Peter at Mosses from an Old Manse gives a list headed, with charming self-deprecation, "75 of maybe 150 'Essential Texts' in No Particular Order and not including reference books"; I like this sort of personal grab-bag far more than the dutiful "100 Greatest Novels/Books/Poems of All Time" lists that are always being thrust on us, and it includes so many authors I myself love (Hugh Macdiarmid, Coleridge, Basil Bunting, Fernand Braudel, Charles Reznikoff, Lorine Niedecker, Hilary Mantel, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens [and I too would pick Harmonium of all his books])—including Charles Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta, a great, great book I thought no one besides me had read in decades (do not get an abridged edition, and you will need the OED constantly at hand)—that I'm thinking I should give Anthony Powell a try simply because he's on the list.
Posted by languagehat at September 5, 2003 04:11 PMI really enjoyed the First Movement of Dance to the Music of Time when I read it a few years ago. I'm hoping to have a go at the whole piece this winter.
Posted by: Chris at September 6, 2003 02:24 AMAre you a fan of Bruce Chatwin? Any reference to travel literature makes me think of him...
Posted by: pat at September 6, 2003 02:25 AMI'm a fan of his with the proviso that I haven't actually read any entire books by him... but I've read enough excerpts to know he's a wonderful writer, and I own The Songlines and am very much looking forward to reading it.
Posted by: language hat at September 6, 2003 09:50 AMThanks for the link and kind words! Do read Powell, who amongst other things is not averse to using the odd word you have to look up. I came to Doughty from MacDiarmid's 1936 essay 'Charles Doughty and the Need for Heroic Poetry', which is mostly about Doughty's six volume epic "The Dawn in Britain", which I had for a week once in the vanished days of free inter-library loans...
Posted by: Peter C at September 6, 2003 05:53 PMThe vanished days of free inter-library loans? What happened? Do you have to pay now?? At any rate, I dipped into "The Dawn in Britain" and decided it was more of a commitment than I could envision.
Posted by: language hat at September 6, 2003 07:24 PMI'm not a student, so at my local college library its 10 bucks a book now. Fellow Canadian poet (and big time bibliophile) Steve McCaffrey once casually claimed to have read the first four volumes....
Posted by: Peter C at September 6, 2003 07:44 PMTen bucks a book?! *faints*
Thank ghod for the New York Public Library!