'It Is the Only Work We Feel Like Reading'

“Most of the literary works with which we are acquainted fall into one of two classes, those we have no desire to read a second time—sometimes, we were never able to finish them—and those we are always happy to reread. There are a few, however, which belong to a third class; we do not feel like reading one of them very often but, when we are in the appropriate mood, it is the only work we feel like reading. Nothing else, however good or great, will do instead.”

Some find literary taxonomies of the prescriptivist sort unacceptable. The one described above by W.H. Auden makes sense and I suspect some who object will privately subscribe to it. You’ll find Auden’s essay on Byron’s Don Juan (a poem he consigns to the third class) collected in The Dyer’s Hand (1962).

Of necessity, the first class – “those we have no desire to read a second time” – is the most crowded. Good books are rare in any era. Ambitious young readers must plow through vast fields of them while their tastes and critical faculties remain works in progress. With age and experience come confidence and independence. The judgments of others matter less. Fashion and peer pressure can be happily ignored.

Naturally, the second class – “those we are always happy to reread” – is smaller, and many of its titles are self-evident – King Lear, for instance, and Rasselas, Tristram Shandy, Moby-Dick and Dead Souls. Auden’s third category is the most exclusive. It can feel like hunger. Perhaps only an older reader whose literary hedonism has been honed over the decades can maintain such a sui generis private library. On the top shelf, for this reader, is Pale Fire. Some think it the Ur-postmodern novel-as-game but Hazel Shade’s death is no game. Nearby are Zeno’s Conscience, Memoirs of Hadrian, Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, The Collected Essays of J.V. Cunningham, and L.E. Sissman’s Hello, Darkness: Collected Poems. Some days, usually after dark, no other books will do.