The Short List of Essential Reading

There is no definite set of books that everyone is expected to read. In western culture there are hundreds of novels and writers who make up the loosely demarcated cannon of literature. Yet it is obvious that certain books are referred to, talked about, and cited in (cultural) conversation more than others.

If we narrow down the list of important and relevant books to less than a dozen, here is what it might look like...

The Sound & the Fury

William Faulkner's challenging masterpiece is often referred to in conversations concerning modernist fiction, stream-of-consciousness fiction, and highly stylized narratives.

Written in four stylistically distinct sections, The Sound and the Fury explores a single generation of one southern family moving from decadence to decay, struggling to find ways for individual family members to find their own sustainable identity.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville's wild and dark account of a maniacal whale hunt led by Captain Ahab is one of the most widely discussed pieces of fiction by an American writer. Moby Dick is discussed in reference to ideas of "greatest American novels", American Romanticism, hybrid fiction, character archetypes, organizing metaphors in fiction and allegory.

Though this large book may not technically qualify as a traditional novel or as a true allegory, Moby Dick is discussed in these terms anyway. Highly charged with metaphor, with epic and tragic sensibility and a myriad of styles and voices, Moby Dick is the original tour de force of fiction.

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad's great achievement Heart of Darknesswas published at the turn of the century as global empires were entering their final decades of power. His brief novel uses a story skeleton focused on the exploitative ivory trade carried out by a Belgian company in the center of "the dark continent". Africa, in this novel, is dark because it represents the unknown, a theme that is central to the thrust of Heart of Darkness.

The unknown is the primary exploration of Conrad's masterpiece, as the novel tells the story of Marlowe, a man hired to pursue another man who has gone of into the jungles of Africa to conquer the unknown and thereby conquer death.

Kurtz fails to wrench immortality from the forces of chaos with whom he dares to wrestle and Marlowe discovers a brave, deranged and broken man when he finally reaches Kurtz at the end of the river.

Heart of Darkness is discussed for its controversial representation of Africans, for its commentary on the commercial exploitation of native peoples, and for its density of ideas and emotions.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby has been called "the most perfect novel." With a fluid style, a concise form, and a tremendously clear presentation of characters, F. Scott Fitzgerald honed his skills into a masterpiece of American letters.

Beyond the significant technical qualities of The Great Gatsby, the novel takes up some essentially modern themes (of wealth, status, social order) and examines them in light of perennial themes of integrity, deception, and ambition.

Referred to in many conversations on modernism, The Great Gatsby also comes up in discussions of style, clarity, the novel form, American striving, class distinctions, the nouveau riche and first person narrative.

Ulysses

More people claim to have read Ulysses than any other of James Joyce works. Ulysses is regularly referred to as the greatest literary work of the 20^th century, the high point of modernism, and as Joyce's greatest achievement.

A verbal mud-trap, a layer-cake of narratives and classical references, Ulysses is a rich literary bog perfect for those who want to climb the literary mountain top and raise their flag.

However, Ulysses also stands as a testament to the wisdom of the notion: "just because you can doesn't mean you should." This applies to the writing and reading of Ulysses. (See Irish writer Roddy Doyle's take on Ulysses.)

To clarify a bit, we might point to a comparison between the challenging modernist work of William Faulkner and James Joyce.

Where Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is driven by a passionate will to express a psychological and spiritual truth of the characters in the novel, using twisting stream-of-consciousness to mimic the twisting corridors of the minds and spirits of those characters, Ulysses has no such intention. The thick and obtuse style seems driven by a will to evade - evading both story and character - so that a reader is challenged constantly to answer the most basic question: Why am I still reading this?

Yet, due to its immense reputation, Ulysses makes the short list of essential reading.

War & Peace

Leo Tolstoy wrote this book when he was still a young man, exploring at length a metaphorical question relating calculus to history. Can we express the truth of history through the lens of calculus? Can we break down the area under the curve (of sweeping historical events) to look at the details, the individuals, the personalities and the whims which are the component parts of history and in this way express a precise result?

This is a big, strange philosophical and artistic question and it is a big, strange, philosophical artistic novel. Upon cracking the spine of War and Peace it becomes immediately clear that honest readers world-wide have been reading this novel for over a hundred years because it is highly engaging and entertaining, and not just because they want to say they have read the world's longest book (which it isn't anyway).

War and Peace is discussed in regards to historical fiction, Russian literature, spiritual ideas, war, and fiction of European aristocracy.

*

More From Associated Content:
What Books to Recommend to a College Student
Nutshell Classics: One Line Synopses of Classic Fiction
Novelists Succeeding in Hollywood

Further Reference:
100 Greatest 20th Century Novels
Ulysses is Overrated
Ulysses Is Overreated (2)
A Defense of Ulysses