Reading plans are very popular among devoted readers. For that special breed of nutcase wanting to delve deeply into the classics they are practically a necessity.
There are many ready-made reading plans available on the internet with most of them requiring several years to complete and taking the reader, working chronologically, from antiquity to present day. Unfortunately, I think these plans share several limitations.
We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while there is more to read than there ever was before. From the Yahwist and Homer to Freud, Kafka, and Beckett is a journey of nearly three millennia. Since that voyage goes past harbors as infinite as Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, all of whom amply compensate a lifetime’s rereadings, we are in the pragmatic dilemma of excluding something else each time we read or reread extensively. One ancient test for the canonical remains fiercely valid: unless it demands rereading, the work does not qualify. The inevitable analogue is the erotic one. If you are Don Giovanni and Leporello keeps the list, one brief encounter will suffice.1
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995. 29. Print. ↩
Build a foundation in Western classics through reading focused in order of importance on literature, philosophy, and history.
Read the Western Canon in a series of widening passes over the material, beginning with Shakespeare. Each pass will delve deeper into the canon, building on the readings from previous passes, and including re-readings where desireable.
The reading plan will remain secondary to inspiration and enthusiasm. When interests wane, the structure is there to maintain focused movement.
Found in Werner Herzog’s book, Conquest of the Useless:
Las vanidades del mundo
Las grandezas del imperio
Se encierran en el profundo
Silencio del cementerio
The vanities of the world
The greatness of the empire
Withdraw into the deep
Silence of the cemetery
In a letter dated July 5, 1814, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams Monticello:
Our post-revolutionary youth are born under happier stars than you and I were. They acquire all learning in their mother’s womb, and bring it into the world ready made. The information of books is no longer necessary; and all knowledge which is not innate, is in contempt, or neglect at least.
I came to Kij Johnson’s The Fox Woman after reading her award winning short story, 26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss. From these two works it would seem that Johnson is an author of sensitivity. She deftly weaves wonder, beauty and sorrow together while preserving mystery, and a respect for both her characters and her readers. She leaves room within the stories for her characters to breathe, and for her readers to reflect without heavy-handed explanations of theme or meaning.
Anton Chekhov was a master of the short story. However, he gets poor treatment by the Interwar Period translations of Constance Garnett. I first came to dislike Garnett’s Russian translations while discovering the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky. The great Russian writers all have very distinctive writing styles and Constance Garnett succeeded in making them sound like Victorian era British novelists. She is known for her very fast, “smoothed over” style of translation in which difficulties in the original are simply dropped from the work. This is simply not the way to get the flavor of the great Russian writers. I can only surmise that the decision to go with the Garnett translation of these stories rested upon the economics of public domain versus newer, licensed translations.
