'Everything of Any Seriousness Written in English'

“Whereas a decently well-read person has read the first line of good books (as deep down, say, as Trollope and Aldous Huxley and Lytton Strachey), a rather better-read person (myself, actually) goes further down (to, say, Goncharov and Firbank and Lord Berners).”

Admit it: we secretly read such a passage defensively and quickly do the math: “Five out of six is pretty good.” In my case, I’ve never read a word by Lord Berners. By nature I’m not competitive, except with myself, but I didn’t want to risk censure from Joseph Epstein, author of the sentence quoted above. It’s from “New Prose for Old,” his review of The New Oxford Book of English Prose (1999), edited by John Gross. Epstein continues:

“John Gross’s reading goes yet a third level deeper—and I should be delighted to provide the names of three writers here if only I knew them. As befits a former editor of the London Times Literary Supplement (which he was from 1974–1981), he appears to have read and taken the measure of just about everything of any seriousness written in English.”

Every reader has weak spots, often vast expanses of literature, sometimes entire continents and eras, of which he remains blissfully or guiltily ignorant. I’ve read little from the Anglo-Saxon and Old English, and less from Africa (except for St. Augustine). I was always surprised (and frankly appalled) that my late friend David Myers found time to read so many contemporary novels. But then, I have always read without plan, guided by serendipitous pleasure-seeking. I seldom know what I will read next, and could never follow a Clifton Fadiman-style reading plan.  

Epstein calls Gross’ comprehensiveness “impressive,” but indulges, as we all would, in second-guessing the omissions – “those less than obviously famous writers whose style one admires or finds amusing whom the editor may have forgotten or perhaps did not know.” Epstein writes:

“I could think of only four such exclusions, one highly obscure and one entitled to entry in the book only for an oblique reason: H. W. Fowler, the lexicographer; Sir Steven Runciman, the historian of the Crusades; Colonel John R. Stingo, the pseudonym of the columnist of the Racing Form much quoted by A. J. Liebling; and F. R. Leavis, whose generally wretched prose somehow did not stop him from making powerful arguments—a salutary sign, perhaps, of the limits of style itself.”

To his credit, Gross does include samples of Liebling’s delicious prose (his Honest Rainmaker is devoted to Col. Stingo). And I’ve never read a thing by Runciman, damn it.