working on the things I was writing so I could start over. Perhaps David Foster Wallace's worldview and his words speak so directly to me because we're of the same era, he born in 1962 and me in 1961. Maybe his unique take on the world, which was not just the dull irony and disdain for modern culture that I fear many of his imitators have given to us, but it was an almost embarrassed exposure of the absurd that was infused with both sadness and compassion and in the end, hope.

Wallace was not an imitator. He approached style and structure in a way that had never been done and that will never be done again. His work was at times the most difficult that I've ever read and at the same time, the most enjoyable. He made me work to read him and it was worth the work. Every person I've spoken to who has read Infinite Jest finished all 1,078 pages and immediately went back and re-read the first chapter. Some people have read the book three and four times. I know I'm likely to be one of them.

Thoughts on what I've been reading? What you've been reading? Recommendations?

The End of Spring and On to Infinite Summer

Blogging and working out are very similar in that if you stop doing either, the longer you wait to get back into the routine, the harder it is to get started again. I've been reading so many great books lately and since two of them were written by friends and published this month, I want to send some positive vibes about them out into the world.

I will dedicate separate posts to each of these fine books this week, but for now let me recommend This Lovely Life: a memoir of premature motherhood by Vicki Forman and Children of the Waters, Carleen Brice's second amazing novel. For now, I'll just say that both books touched me deeply and on a very personal level and I'll talk more about that and about these gifted writers and wonderful people when I post about each book.

In December of 2007 I did a post about my teetering TBR stack and I had a special category for cinderblock-like books that pose special challenges:

"Last, by by no means least, I have the titans. The long, hard tomes that I'd like to read for one reason or another. I suspect I'll save and tackle these big guys for vacations or in case I end up in a body cast and incapacitated for months on end. I'm very interested in hearing from anyone who has read any of these books. I can see this picture doesn't show the titles well, so they're: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, All four Rabbit Novels by John Updike and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace."

I'm pleased to say that I've read the first three volumes of In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust and I've finally been given the incentive to start Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

In early June, Matthew Baldwin launched Infinite Summer an online campaign challengingThis Lovely Life and Children of the Waters.

David Foster Wallace, who was known for his essays, short fiction and novels was probably best known for his 1996 masterwork, Infinite Jest . I, like many of the other readers to tackle Wallace's 1,079 page novel between June 21st and September 22nd. At roughly 75 pages a week and with participation estimated at more than 2,000 readers, the idea of taking on the massive work is far less intimidating. Since I'm a huge cheater, I started the week before but did stop twice to read Infinite Summer participants had read much of his shorter work and had purchased Infinite Jest with all good intentions to read it. Many of those reading it now had started it once or twice before, but had never finished. I suspect most readers were like me and after flipping through the densely written, heavily end-noted monster decided that a book like this would need time specially set aside for it.

Social networking has really enhanced the "we're all in this together" feeling of this summer read with over 2,500 people following Infinite Summer on Twitter and over 4,000 members on the Infinite Summer Facebook group.

As of this evening, I'm on page 395 and after admittedly battling through the somewhat disorienting, yet captivating first two hundred pages, I am on board and strapped in for the ride. I've never read anything quite like this and sadly, neither I nor anyone else ever will again. Certainly, Wallace's tragic suicide after a lifetime battling clinical depression has given this project a bittersweet edge.

I have a whole list of books I've read since the last time I posted and I want to hear about what you've all been reading. How are you? I've missed you guys.