On what compulsion must I?
Jan. 23rd, 2009 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThe Guardian has published a list of "1000 Novels Everyone Must Read". My first reaction was to class it as yet another of the pointless supplements they insist on publishing: wallcharts of plants and animals, pamphlets of poetry, free DVDs, which I assume are aimed at boosting circulation in some way. But on reflection, I think it's a corollary of what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks has called the 'I Like Cheese' problem; it may be frustrating thaat people are more willing to comment on a throwaway statement of preference than on a reasoned argument, but it does mean that if all you want is to generate commentary then, in life, as on LJ, a throwaway statement of preference will do the trick. 'I Like Cheese'; 'You Must Read These 1000 Novels' - as cherylmmorgan says, "Please note, the whole point of such lists is that people should disagree with them." Logically, then, I shouldn't comment at all, because it only encourages them - but berhaps if I put it behind a cut, they won't notice.
Naturally, faced with a list of novels which everyone must read, I think simultaneously: "Why must I? Shan't!" and "Have I in fact read a respectable number of them?" A quick dash through with a highlighter gives these rough figures:
They don't necessarily divide up the way I would expect, but then the books aren't necessarily categorised as I would expect: Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond, which I think of as a novel about travel, is listed as comedy, while Black Beauty is described as "the most famous animal story of the 19th century" and listed under War & Travel. (There is no separate listing for children's books, or for graphic novels, and I wonder how far this affects not only how many of them are listed, but also which ones).
The exercise of reading through the list didn't add many books to my list of books I would like to read one day - though it did remind me of one book I'd seen reviewed and been intrigued by: Pierre Bayard's How to Talk about Books you haven't Read (review). This isn't a bluffer's guide, but a serious examination of how we read and don't read. I was surprised how often I hesitated over whether I had read a book or not - especially when I've seen the film (the print version of the Guardian's list is heavily illustrated with film stills and posters, so perhaps they have the same problem). I don't think I've read Orlando or La Bête Humaine, but I've seen both films; I know I haven't read The African Queen, but I have a much clearer conception of it than of, say, John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance, which I definitely have read, but half a lifetime ago. I read an awful lot of Henry James at one time, but hesitated over several of the specific titles.
With any list of this kind, there will be a certain element of "right author, wrong book". Sometimes, no doubt, I'm the one who has read the 'wrong' book - I've read some random volumes of Ian Rankin, but I'm willing to believe that the titles recommended are even better. Sometimes, I disagree with their choice (there are several novels by Zola, but Nana isn't one of them). And sometimes - and this is the really odd one - they opt out of making a choice at all. This, more than anything else, is what demonstrates to me that the list is not seriously intended as a reading guide for the would-be well-read: if you really want to encourage someone to read Pratchett, you can think of two or three favourites. No-one who has not already plunged into Discworld is going to do so on the instruction: "Read 'Discworld'!" (and if they did, they'd probably start at the beginning, which few of us would recommend...). Even more bizarre is the inclusion, as a single item under State of the Nation, of Balzac's La Comédie Humaine - all 95 volumes of it. Sloppy, too, since two of those volumes (Eugénie Grandet and Le Père Goriot) have already been recommended in Family and Self.
This corner of the blogosphere being what it is, most of the posts I've seen home in on the selection of fantasy and science fiction; the excellent discussion in the comments ofsovay's post, for example, cover a number of the omissions I might have remarked on. In fairness, this is ostensibly a list of books that everyone must read, so it should include books you need to know to participate in general conversation, rather than stuff you need to know to appreciate the best of the genre. There's a whole alphabet of the missing: no Brunner, no Cadigan... all the way through to Zelazny. But given the effort to include 'first' or early examples of other genres, a better question might be: why no Cyrano de Bergerac?
The coverage of crime is equally patchy. The oddest thing about it - and this is not something you will often hear from me - is how many of the major women writers are missing. You may not like Agatha Christie (I don't). But can you seriously talk about crime fiction without having read any of her books? Sayers is in (Whose Body?, not an obvious choice, and Murder Must Advertise), but neither Allingham nor Marsh. Nor, coming up to date, Val McDermid or Lindsey Davis. There may be a preference for thrillers over the 'detective' variety of crime fiction, which explains both the absence of Peter Dickinson and Tony Hillerman (first names that come to mind) and why I read so much crime fiction and yet have read so few of the recommended titles.
I could go on. But in fact I have already gone on. I'd rather go to bed and read a book (but not a novel).
rushthatspeaks has called the 'I Like Cheese' problem; it may be frustrating thaat people are more willing to comment on a throwaway statement of preference than on a reasoned argument, but it does mean that if all you want is to generate commentary then, in life, as on LJ, a throwaway statement of preference will do the trick. 'I Like Cheese'; 'You Must Read These 1000 Novels' - as cherylmmorgan says, "Please note, the whole point of such lists is that people should disagree with them." Logically, then, I shouldn't comment at all, because it only encourages them - but berhaps if I put it behind a cut, they won't notice.Naturally, faced with a list of novels which everyone must read, I think simultaneously: "Why must I? Shan't!" and "Have I in fact read a respectable number of them?" A quick dash through with a highlighter gives these rough figures:
- Love: 46
- Crime: 24
- Comedy: 50
- Family & Self: 35
- State of the Nation: 27
- Science Fiction & Fantasy: 63
- War & Travel: 28
They don't necessarily divide up the way I would expect, but then the books aren't necessarily categorised as I would expect: Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond, which I think of as a novel about travel, is listed as comedy, while Black Beauty is described as "the most famous animal story of the 19th century" and listed under War & Travel. (There is no separate listing for children's books, or for graphic novels, and I wonder how far this affects not only how many of them are listed, but also which ones).
The exercise of reading through the list didn't add many books to my list of books I would like to read one day - though it did remind me of one book I'd seen reviewed and been intrigued by: Pierre Bayard's How to Talk about Books you haven't Read (review). This isn't a bluffer's guide, but a serious examination of how we read and don't read. I was surprised how often I hesitated over whether I had read a book or not - especially when I've seen the film (the print version of the Guardian's list is heavily illustrated with film stills and posters, so perhaps they have the same problem). I don't think I've read Orlando or La Bête Humaine, but I've seen both films; I know I haven't read The African Queen, but I have a much clearer conception of it than of, say, John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance, which I definitely have read, but half a lifetime ago. I read an awful lot of Henry James at one time, but hesitated over several of the specific titles.
With any list of this kind, there will be a certain element of "right author, wrong book". Sometimes, no doubt, I'm the one who has read the 'wrong' book - I've read some random volumes of Ian Rankin, but I'm willing to believe that the titles recommended are even better. Sometimes, I disagree with their choice (there are several novels by Zola, but Nana isn't one of them). And sometimes - and this is the really odd one - they opt out of making a choice at all. This, more than anything else, is what demonstrates to me that the list is not seriously intended as a reading guide for the would-be well-read: if you really want to encourage someone to read Pratchett, you can think of two or three favourites. No-one who has not already plunged into Discworld is going to do so on the instruction: "Read 'Discworld'!" (and if they did, they'd probably start at the beginning, which few of us would recommend...). Even more bizarre is the inclusion, as a single item under State of the Nation, of Balzac's La Comédie Humaine - all 95 volumes of it. Sloppy, too, since two of those volumes (Eugénie Grandet and Le Père Goriot) have already been recommended in Family and Self.
This corner of the blogosphere being what it is, most of the posts I've seen home in on the selection of fantasy and science fiction; the excellent discussion in the comments of
sovay's post, for example, cover a number of the omissions I might have remarked on. In fairness, this is ostensibly a list of books that everyone must read, so it should include books you need to know to participate in general conversation, rather than stuff you need to know to appreciate the best of the genre. There's a whole alphabet of the missing: no Brunner, no Cadigan... all the way through to Zelazny. But given the effort to include 'first' or early examples of other genres, a better question might be: why no Cyrano de Bergerac? The coverage of crime is equally patchy. The oddest thing about it - and this is not something you will often hear from me - is how many of the major women writers are missing. You may not like Agatha Christie (I don't). But can you seriously talk about crime fiction without having read any of her books? Sayers is in (Whose Body?, not an obvious choice, and Murder Must Advertise), but neither Allingham nor Marsh. Nor, coming up to date, Val McDermid or Lindsey Davis. There may be a preference for thrillers over the 'detective' variety of crime fiction, which explains both the absence of Peter Dickinson and Tony Hillerman (first names that come to mind) and why I read so much crime fiction and yet have read so few of the recommended titles.
I could go on. But in fact I have already gone on. I'd rather go to bed and read a book (but not a novel).
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Re: Sayers
Date: 2009-01-24 08:48 pm (UTC)