My favorite books. Part one: classics I love.

[valis2]

Since there are so many voracious readers on my flist, I thought I might dust off one of my old entries about my favorite books. I've completely revised and updated it, and it got a little long so I'm breaking it up into smaller entries.

• Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis. This story, about a "babbitt" (cog) in the giant machinery of society, is simple, yet complex. We follow Babbitt, a middle-class, nearing-middle-aged protagonist with a wife and two kids. This novel is so well-written that you feel as if you are there, in the twenties, amid Prohibition and Progress, experiencing it all through the lens of the middle class. It tells the story of America, an America that has not vanished, an America experiencing growing pains and following the siren song of Progress.
  
  I love this book. Every time I read it I become stuck in the style of the book, and my inner narrative turns into a Babbitt narrative for a few weeks. Lewis had an extraordinary ear for dialogue. He used to take trips and just listen to the people around him and write down rhythms of speech and phrases. And he had such a great wit. He truly understood his characters, and he wasn't afraid to make them look a little silly, or to peer into their hearts and crack open their lives.
  
  Even though this book was published in 1922, it echoes strongly into the present. Yes, the Kiwanis Clubs and the Moose Lodges are dying out nowadays, and we can drink alcohol legally, and we have cell phones and we slug each other on TV in front of a live studio audience. But so many other things in this book are so "modern" that it's startling. The destruction of wild land to create subdivisions, and then naming the streets after what was once there. (Thousand Oaks Lane, Fox Hollow Street...) Hell, the whole middle class--that's who this book follows, and it's intriguing how much things stay the same. Babbitt is adrift in the middle class, Progress for Progress's sake, busy with empty prosperity, and sometimes he feels strange, like there is something else out there, and he follows this new feeling, taking a trip into the unfamiliar and straying beyond the bounds of middle-class life.
  
  Lewis reportedly wrote three times the final word count and pared it down. The language is purposeful and strong, and the characters are authentic. It's a helluva book.
  
  Excerpt: Now, Mrs. Babbitt was not accustomed to leave home during the winter except on violently demanding occasions, and only the summer before, she had been gone for weeks. Nor was Babbitt one of the detachable husbands who take separations casually. He liked to have her there; she looked after his clothes; she knew how his steak ought to be cooked; and her clucking made him feel secure.


• The Junior Classics 1: Fairy Tales and Fables (Popular Edition) from the Young Folks' Shelf of Books series(1938). This is a collection of fairy tales I purchased just a few years ago at a used book sale. I was astonished to find two of my very favorite fairy tales within, in the exact versions that I had read them years ago when I was in the Great Books program. The two tales are called "The Little Humpbacked Horse" and "Wassilissa the Beautiful" and are credited to Post Wheeler. They’re Russian fairy tales and they really affect me in a way that most don’t, probably because I read them as a child. They are wonderful. Magical.
  
  Excerpt: Suddenly, just at midnight, [Little Fool Ivan] heard the neigh of a horse, and looking out from the bush he saw a wonderful mare, as white as snow, with a golden mane curled in little rings.


• Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Yeah, I know, it’s technically a play, not a book. But Macbeth transformed Shakespeare for me. It was the first Shakespearean play that I really understood. Once I found his remarkable use of language, his angst, and his clever, beautiful words, I never looked back. His plays are thick with meaning, and Macbeth is a tightly wound, coiled spring of a play that grabs you and won’t let go. Lady Macbeth is an incredible character, Macbeth's "dearest partner of greatness," and her doom resonates.
  
  Excerpt: The raven himself is hoarse
  That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
  Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
  That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
  And fill me, from the crow to the toe, top-full
  Of direst cruelty!


• Anything by Katherine Porter. Really, anything. There are amazing depths to her writing. And yet, still, they all have a surface story that makes them easy and compelling to read. That kind of writing takes skill. Her stories stay with me. They're interesting, and a breeze to read, but then later I find myself turning them around and around in my head, discovering things, coiling them round my fingers and finding out that they have a deeper strength than I ever imagined.
  
  Here are a few of my most-read:
  
  
  • I think my favorite is "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall." This is the first of her stories that I ever read, and I read it over and over again. The plot is simple on the surface; an old woman and her last moments. I've delved further and further, and over many rereads and many years I've come to see that it's a marvelous feat of writing. There are layers and layers, and there's a beautiful dream-like atmosphere that haunts every word.
    
    Excerpt: It was good to be strong enough for everything, even if all you made melted and changed and slipped under your hands, so that by the time you finished you almost forgot what you were working for. What was it I set out to do? she asked herself intently, but she could not remember. A fog rose over the valley, she saw it marching across the creek swallowing the trees and moving up the hill like an army of ghosts. Soon it would be at the near edge of the orchard, and then it was time to go in and light the lamps. Come in, children, don't stay out in the night air.
  
  
  • "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is one of the best stories I’ve ever read. It follows the story of a single, independent woman who falls in love with a soldier during World War I and the beginning of the Spanish Flu Epidemic, and it’s an astonishing piece of work. The themes--death, rebirth, love, life, they reverberate through her plain prose and illuminate deeper mysteries. Just the glimpse into the society of the time is completely absorbing.
    
    Excerpt: Miranda was silent, thinking about Adam. No, there was no resentment or revolt in him. Pure, she thought, all the way through, flawless, complete, as the sacrificial lamb must be. The sacrificial lamb strode along casually, accommodating his long pace to hers, keeping her on the inside of the walk in the good American style, helping her across street corners...giving off whiffs of tobacco smoke, a manly smell of scentless soap, freshly cleaned leather and freshly washed skin, breathing through his nose and carrying his chest easily. He threw back his head and smiled into the sky which still misted, promising rain. "Oh, boy," he said, "what a night. Can't you hurry that review of yours so we can get started?"
  
  
  • "Holiday" tells the story of an outsider who stays with a large German family in Texas. And, in the traditional manner of a stranger in a new place, she learns many things about this family. She is uncertain at first, but grows to know the farm and the people, and then tragedy strikes.
    
    Excerpt: A few days later I found myself tossed off like an express package from a dirty little crawling train onto the sodden platform of a country station, where the stationmaster emerged and locked up the waiting room before the train had got round the bend. As he clumped by me he shifted his wad of tobacco to his cheek and asked, "Where you goin'?"
    "To the Müller farm," I said, standing beside my small trunk and suitcase with the bitter wind cutting through my thin coat.
  
  
  • "The Downward Path to Wisdom" haunts me still today. It's a disturbing story. Porter captures the feeling of childhood so perfectly, and yet there's so much more there, and I'm still thinking about this story and its darker emotions.
    
    Excerpt: "That's right," said Marjory, leaning over him and speaking so her voice would not carry. "That's right, just like your papa. Mean," she whispered, "mean."
  
  
  • "He" is a story that stays with you. The Whipples and their three children live in poverty, a poverty that only worsens as the years go by.
    
    Excerpt: Mrs. Whipple loved her second son, the simple-minded one, better than she loved the other two children put together. She was forever saying so, and when she talked with certain of her neighbors, she would even throw in her husband and her mother for good measure.
  
  
  • "María Concepción" is the story of a Mexican woman with a lazy, shiftless husband who leaves her for another. María does not mourn her fate; she is a strong woman, and she refuses the succor of the community, preferring instead to pray and gather her strength on her own. But she is still a part of that community, and when life's wheel turns another revolution, she will stand or fall by their judgment.
    
    Excerpt: She paused on the bridge and dabbled her feet in the water, her eyes resting themselves from the sun-rays in a fixed gaze to the far-off mountains, deeply blue under their hanging drift of clouds. It came to her that she would like a fresh crust of honey. The delicious aroma of bees, their slow thrilling hum, awakened a pleasant desire for a flake of sweetness in her mouth.
  
  She is one of my favorite writers of all time. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter has all of these and many, many more.


• Anything by Kate Chopin, who is one of my other favorite writers. She was an incredible author. She was brutally condemned by critics after "The Awakening" was published, wrote almost nothing after, and died within a few years. It wasn’t until the fifties that academics re-discovered her.
  
  
  • "The Awakening" is a novella I re-read every year or two. It is astonishing, the portrait of a woman who is just beginning to awaken, to dream of something new, something beyond the path chosen for her. Will her wings support her? Will she fly alone and unencumbered, or will she crash to the earth?
    
    Excerpt: It was growing late, and there was a general disposition to disband. But some one, perhaps it was Robert, thought of a bath at that mystic hour and under that mystic moon.
  
  
  • "At the 'Cadian Ball" is another great story. Love is a tricky beast. There is also a sequel, "The Storm," which I believe was not published during her lifetime because it was considered too racy. I love both stories. They have an earthy sensuality, and they chart the course of the human heart, which never steered true.
    
    Excerpt: But [Alcée] must have been crazy the day he came in from the rice-field, and, toil-stained as he was, clasped Clarisse by the arms and panted a volley of hot, blistering love-words into her face. No man had ever spoken love to her like that.
  
  
  • "At Chênière Caminada" haunted me for days. Tonie's story is a story of wild and obsessive love, and his simple heart is nearly overwhelmed by it.
    
    Excerpt: "Claire Duvigné," muttered Tonie, not even making a pretense to taste his courtbouillon, but picking little bits from the half loaf of crusty brown bread that lay beside his plate. "Claire Duvigné; that is a pretty name. Don't you think so, mother? I can't think of anyone on the Chênière who has so pretty a one, nor at Grand Isle, either, for that matter. And you say she lives on Rampart street?"
  
  
  • "Her Letters" is another story that I remember again and again. So beautiful and so wonderfully written. A woman keeps a bundle of letters from another love, and when she passes away, her husband must dispose of them. Not just a story of what happens to the letters, but a story about love, passion, truth and doubt. An amazing story.
    
    Excerpt: She kissed it again and again. With her sharp white teeth she tore the far corner from the letter, where the name was written; she bit the torn scrap and tasted it between her lips and upon her tongue like some god-given morsel.
  
  Kate Chopin released only a few collections of short stories and novellas, and was considered to be a "local color" author who wrote mostly about rural Louisiana life. But her work is far more than that; she explores society, manners, the human heart, and what it feels like to have your very soul restrained. Another author who cannot be missed.


• Daughters of Decadence is probably my favorite collection of short stories. The editor has gathered several important works from the New Woman movement during the fin-de-siècle. It has so many wonderful pieces of fiction that it's impossible to list them all out here. A few of the highlights:
  
  
  • "The Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which is also available to read here online. An incredible story. I have no words for how affecting it is on so many levels. A woman wants to get out. But she is a silly little goose, and must rest.
  
  
  Excerpt: I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.
  But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself-- before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.


• "The Fifth Edition" by Mabel E Wotton. Frank Leyden has stolen a story, and does not know where to get another one. Cue the unlovely Janet Suttaby, who quite conveniently has a story to tell.
  
  Excerpt: "They give me seven-and-six a thousand [words], and I generally have to alter one-third, while they cut out another," Miss Suttaby explained. "But I know it is foolish to mind, for if I were fit for the magazines I should be paid more, of course."
  [Leyden]: "Meanwhile, you should not buy daffodils."
  "I don't in meat weeks. Daffodils means bread and coffee; but I would rather. I am very strong."


• "The Valley of Childish Things" is short but powerful. Edith Wharton packs this slim ficlet with a very strong punch. It's available online here; click on the Chapter I link to read it in its entirety.
  
  Excerpt: Once upon a time a number of children lived together in the Valley of Childish Things, playing all manner of delightful games, and studying the same lesson-books. But one day a little girl, one of their number, decided that it was time to see something of the world about which the lesson-books had taught her; and as none of the other children cared to leave their games, she set out alone to climb the pass which led out of the valley.

Robin Hood. By Howard Pyle, Gilbert, etc. I’ve read at least seven versions, and I still love the tale, and dream of the Green Woods.

Excerpt, from Gilbert's version: [Will Scarlett] wished especially to win--that he might have the satisfaction of vexing the Sheriff of Nottingham. Will had intended to send back this prize--a golden arrow--from his stronghold of Sherwood, snapped into twenty pieces, with a letter of truculent defiance wrapped about the scraps. He wished to make it plain to Master Monceux that the free archers of Sherwood were better men than any he might bring against them, and that they despised him very heartily. Now that he saw a likelihood of his being beaten his heart grew hot within him.

F Scott Fitzgerald's short stories.

• "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is a short story that explores popularity and inner fortitude. Whenever I'm at a party, I think, "It's hotter here than Eau Claire," and really, it is such a key phrase for my entire existence at parties. In fact, the entire story hits incredibly close to home. Now that I'm older I have a slightly different view of the story, but it still is quite a fun read. It's amazing how well Fitzgerald puts it together, and how fresh and vivid the characters seem.
  
  Excerpt: Much as Warren worshipped Marjorie, he had to admit that Cousin Bernice was sorta dopeless. She was pretty, with dark hair and high color, but she was no fun on a party. Every Saturday night he danced a long arduous duty dance with her to please Marjorie, but he had never been anything but bored in her company.


• "The Ice Palace" follows a young Southern girl who gets engaged to a Northerner. She makes a journey to his hometown, and he takes her to a winter carnival. Full of fascinating insights, and the main character is intriguing.
  
  Excerpt: The [engagement] settlement took only a quiet afternoon and an evening in front of a glowing open fire, for Harry Bellamy had everything she wanted; and, besides, she loved him--loved him with that side of her she kept especially for loving. Sally Carrol had several rather clearly defined sides.

The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Such tight, perfect prose, such breathless, amazing tension. Buck the dog is transformed from his lazy Santa Clara existence into a creature of the Wild.

Excerpt: [Buck] was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation.

Comments

[marginaliana]

Really interesting list. I have bad memories of The Awakening because I wrote a paper on it in school and my teacher said that I "completely missed the point of the novel." LOL am I still bitter about that? You bet. :D

[valis2.livejournal.com]

grah! That really sucks, I'm so sorry! It really is one of my favorite pieces of writing ever. Such an amazing work.