Book Review: Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier

I am reluctant to admit that I hadn't heard of Ford Madox Ford prior to purchasing The Good Soldier from among those still unread tomes on my list. Astonishing too, since I have long enjoyed the work of Joseph Conrad, a close personal friend of Ford's throughout his lifetime.

Interestingly, I was also unaware that The Good Soldier is widely regarded as "one of the few stylistically perfect works in any language." A bold assertion, but one that I do not think is inappropriate for a novel so masterfully written.

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard," writes narrator, John Dowell, as he commits to posterity a tale of love, marriage, adultery, madness, and deception. Many reviewers seem to distill the premise as follows. It is the tale of two couples, one English, one American. The English husband and the American wife engage in an extramarital affair. The American husband is unaware of his wife’s infidelity, while the English wife tacitly consents to conceal it. On the surface, all this is correct, and yet, the affair, I would argue, is not at the heart of the story. Rather, it is the vehicle by which Ford is able to engage with some of the more complex moral and philosophical dilemmas central to the novel.

Were I to explain the premise of this book to interested readers, I would instead suggest that this story is, first and foremost, about love in its varied, untidy, and often illogical forms, and the struggles of its characters to obtain and retain it from the objects of their desire in the face of myriad societal constraints. Undignified, forbidden, reckless, futile, and unconventional, the infidelities of Edward Ashburnham (the English husband) and Florence Dowell (the American wife), though central to the book's early chapters, hardly convey the overarching complexity of the relationships between husbands, wives, and lovers.

And we never quite seem to grasp what love means to Dowell, Leonora (Edward's wife), and others; or, perhaps, we grasp it only too well through the calculated, the innocent, and the unguarded actions of the novel's victims and villains--though I am hesitant to ascribe either label to the book's main characters. I imagine part of Ford's intent, whether conscious or unconscious, was to engage readers in these very questions and to examine their own beliefs about duty, passion, and morality.

In many ways Dowell is perhaps one of the most emotionally inaccessible and ambiguous characters. He remains detached from many of the tragic events that occur with some regularity in the novel, and his own understanding of Edward’s, Florence’s, and even Leonora’s actions are predicated entirely on his assumptions about the way people ought to act. His impulses lean towards sympathizing with the indiscretions and immoral conduct of certain personages, but equally reprehensible behaviour occasionally evokes in him tacit approval by virtue of the conduct being “proper” or “expected.”

Thus, I would also suggest that the book grapples with another moral dilemma: mainly, what constitutes a “good” person. We find Dowell is particularly concerned with this notion, describing both himself and his wife, as well as the Ashburnhams, as inherently “good people.” Perhaps that is what makes this novel one of the saddest stories ever told. However, as the book progresses and the characters of Edward and Leonora, are revealed, we are plunged into a murky grey area, torn between societal and traditional gender expectations, moral obligation, and powerful emotional ties, which cannot be broken despite efforts from various quarters. In the end, the reader remains the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, similarly torn between sympathy for appropriate conduct and natural human frailty.

What strikes the reader as particularly unusual about this novel is the process by which both husbands are emasculated through the comparative strength of their wives, their domineering characters and the manner in which they wield their sexual power (though not often times overt) to dictate the contours and boundaries of their respective marriages. On the one hand we are puzzled by the weakness of Ford’s male characters, and the frequently underhanded and deceitful exercise of control by Florence and Leonora. On the other hand, we understand the importance of illusions in this novel and the process by which Dowell discovers that neither Florence nor Leonora are who they appear to be, notwithstanding the initial assumption that both are proper, obedient, and self-sacrificing women. This paradox is one of the more obvious ones in a novel riddled with contradictions of character, behaviour, morality, and expectation.

I don’t think I even know how to rate this book, since my entirely unsystematic assignment of stars scarcely seems suitable. Was this a book I enjoyed? On the whole, yes. It was thought-provoking and beautifully written, though its tragedy and almost hollow ending seemed a bit disappointing. Would it be among my first recommendations to readers searching for a love story? Probably not. Though there is indeed several love stories running concomitantly throughout the novel, they are not entirely uncomplicated ones and many do not end as one would hope. However, if a reader were in the market to test Ford out, then I would wholeheartedly recommend this novel, as I am interested to read his other acclaimed work, Parade’s End, and look forward to commenting upon it in future.

☆☆☆☆/5

In Defence of the Book (as we still know it)

I admit, I make frequent use of Google Books. Among the search engine's many conveniences is the ability to scan large portions of published text for specific terms sought out by users like me. Recently, an article I was developing for one of my freelance gigs required me to say a few words about the Macedonian diaspora. Before I even ventured to the library, Google Books allowed me to make a preliminary search of the texts that would prove most helpful in my quest. Clicking the link provided by the completed search conveniently redirected me to the exact page in each book containing the phrase "Macedonian diaspora." Unfortunately, copyright restrictions bar me from reading the contents of most books in their entirety online; pages of varying quantity are omitted, still forcing the researcher and reader to consult the book physical, rather than depend solely on the book cyber.

There's something particularly alluring about having a book's entire contents a mere mouse click away--perhaps it's convenience, efficiency, or a combination of both. Certainly searching the text of several relevant volumes for the topics pertinent to your own research significantly whittles down the time it previously took to consult individual tomes in the dusty stacks of a university library. However, I wonder what impact the growing digitization of books will have on a society in some ways becoming increasingly atomized by the very technology aimed at bringing it together.

An interesting article on cleaveland.com speculates about the future of books as we know them, hinting that we should prepare ourself for more digitized content, sometimes even at the expense of a print alternative. For institutions of higher learning, e-books provide a cost-cutting substitution for traditional tomes. The article states that in 2008, Columbia University acquired90,000 physical volumes--a vast amount--but an additional 380,000 electronic books were also acquired. The proportion is staggering.

Advocates of digitization maintain that their goal is noble: mainly, the "democratization" of knowledge. A public domain like the internet -- where anyone can post largely unregulated content free of charge -- could also be home to the vast repositories of the world's innumerable libraries. In The New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton likens these lofty aims to the fundamental theoretical principles underpinning the Republic of Letters--right before professionalization overtook idealism in the nineteenth century. Darnton, a supporter of Google's digitization efforts, maintains that the spirit in which Google undertook its project ought not to be fettered by capitalist greed, despite a recognition for accountability to stakeholders and compensation to authors and publishers. However, Google was sued in 2005 by several publishers, who claimed that the scanned books infringed on existing copyright laws; a settlement was nevertheless reached several months earlier. I won't go into the details of the suit or its outcome. You can read about it elsewhere.

Two years ago, when I first began grad school, I recall our DGS' new toy. He stalked the hallowed halls of the ivory tower with what might have been a prototype of the amazon Kindle. When bored by colloquium, he could be seen doodling on it, reading digital books, and even editing his grad students' papers with a few touches of his plastic pseudo-pencil. Maybe the Kindle doesn't have these same capabilities, but I do recall him smugly asserting that this was the wave of the future: the complete and total digitization of books and even whole archival collections. "You'll never even have to leave your comfy university office again to spend time with the original documents," I recall him saying. "Unless you really want to fondle the real Declaration of the Rights of Man or lick the parchment of the Domesday Book. No, you'll be able to access everything from the convenience of your desktop. Isn't this great, kids?" (OK, perhaps that was paraphrased, but you get the idea.)

I'm not sure how I feel about the digitization of books, though the big 'L' liberal in me loves the idea, especially if there's no fee-for-access terms attached. Most of the classics I so enjoy reading are already available for free through Google Books, but I still spend the money on a $5 copy of Lady Audley's Secret rather than read it on my laptop computer. The suggestion that books are inherently more mobile than laptop computers and can be taken anywhere with you won't hold up against advocates of the Kindle and contraptions of their ilk. Last month I was seated beside a woman on a Toronto bus who was reading a Russian novel on her PDA-like gadget--clearly, like the book, the Kindle can go where you go.

I'll likely lose on the environmental argument as well, since my counterpoint is purely a sentimental one. I don't know if the mass production of Kindles will prove significantly better for the environment, though a .pdf file saves on the cost of paper, ink, and technology. This does have its pros in a society increasingly concerned with its carbon footprint. But, what about the pure enjoyment of reading a form that's, in a way, a treasured cultural artifact of western civilization still in use today? I'm probably in a minority, but seeing the original Bible or a first edition of Madame Bovary is much more exciting in real life than viewing it on any two-dimensional screen; likewise, reading a book in the comfort of your favourite chair beats sitting in front of a computer any day.

I also tend to think of the long-range impact on students. Yes, by digitizing books we have the opportunity to provide vast resources generally unavailable to most institutions of higher learning were it not for the wonders of interlibrary loan; but, at the same time, what are we doing to our students? In twenty years will any of them know what a book even was, or will libraries go the way of the dodo. If you can read a copy of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan or Machiavelli's The Prince online, then what's the point of bookstores or circulating libraries?

TA'ing for two semesters confirmed my suspicion that the internet has bred a generation of students completely unaware of the print resources available. As a late recipient of the internet (it became known to me in the last years of high school), I was taught to consult encyclopedias, dictionaries, maps, and other reference volumes in my pursuit of knowledge. One of the first assignments a class of freshmen taking "The Medieval West" were required to complete was a map quiz, where a list of cities and territories of historical significance were to be plotted on a blank map of Europe. Many students encountered a "dead end," as they called it, when they were unable to determine the lands belonging to Eleanor of Acquitaine. "I can't find it online," they complained to me during office hours. Naturally, I redirected them to the library and to historical maps of the period with which they were concerned. "Try the library catalogue," I suggested. I sometimes wonder whether the growing accessibility and convenience of the digital age doesn't inhibit the development of intellectual resourcefulness. If the internet doesn't have what a student is searching for, few will turn to print sources, simply because they are unfamiliar with the kinds of aids available, and this is a real shame. (And don't even get me started with the plagiarism problem, the rampant citations of Wikipedia in college essays, and the inability of students to distinguish between legitimate secondary sources on the internet and those posted by some nut living in his parents' basement.)

The late John Updike's defence of the printed book resonated with me because some of my fondest childhood memories are connected with reading. I treasure my tattered copies of Anne of Green Gables, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Little Women, all read before the age of thirteen and stowed safely away in my hope chest. I recall curling up in bed next to my mother on a cold winter night in sixth grade while she read Jane Eyre aloud and I even mourned alongside Jane (complete with tears!) when Helen Burns passed away. For me, there is now an ascribed emotive character to these books. Regardless of where I move, they always go with me; I cherish them. I doubt I could ever feel the same way towards a .pdf copy of David Copperfield or A Soldier of the Great War.

Updike's observes that,

"The printed, bound and paid-for book was — still is, for the moment — more exacting, more demanding, of its producer and consumer both. It is the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following in the other's steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness...For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity."

How accurate that is! Please, booksellers, "defend your lonely forts," as Updike urged. There's still an audience who likes to feel the rough and the smooth of the paper, the gloss of the cover, and the embossing of a dust jacket too much to allow the book physical to be the next casualty of the digital age. I only hope there are more out there who feel the same way.

So, while I don't necessarily oppose the digitization project -- heck, it'll go on with or without my consent -- I do worry that in the process we'll lose a bit of our own cultural identity along with it, and in some respects I think that's pretty tragic.

Happy Birthday Strunk and White!

I was perusing the New York Times' Review of Books only to come across a tribute to one of the staple handbooks of my undergraduate (and later graduate) career. I was sitting in a second-year political science tutorial one summer at the University of Toronto when I first learned about the slender tome. I didn't much care for the TA or my grade in the class, but it was on her recommendation that I invested in my silver-coloured copy of The Elements of Style, as well as Kate Turabian's guide. Both accompanied me from Toronto to Baltimore and back again, and were used frequently over those five years.

Geoffrey Pullham, head of linguistics and English at the University of Edinburgh chides Strunk and White for their reductionism, oversights, and errors in The Chronicle of Higher Education. An expert on English syntax, Pullham pulls no punches in consigning The Elements of Style to the trash heap of superfluous and, indeed, useless grammar aids (and for a number of good reasons).

However, to today's undergraduates, many of whom seem to be emerging from high school barely able to form grammatically correct sentences (I blame texting, e-mail, instant messaging, and Twitter), The Elements of Style may still prove a useful tool for outlining some of the do's and don'ts they truly don't know! As a teaching assistant, I graded papers that demonstrated the feeblest grasp of the English language -- and this by native speakers! Though Strunk and White may not solve all their problems, it does offer some general hints for the clueless college co-ed.

It isn't my intention to turn this into a critique of the educational system, its strengths and shortcomings. My entirely unsubstantiated and unscholarly opinion is that young people do not read anymore, which inevitably has a negative impact on their ability to communicate in written form. I am a strong believer in the notion that syntax is learned; syntactic constructions are repeated and subsequently internalized through exposure to highbrow literature -- from the classics to academic articles and beyond. I'm not suggesting that we revamp the entire school system to introduce a rigorous curriculum in which we inculcate our youngsters with facts and grammar a la Thomas Gradgrind; rather, I think many students can still profit from a copy of Strunk and White, since many never seem to learn the the most basic principles of English grammar or how to communicate effectively in writing.

At any rate, Happy Birthday Strunk and White! Congratulations on turning 50, and may you continue to fill the shelves of college dorm rooms for years to come!

Book Review: David Lodge, Nice Work

What drew me to this book was the first line on the dust cover blurb: "The campus novel meets the industrial novel..." -- or so wrote David Profumo in the Daily Telegraph. Of course, I was also lured by BMV's price tag of $1 and the signature orange spine of Penguin paperbacks from days long gone. Thumbing through the pages, the chapters of the novel, subdivided into parts, bear inscription from some of the most well-loved industrial novels of nineteenth-century Britain: Dickens' Hard Times, Bronte's Shirley, Gaskell's North and South, and Disraeli's Sybil. I was sold. I even put a few books on hold and moved this one to the top of the queue. Unfortunately, the first chapter had me disappointed.

Lodge begins with the most banal narrative of a day in the life of Vic Wilcox, managing director at J. Pringle & Sons Casting and General Engineering. His life seems so mundane, so unremarkable that to read about it is as dull and inspiring as his diurnal activities: from bum kids to bowel movements, every detail of Vic's morning routine is chronicled to the disinterest of the reader. The pace is painful, the minutiae excruciating. However, I continued, determined that, were the book not to improve by the second chapter, I would deliver it to my local Goodwill the next day.

That's where the reward comes. Perseverance yields a delightful change in tempo and style. Enter Robyn Penrose, Temporary Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Rummidge -- the imaginary industrial town borne of Lodge's at times Gaskellian imagination -- and committed feminist. Her concentration, the nineteenth-century industrial novel, lends itself well for framing the story (perhaps a neo-industrial novel or post-industrial novel?) and we are certain that Wilcox and Penrose will somehow collide in a moment of pure fictional kismet. We gain insight into Robyn's Freudian interpretation of industrial capitalism's phallocentrism in her undergraduate lecture delivered in chapter three, which alternates between scenes of Vic's production meeting and his pill-popping wife's trip to the mall with their unambitious daughter.

For the literary snob seeking high-brow fiction in decidedly low-brow disguise, consider this it, for no sooner do we have Robyn and her on-again/off-again post-modern post-feminist relationship discussing Saussurean linguistics over erotic massages than both she and Vic meet in an altogether too-contrived-to-be-believable manner: Robyn is selected to "shadow" Vic every Wednesday for the duration of Rummidge's winter semester as part of a scheme called "Industry Year," in which members of the academy and business get a crash-course in the problems plaguing the other's sector in the aftermath of Thatcher's reforms. Lodge makes no attempt to disguise what is evidently a critique of university funding cuts and the human cost of industrial rationalization.

Penrose might be familiar with "industry" from the pages of Bronte's Shirley and Gaskell's North and South, but is completely ignorant of the challenges facing managing directors like Vic Wilcox in an industry confronted with more complex dilemmas than the wage and mechanization debates of Thornton's Milton or Bounderby's Coketown. The immigrant labour force, elevated production costs, market forces, technological advancement, and the politics of placating potentially restive workers inspired to action by Penrose's blunder all illustrate the level of sophistication of contemporary industrial obstacles which Wilcox navigates with a mixture of pragmatism and bottom-line business sense (and which Penrose often opposes on moral and humanitarian grounds).

The "relationship" between Penrose and Wilcox reads like an updated version of North and South, with Penrose defending the virtues of the academy (the South) from her advantageous social position against naysayer "manufacturers" like Wilcox (representing the North), who discount the utility of advanced study in the arts. (And, much like Margaret Hale's encounter with Nicholas Higgins and the strike, Penrose nearly incites one, and, later, even has a change of heart about her own rigorous advocacy for higher learning. In dialogue with her pseudo-boyfriend, Charles, Penrose admits, "Well, when Wilcox starts getting at me about arts degrees being a waste of money...I find myself falling back on arguments that I don't really believe any more, like the importance of maintaining cultural tradition, and improving students' communicative skills--arguments that old fogies like Phillip Swallow trot out at the drop of a hat. Because if I said we teach students about the perpetual sliding of the signified under the signifier, or the way every text inevitably undermines its own claim to determinate meaning, he would laugh in my face.")

The burgeoning romance between Penrose and Wilcox develops to its climax, albeit awkwardly, and leaves, at least this reader, unsatisfied. Perhaps this is what makes this a neo-industrial novel/post-industrial novel? Penrose remarks in her lecture that the women writers of the industrial novels "were never able to resolve in fictional terms the ideological contradictions inherent in their own society" and instead "[offered] narrative solutions to the personal dilemmas of their characters. And these narrative solutions are invariable negative or evasive" (pp. 82-3). This might explain the book's unusual ending: Lodge finds himself unable to satisfactorily work out the contradictions inherent in the mandate of academia, the tensions between the ivory tower and industry, the precariousness of assumed job security, the socioeconomic repercussions of Thatcherism, and Penrose's idea that love is nothing more than "a rhetorical device...a bourgeois fallacy" that the reader is left wondering what the moral of the story really is. (And he cleverly exempts himself from a more explicit commitment to outlining it for the reader with the help of Charlotte Bronte: "This story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity to offer directions. I only say, God speed to him in the quest!")

What makes this book charming is the adept insertion of critical theory, semiotics, and some of English literature's less mainstream Victorian novels into a character and a story that has the elements of a social critique, a romance, and an exploratory piece of the psyche of the 1980s working class and the old "elite" (here think privileged academics past their '68 heyday). Though Lodge attempts to persuade the reader to sympathize with both, the bra-burning, man-eating, love-hating feminist orientation of Robyn Penrose does grate on the nerves and, by contemporary standards, seems cliche. Nevertheless, those familiar with the plot of North and South will invariably enjoy Lodge's modern spin, though perhaps likewise finding the ending a tad rushed and more than a little hollow.

☆☆☆/5

Book Addiction

It appears that I am thoroughly incapable of passing up discount books. Late this afternoon I was meeting a friend for an early dinner and found myself downtown with about 30 minutes to spare. Naturally, being in the general vicinity of Bloor and Spadina, I strolled to my favourite used bookstore, BMV. Since I had been living in the States for a number of years, I missed its grand opening, and, in fact, didn't even know it existed until a few months ago when I dropped nearly $50 on 13 titles ranging from Haggard's She to Butler's The Way of All Flesh.

Books are my one weakness (quoting Dorcas Lane), and even the most innocent stroll by BMV never seems to remain an innocent stroll. Today, I was lured by their prodigious sidewalk sale: a veritable cornucopia of books were strewn about the storefront and a cursory scan yielded 5 titles of interest to yours truly at the bottom-basement price of $5.25 (tax included). John Galsworthy, Stendhal, and Thomas Hardy rounded out the familiar; Corelli's Mandolin (which I seem to recall having been adapted into a terrible film starring Nicholas Cage) and a Nice Work, by David Lodge, were my other two picks. The former intrigued me because of its setting, the latter because of its quotes from Disraeli's Sybil and Bronte's Shirley in what is evidently a contemporary novel. I hope it's as entertaining as I seem to think it will be.

BMV is really one of the best bookstores in the city, especially for book snobs like me. I hate spines that show any sign of wear, tattered edges, and reading classics other than those produced by Penguin or Oxford. Fortunately, for under $10 per reading copy -- and generally under $8 -- one can get a near-pristine book. I, however, need to commit to purchasing nothing else until I finish the ones I've already amassed, save, of course, my book club books. I'm still trying to catch up on year-old novels (Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March is currently being read, cracked open for the first time since '07).

"Little Dorrit," Little Disaster?

I mourn the recent loss of PBS; it cut its broadcasting services to analog television sets on my birthday of all days! Though I thankfully managed to watch all fourteen episodes of "Little Dorrit" online prior to the end date, I still tuned into Masterpiece Theatre on Sundays to watch Matthew Macfadyen, Claire Foy, Alun Armstrong, et al delight me on the big screen. (The departure of PBS in particular has led me to revisit my staunch opposition to cable and satellite television.)

I was disappointed to read that the BBC intends to move away from its big-budget costume dramas. I imagine "Little Dorrit"'s ratings were not the sole determinant for the change in direction, nor the departure of Jane Tranter. While I applaud the desire to adapt other works and explore different historical eras beyond the nineteenth-century, I hope this move is not a permanent one and that the BBC considers adapting other novels, besides those by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy.

The more recent adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels (Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters) were a move in the right direction, I thought. Although I had heard of Gaskell prior to seeing any of the above-mentioned mini-series, I had never bothered to pick up her books. Thankfully, one look at Richard Armitage fixed that in no time!

One of the most wonderful adaptations the BBC has done to date--at least in my opinion--was Bleak House, starring Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame, Anna Maxwell-Martin of North and South, and others. I had read all 989 pages of the Penguin edition prior to viewing it and was stunned by the strength of Andrew Davies' script, the stellar casting, and the overall magnificence of the production. I even managed to convert a few Dickens-phobes by thrusting the three-disc DVD on them, despite protests that they loathed Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and A Tale of Two Cities.

For a friend of mine--a lover of period dramas, but not an avid reader--the adaptations are one of the only ways she's willing to engage with literary classics. Were it not for Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Way We Live Now, or Jane Eyre, my friend would be entirely unaware of Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope, or Charlotte Bronte. In these instances, I think period adaptations, despite their various liberties as regards plot and characters, serve a valuable function: namely, edifying those who would otherwise pass libraries and bookstores by and who'd never know whether Jane marries Rochester, whether Melmotte gets his comeuppance, or whether there's a happily ever after for Tess and Angel.

I imagine part of the problem, particularly in these tough economic times, is the budget. Bleak House recently came in at £8 million, or a whopping $11.7 million USD. That's a hefty pricetag, notwithstanding the length and calibre of the production. Budget cutbacks are apparently responsible for the canning of a new adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, which was set to star Matthew Macfadyen, Sally Hawkins, Gemma Jones, and others. (Un?)fortunately, we'll just have to settle with the original David Lean version, I suppose.

However, I still regard it as a bit of a disappointment, given my penchant for Regency and Victorian literature. If it's ratings that the Beeb is worried about, then I'd suggest something novel: try adapting a book that has never been brought to the small screen before. Charlotte Bronte did write other novels besides Jane Eyre; we can live without another version of Sense and Sensibility; and, perhaps we can even live without Charles Dickens entirely! Don't permit those who dislike reading to live in ignorance of the classics!

On the Continued Bastardization of Jane Austen

Without a doubt, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice remains my favourite novel of all-time. Recently, when discussing what makes this novel so widely loved and so enduring, my mother and I came to the very unsophisticated conclusion that it was because (a) nobody dies; (b) the novel's crisis isn't an especially dire or irremediable one; (c) the characters are generally likable and the "villains" aren't all that bad; and (d) the love story ends in a 'happily ever after.' It's well-written, entertaining, and endearing. No wonder women all over the world love it and everyone and their brother tries to make a buck off it! Once I even succumbed to curiosity and purchased a poorly-written "sequel" by someone or other. I can't recall the details, except that Georgiana possibly ran off with a Wickham-esque rogue (surprise, surprise!)--and not the constant architect who was passionately in love with her.

In some respects I am sympathetic to those who wish to use Jane Austen's novels as a springboard for their own (pathetic?) literary endeavours. I'll even admit to watching ITV's "Lost in Austen" more than once despite, what I think, was a poorly cast Darcy and an absolutely repulsive Mr. Collins. (I find David Bamber almost dreamy by comparison!)

While browsing Google for some reviews of "Lost in Austen" -- I'm curious whether the critics loved it or loathed it and whether, as a Jane fan for life, I should admit to finding it charmingly absurd -- I stumbled on a listing for a book entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Oddly enough, I don't think this is a hoax! It's even listed on amazon! But it gets worse! (As does my punctuation. This is probably the most overzealous use of exclamation points yet on any blog...!) Allegedly, Hollywood studios are going to adapt the book. (I sincerely hope neither Colin Firth nor Matthew Macfadyen agree to reprise their original roles.)

Now, while I try never to judge a book by its cover--or, in this case, a title and premise--I doubt this is one I'll ever pick up, recommend to my book club, or even bother to go to the movies to see. It took me well over three years to warm up to the 2005 version of "Pride and Prejudice" and for legitimate reasons (mainly script, authenticity, and casting). This said, I cannot see myself ever accepting Meryton as a bloody battleground for a zombie invasion, nor Elizabeth as the heroine intent on slaying them. I suppose it's wonderful that one book can inspire so much creativity (and I do employ that term rather loosely), but I can only wonder what Miss Austen would think of the latest sci-fi/horror spin. Perhaps the promise of blood and guts is an attempt to persuade more men to read the book, considering that close to 85% of P & P & Z the text is original? I'm not sure. Regardless, I'm always astonished at what sells, what people write, and what gets published these days!

"Best" Book Lists

Consider it withdrawal. Imagine spending the last seven years of your life toting around lists of prescribed reading and obediently whittling away at what seems like an endless array of tomes aimed more at edification than enjoyment. Suddenly, your intellectual horizons are liberated (read: you’ve left grad school) and a whole, largely uncharted literary world lies before you. What do you do? In my case, you turn to another reading list.

OK, perhaps it wasn’t the most imaginative way to kick off an existence unencumbered by the latest academic book reviews or scholarly articles designed to drown the reader in two-dollar terminology, but I needed a place to start. For me, I decided to spend 2009 becoming “well read”—whatever that might mean. I suppose the term is relative; however, I have always associated it with an individual who was familiar with the classics—and not merely those forced upon them throughout the course of their secondary and post-secondary education.

A cursory Google search for “best book list” yielded several results, including the Modern Everyman Library’s 100 Best Novels, Time’s All-Time 100 Novels, The Telegraph’s 110 Best Books (apparently the more conventional “100” didn’t suit), and others. Being a bit of a stodgy traditionalist, I adopted the Modern Everyman’s list and have since been working my way through it in no particular order.

A friend, and fellow voracious reader, looked askance at me when I admitted that I was implementing a regimented reading schedule. Yes, I was interspersing books from “The List” with my own choices, but I was committed to reading all one hundred over the next few years in order to, as mentioned above, become more “well read.” “You know it’s not a bad idea to read outside of the canon,” she said, disagreeing with me as to the utility of the exercise. “You’ve spent years being told what to read, now, why don’t you read what you want?”

But that’s the thing: I am reading what I want. In my pursuit to become more well read, I want to know what makes these books like these “classics” in the conventional sense and what made some of them scandalous or controversial in their own time. It isn’t that I lack the creativity to select my own reading material; it’s that I want to learn why these books were selected when countless others are available. What makes Lolita, Women in Love, or The Day of the Locust so enduring? Why have these made the cut decades after their original date of publication? And why are they still being read today?

At first, the task seemed daunting, and one I wasn’t entirely convinced I would enjoy. I have never been one who gravitates toward twentieth-century American literature and a preliminary glance at the list reveals a liberal sampling of precisely that. Some of the repeat offenders include Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. Granted, my exposure to them are about as “mainstream” as you can get (e.g., Portrait of a Lady, The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Sound and the Fury, etc.) However, I do believe that part of the joy of reading comes from exposure to books that lie outside of your assumed “comfort zone.” You never know what gem you might find (for me, so far, it is Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey). Though I tend to prefer nineteenth-century British novels above all else, I suspected the challenge of confronting a list of books I was not entirely familiar with, nor wholly interested in reading might nevertheless prove gratifying upon its completion.

So far so good. I have reconnected with E.M. Forster (having last enjoyed A Room With A View several years earlier) and I have discovered the chilling post-colonial criticism of Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea. I think I may forever have a love affair with D. H. Lawrence since Sons and Lovers and why I had never heard of Ford Maddox Ford still astonishes me! Second encounters with Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald have proved rewarding, and I appreciate them all the more since giving them another try. (Admission: My only failed encounter has been with Malcolm Lowry after a mere forty-seven pages and has since been consigned to the backburner; however, I anticipate returning to him in the future.)

I look at this endeavour as continuing my education. The more I read, the more I learn, and the greater my horizons become. Finding your own list, even if it is merely to tackle a book or two that you’ve been meaning to read for ages, is a wonderful exercise. I sincerely believe that it’s a wonderful way to discover unexpected treasures.