Bibliography, February 2009

Bought (2)
M. Bannfy, They were found wanting
N. Gordimer, The Conservationist

Read (9)
BOTM: J. Heller, Catch 22

A. Burgess, 99 Novels
F.M. Ford, The Good Soldier
R. Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs
V.S. Naipaul, India: A wounded civilization
R.K. Narayan, The Man-Eater of Malgudi
A. Powell, The Valley of Bones
A. Powell, The soldier's Art
A. Powell, The military philosophers

In Changing Places David Lodge has his protagonists play a game called humiliation, the object being to own up to a material work of literature that one hasn't read. The most impressive failure wins the game. It's flaw as a game is that the proliferation of literary work and the lack of a recognised canon in modern teaching means that few outside English faculties can play it without it becoming a slightly pointless game of bickering over whose massive omissions are worst - i.e. the value of the works in question. The fact I have never got round to reading King Lear would doubtless go into the mix against A's stubborn insistence that all the characters in War & Peace are called Nikolai Nikolaevitch, when - as this note makes clear - they aren't. The discussion is of course hampered by the fact that, by definition, only one of us will have read the book in question. A tighter defined canon is probably necessary, or making clear that it's really about fame, not quality.

One of my major omissions on that ground was rectified this month by knocking off Catch 22, which while clearly not of the same quality as either of the examples above, is a great and vry influentual book (for example, it comes in number 7 on this list). And it is beloved of the anti-war lot, and students who think its like Kafka, but with more sex in. It's not quite that profound, but it is funny, narratively innovative, explosively written and packs a material, and quite moving, punch. Sometimes I think it errs on the wrong side of farce - which undermine the more serious elements, but this is a minor critique. It is, of course, like many other things, a bit too long and drags a little about two thirds of the way in, before picking for the final sequences.