'Curiosity Matters More Than Any Syllabus'

I can think of many reasons someone might wish to assemble a reading list and share it with others. Most obviously, teachers drawing up a syllabus for students. I remember taking a class in “The Modern Japanese Novel” and getting the list of seven books by writers I had never heard of (except for Yukio Mishima, for extra-literary reasons), including one who would become a favorite: Natsume Sōseki. 

And never underestimate the compulsion to show off. Our age grows more post-literate by the hour but in certain circles there remains a cachet attached to reading, especially “hard books,” so-called classics or the literary hit du jour. You can get a lot of attention in the small world of readers with a solemn suggestion to snuggle up with Finnegans Wake.

 

Finally, there’s the simple wish to share the wealth with others, especially young readers. This can be an act of generosity. I still periodically reread Tristram Shandy thanks to one of my professors and her enthusiasm for Sterne more than half a century ago. In the April issue of New English Review, G. Murphy Donovan publishes “A Reading List for a Curious Mind”:

 

“Not long ago I had a conversation with the son of a longtime friend about books—what to read, where to begin, and how someone builds a library. It is the sort of question that deserves more than an off-the-cuff answer, so afterward I promised him I would put together a short reading list.”

 

You’ll find no surprises on Donovan’s list and a couple of clams (jazz slang for wrong notes). He acknowledges that six of his ten titles are novels, suggesting that the supremacy of long fiction since the eighteenth century remains in place.

 

Another reason someone might share a reading list is to elicit objections to his selections. That’s inevitable, so let’s get it out of the way: Dune is sub-literary junk, topical pulp fiction. Vladimir Nabokov denounced Catch-22 as “anti-American” and “seditious.” He left out “sophomoric.” One Hundred Years of Solitude, written by Fidel’s pal, is among the most overrated books of the twentieth century. Tedious refried Faulkner. I applaud Donovan’s choice of poets – Homer, Dante, Dickinson.

 

Do reading lists work? Do they get non-readers to read? Impossible to say. I do know that children who see their parents reading are likelier to become enthusiastic readers, though my own experience, in part, refutes that claim. My parents were not readers and we had few books in the house. Donovan closes with a reality-based endorsement of autodidacticism:

  

“If you want an education, find something that genuinely interests you and pursue it relentlessly. No school will do that work for you.

 

“Reading widely helps, but curiosity matters more than any syllabus. A good book does not give you answers so much as it teaches you how to ask better questions.”