New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has just listed ten books which are on his summr rereading list because they’re “triumphs of fiction, both fun to read and significant for literary or historical reasons, relating to social justice at a time when inequality in America has soared to historic levels.”
Here’s Kristof’s list of Best Beach Reading Ever—“Germinal” by Emile Zola, “Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte, “Our Man in Havana” by Graham Greene, “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, “Les Miserables” by Victory Hugo, “The Mysterious Stranger” by Mark Twain, and “Scoop” by Evelyn Waugh.
Assuming that anyone even vaguely connected to the University of Kansas is now rereading (or perhaps reading for the first time) the novels of science-fiction giant Theodore Sturgeon because of the recent acquisition of his books, papers, manuscripts and correspondence by the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, thanks to retired English professor James Gunn, himself a giant in the field, one might have time to read just three more non-Sturgeon novels for what’s left of the summer.
My three would be— “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin, because it would make right-wing conservative Christians fall down on their knees in perpetual prayer, and maybe also for occasional inappropriate sex with members of their own sex; “All the King’s Men” by Robert Penn Warren, which firmly advocates that, if you dig deep enough, you can find dirt on anyone, Republicans as well as Democrats; and “The Transposed Heads” by Thomas Mann, because I keep fantasizing about what it would look like to graft the heads of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor on the bodies respectively of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Mary Matalin. Or, truer to the spirit and theme of Mann’s novel, perhaps the heads of Hillary Clinton, Claire McCaskill and Elizabeth Warren on the torsos of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor.
So, those are my three summer rereads. What are yours?
I’ve got so much first-read stuff I want to read that it never occurs to me to reread anything, though I did a lot of rereading for 43 years (how many times for Gatsby and Mme Bovary?? Not to mention Shak.). Three books that stand out that I would want to reread sometime are:
Moravia, The Conformist (to check on how far we’ve gone down the road to fascism)
Nabokov, Pale Fire (because I was irritable and pissed off at the world the first time and couldn’t enjoy it)
Don Quixote in Spanish (first 5 times or so were in English–but I can read Spanish and darn it I can get this done)
Yes to all three, most especially DON QUIXOTE, given all the windmills being tilted in Kansas and these sad United States.
I must be honest that much of my reading this summer had been fluffy fantasy detective novels and a series of graphic novels entitled, “The Last Man” in which a plague causes a “gendercide” that wipes out all but a handful of men on the planet. (Though it’s not one of THOSE graphic novels.)
I’m reading so many plays these days for work that my leisure time is filled with less labor intensive material to work my way through.
I did recently read Clybourne Park, the recent winner of the Pulitzer, and it is an amazingly wonderful work. Woolly premiered it last season at the same time that Playwrights Horizons in New York did the World Premiere, and it’s hitting our stage again later this month to celebrate Bruce Norris winning the Olivier, Pulitzer and various other amazing regional and international awards.
I like your list though, Paul. I’m adding them to my list.
My production of A RAISIN IN THE SUN at Lawrence Community Theatre some years ago ended with moving men coming into the Younger household and removing all the furniture, leaving the family standing on an empty stage with Mama Younger holding her potted plant. And then, for a final image, I lowered Venetian blinds on all three sides of the thrust stage, and I had three Caucasian men with rifles peering through the blinds at the Youngers. It was a chilling image, and the Artistic Director of LCT was really unhappy with what I did, saying that I had “distorted” what was a happy ending. I had done my research, and given what Lorraine Hansberry said about what happened to her family after they moved to Clybourne Park, I remained adamant about my final image for the play. You can see a picture of Aron Carlson peering through one of the Venetian blinds in the slide show on the EAT website. All these years later, I am thrilled that CLYBOURNE PARK by Bruce Norris sets the record straight on what many people continue to think is a happy ending for A RAISIN IN THE SUN.