Favorite Literary Works

February 5, 1997

“I had rather than forty shillings
I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets
here.”
(Slender, THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR)

I am neither an English teacher nor a literary critic. But there are examples of writing so superior that I have again and again read them. Why do they grab me? Structure, logic, the irreplaceable verb, adjective or noun, an economy of words that dares me to look at myself and the human condition, informing with literary charm, striding with ebullience the less-trod paragraph paths? All or most of these qualities in felicitous arrangement.

An incomplete (off the top of my head) list of favorites that I have read again and again would comprise these (in no particular order of priority):

Shakespeare:
Henry V’s orations to his troops on the eve of battle.
Hamlet’s soliloquy.
Portia on the quality of mercy.
Macbeth’s despairing soliloquy.
Jacques’ Seven Ages of Man.

George Bernard Shaw: Preface to ST. JOAN

Charles Dickens: DAVID COPPERFIELD

Arthur Bryant: ENGLISH SAGA 1840-1940

Albert Camus:
“Reflections on the Guillotine,” found in RESISTANCE, REBELLION AND DEATH
The Last paragraph of “The Artist and His Time”, also found in RESISTANCE, REBELLION AND DEATH.

Lord Acton: ESSAYS ON FREEDOM AND POWER

The Book of Amos in the Hebrew scriptures

The Gospel of Mark in the Christian scriptures

Alfred Newboldt: “Drake’s Drum”

Barbara Tuchman: THE GUNS OF AUGUST

Abraham Lincoln: The Second Inaugural Address

What would your list comprise?

You may have noted that I do not refer to my choices as “classics.” I remembered Mark Twain’s definition of “classic”: “A book people praise but don’t read.”*

I worry a bit in these years nearing a new millennium. When sci-fi writer, Ray Bradbury wrote, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading,” he touched a painful possibility.

So, dear reader, along with your aerobics, work, walks, sports, good conversations laced with fine wine or single-malt Scotch, occasionally signal “time-out”. Read a book; read again and again that which illuminates a human condition, a hope, a vision, or just simply entertains.

* Editor’s note: the actual quote is, “Something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”