'There Are Uses for All Kinds of Books'

I’m skeptical of book lists. Experience tells me good books are best discovered serendipitously. Good readers tend to be hungry and enterprising, and they will always find the books they want to read, one way or another. Systematizing the process seems pointless. Unless a book is part of a mandatory curriculum, or one is reading for review, some of us resent unsolicited reading suggestions. I hate being told there’s a book I “just have to read.” No, I don’t. Tastes are prohibitively individual. I’m famous in my family for being hard to shop for on birthdays and holidays. Non-readers seem to think any old book will do. 

A reader has asked for a list of books I think “everybody should read.” He’s young and smart, and already seems fairly well-read, especially for someone his age. I’ve suggested he use Anecdotal Evidence as an ad hoc, loosely organized library catalogue. Poke around. See if my account of a given writer, or the frequency with which I mention him, sounds attractive. Then go to the library or bookstore. You have little to lose. When reading, always follow through, a suggestion I took from my brother. By that I mean, what writers does the first writer allude to, imitate or praise? This encourages happy discoveries and raises your awareness of literature as a vast, loosely woven fabric. Every book is linked, however remotely, to every other book. That’s what Borges taught us. 

 

Frank MacShane, the biographer of Raymond Chandler and Ford Madox Ford, wrote a remembrance of Edward Dahlberg soon after the latter’s death in 1977. Dahlberg had known Ford in the Thirties and supplied MacShane with background. The biographer writes:

 

“Edward venerated the classics, and anyone who knew him was bound to have one of his book lists, most of whose titles are never read in the universities. One of mine includes these books: the Letters of Eric Gill, Ruskin’s The Political Economy of Art, Strabo’s Geography, Seneca’s Morals, Plutarch’s Moralia, Lucian’s Dialogues, The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno, Egolatry by Pio Baroja and a dozen more. He thought it absurd that students be required to rush through their literature courses at the rate of a novel a week, and he always cautioned that you should not proceed with a book if you did not like it.”

 

In general, I agree. In the past I’ve written about reading lists assembled by Dahlberg and Marianne Moore. They are entertaining mostly for what they say about the list-makers. Among the titles recounted by MacShane, I’ve read most – not Gill, certainly, or Strabo – but the Unamuno has been one of my Desert Island Books for half a century. See what I mean? Pick and choose privately, according to your own bent, which can change significantly over time. In this case, Dahlberg was a difficult, angry guy. Weigh his thoughts carefully. MacShane goes on:

 

“Quoting Nietzsche, he said the book may be ripe for you, but not you for the book. Edward's book lists were daunting and  somewhat indigestible, but they reinforced the idea that books were written by human beings for others of their kind to read. Also he believed that for the education of a whole and feeling person it was as important to know about geography and natural history and cooking as it was to be expert in textbook knowledge. This awareness is wonderfully liberating for a writer because it gets rid of the idea of specialisation. Also, it means that nothing is forbidden: there are uses for all kinds of books.”