A Course in Modern Classics: The Beginning

I have always had an unrelenting interest in reading, and it is a passion that has provided me with a wealth of knowledge and entertainment over the years. My interest in literature began at a very early age, and continued through high school, and when I arrived at college I continued to take countless English courses, hoping to expand the library of titles that I had explored and mentally digested.

However, the problem with classic literature that continually presents itself is this: it is intensely difficult to cover a large wealth of it, because that category is both broad and varied. Mark Twain is certainly classified as literature (and rightly so), but so is J.R.R. Tolkien; suffice it to say the similarities between the two are very minimal, and one of these authors doesn't seem to segue into the next with any level of ease. Classics can emerge from several different countries, genres, styles, eras, and countless different walks of life, so any attempt at exploring a reasonable survey of titles classified as "timeless" can be quite difficult. One of the other issues I personally encountered in both high school and college was the tendency to read some of the less acclaimed works from a famous author, rather than the titles with which they have attained their popularity. Trust me, I think Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad is a terrific book, and it is one I was required to read for college; but I would have much rather read Heart of Darkness in class, simply because on a social level it has always seemed more relevant. I would have loved to be assigned to James Joyce's Ulysses in college, if only because it is continually held among the best novels ever written. As of right now, I have yet to read it. But I have read Joyce's short story Araby so many times I could almost recite it.

It is because of these reasons and several others I decided to embark on a rather bold mission. A few years ago, TIME Magazine requested author Lev Grossman and Time critic Richard Lacayo put together a list of what they perceived to be the 100 Greatest Novels written since 1923. The genres of the titles ranged several different styles and genres, and the titles on the list for the most part are either benchmarks in their respective genres, or the originators of their respective genres. I have decided if I am going to acquire a better understanding of much of the classic literature I have missed out on, a more proactive approach will be necessary. Which is why I have decided to read all 100 titles on this list, and record my progress and observations regarding each of these titles through this blog. Well, actually, my list will have 101 titles: Ulysses by James Joyce is recognized as a title that ABSOLUTELY would have been included on this list had it not been published a year earlier, so I am including that title as well. Plus, I just want to read that book in addition, and the insistence that it should be included just provides another reason to check it out. To give you an idea as to what titles this list entails, here it is in its entirety (with Ulysses included. Hyperlinks are available for several of the entries):

A - B

1. The Adventures of Augie March (1953), by Saul Bellow
2. All the King's Men (1946), by Robert Penn Warren
3. American Pastoral (1997), by Philip Roth
4. An American Tragedy (1925), by Theodore Dreiser
5. Animal Farm (1946), by George Orwell
6. Appointment in Samarra (1934), by John O'Hara
7. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), by Judy Blume
8. The Assistant (1957), by Bernard Malamud
9. At Swim-Two-Birds (1938), by Flann O'Brien
10. Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan
11. Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
12. The Berlin Stories (1946), by Christopher Isherwood
13. The Big Sleep (1939), by Raymond Chandler
14. The Blind Assassin (2000), by Margaret Atwood
15. Blood Meridian (1986), by Cormac McCarthy
16. Brideshead Revisited (1946), by Evelyn Waugh
17. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), by Thornton Wilder

C - D

1. Call It Sleep (1935), by Henry Roth
2. Catch-22 (1961), by Joseph Heller
3. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J.D. Salinger
4. A Clockwork Orange (1963), by Anthony Burgess
5. The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), by William Styron
6. The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
7. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), by Thomas Pynchon
8. A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), by Anthony Powell
9. The Day of the Locust (1939), by Nathanael West
10. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
11. A Death in the Family (1958), by James Agee
12. The Death of the Heart (1958), by Elizabeth Bowen
13. Deliverance (1970), by James Dickey
14. Dog Soldiers (1974), by Robert Stone

F - G

1. Falconer (1977), by John Cheever
2. The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), by John Fowles
3. The Golden Notebook (1962), by Doris Lessing
4. Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin
5. Gone With the Wind (1936), by Margaret Mitchell
6. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), by John Steinbeck
7. Gravity's Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pynchon
8. The Great Gatsby (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald

H - I

1. A Handful of Dust (1934), by Evelyn Waugh
2. The Heart is A Lonely Hunter (1940), by Carson McCullers
3. The Heart of the Matter (1948), by Graham Greene
4. Herzog (1964), by Saul Bellow
5. Housekeeping (1981), by Marilynne Robinson
6. A House for Mr. Biswas (1962), by V.S. Naipaul
7. I, Claudius (1934), by Robert Graves
8. Infinite Jest (1996), by David Foster Wallace
9. Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison

L - N

1. Light in August (1932), by William Faulkner
2. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), by C.S. Lewis
3. Lolita (1955), by Vladimir Nabokov
4. Lord of the Flies (1955), by William Golding
5. The Lord of the Rings (1954), by J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Loving (1945), by Henry Green
7. Lucky Jim (1954), by Kingsley Amis
8. The Man Who Loved Children (1940), by Christina Stead
9. Midnight's Children (1981), by Salman Rushdie
10. Money (1984), by Martin Amis
11. The Moviegoer (1961), by Walker Percy
12. Mrs. Dalloway (1925), by Virginia Woolf
13. Naked Lunch (1959), by William Burroughs
14. Native Son (1940), by Richard Wright
15. Neuromancer (1984), by William Gibson
16. Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
17. 1984 (1948), by George Orwell

O - R

1. On the Road (1957), by Jack Kerouac
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), by Ken Kesey
3. The Painted Bird (1965), by Jerzy Kosinski
4. Pale Fire (1962), by Vladimir Nabokov
5. A Passage to India (1924), by E.M. Forster
6. Play It As It Lays (1970), by Joan Didion
7. Portnoy's Complaint (1969), by Philip Roth
8. Possession (1990), by A.S. Byatt
9. The Power and the Glory (1939), by Graham Greene
10. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), by Muriel Spark
11. Rabbit, Run (1960), by John Updike
12. Ragtime (1975), by E.L. Doctorow
13. The Recognitions (1955), by William Gaddis
14. Red Harvest (1929), by Dashiell Hammett
15. Revolutionary Road (1961), by Richard Yates

S - T

1. The Sheltering Sky (1949), by Paul Bowles
2. Slaughterhouse Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut
3. Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson
4. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), by John Barth
5. The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner
6. The Sportswriter (1986), by Richard Ford
7. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964), by John le Carre
8. The Sun Also Rises (1926), by Ernest Hemingway
9. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Zora Neale Hurston
10. Things Fall Apart (1959), by Chinua Achebe
11. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee
12. To the Lighthouse (1927), by Virginia Woolf
13. Tropic of Cancer (1934), by Henry Miller

U - W

1. Ubik (1969), by Philip K. Dick
2. Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce
   
3. Under the Net (1954), by Iris Murdoch
4. Under the Volcano (1947), by Malcolm Lowry
5. Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
6. White Noise (1985), by Don DeLillo
7. White Teeth (2000), by Zadie Smith
8. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys

Details for this list can be viewed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_magazine%27s_%22All-TIME%22_100_best_novels

Some of these titles I have already read, but for the purpose of this blog I intend to read them again, and perhaps I will have a new perspective when reading those texts now. Some of these works I am elated to read again (A Clockwork Orange, Watchmen) and some I am dreading having to revisit (Gone with the Wind). The primary reason I chose this list is that it contained many of the contemporary classics, and had enough of a broad range of categories represented that I felt it would make for an intriguing exploration. I am beginning this list with a book I have never read, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.