This morning, waking up early to cough a week or so after I thought I'd shaken a minor unidentified ear-nose-throat virus (it began in my ear), I chanced to see what sort of news my smartphone had to offer. I try to avoid doing this, but like many things in life, it's an addictive practice and admittedly provides me with a fine array of news not just about covid-19 and the ex-president, but about Stonehenge, ancient hominins, camping, fungus-infected ants preserved in amber, and advice columns by at least three different people.
Of late it's been offering up a lot of literary and writer-oriented stuff, and so this morning I found myself devouring a list on Lithub of short novels (under 200 pages) written before 1970.
Now, although I am trying very hard to read fiction by current authors, I'm more the kind of reader who goes for underappreciated gems that have nonetheless passed the test of time. It's no surprise that I'm a historian of modern rather than contemporary art. Anyway, while as the list-maker (Emily Temple) admits, it's sort of a white-male-dominated list, it's still an exciting list and I was thrilled to see so many familiar and new titles.
I'm going to break up the list into what I've read, what I've meant to read (or at least knew of), and what I've never heard of.
Read
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel: The list began with this! I'm stunned. I read this just after graduating from college, when I was interning at an experimental theater and checking out books from the Mill Valley public library. I read a lot that summer, most of it pretty famous (from Joyce's Ulysses to all of Raymond Chandler).
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Not sure how old I was when I read this. High school? Junior high? Grade school?I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories at least once. Probably ought to read them again.
Italo Calvino, The Cloven Viscount: Ah, what a delight. I discovered Italo Calvino just before starting college, thanks to (of all things) a book review in Time. I really need to reread this. It's been too long. I love Italo Calvino.
Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar: Did I read this in high school or in college? I read a fair amount of Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut all around the same time. It's what we did in the 1970s.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice: First read this in 1980, for a class. I read it while sunbathing nude in a meadow, which I put into the pandemic novella I wrote last year because such things belong in fiction. Of course, it could be argued that I should have read it at the beach instead. It's the kind of thing I would read at the beach if I hung out at beaches. Grim, diseased, with long sentences.
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Probably read this in high school. The Haunting of Hill House was the Shirley Jackson I read many times as a child, but I read other Shirley Jackson books in high school.
Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse: I read this in junior high or high school, probably the latter. My recollection of it is not all that clear; time to reread.
Franz Kafka, The Trial: First read this in high school, when I devoured Kafka.
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood: I believe I picked this up in or just after college. Another of those curiously influential books twisting my mind.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea: I love Jean Rhys, but this is my least favorite of her books. I've only read it once. I did give my mother a copy since she loved Jane Eyre, but I have no idea what my mother thought of this take on the characters.
Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means: Guessing that I first read this is my twenties, when I read practically every Muriel Spark novel that then existed (and which all, in the library copies, showed Spark in what seemed a bizarrely outdated and extravagant style of hair and makeup). These days I read this and several other Spark novels frequently and do not read certain of the others at all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby: I suppose I must have first read this in high school, back when I was somewhat baffled by the idea of someone's voice sounding like money. Like coins? Like paper money? I wasn't sure.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin: Curiously, this is one I only read quite recently, and enjoyed it. I haven't read all that much Nabokov. I always enjoy The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; I liked Lolita well enough back in my teens or twenties but found it rather horrifying more recently; I was not that wild about Ada.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange: Read this in college, or possibly high school. I know I saw the movie in college. The invented slang intrigued me.
Meant to Read Someday, or Knew Of, or Read Others by the Author
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men: Never got around to this; read The Red Pony and The Grapes of Wrath.
George Orwell, Animal Farm: Yeah, I know I should. And it almost seems like maybe I did.
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice: I am pretty sure I somehow missed this.
Nella Larsen, Passing: Knew of this because I read Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun, which gets discussed in relation to Passing.
Albert Camus, The Stranger: Somehow never got around to it.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening: Started it in high school, apparently got distracted and didn't finish it.
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich: I have no idea why I haven't read any Tolstoy yet. Wait, I did read something he wrote on art, thinking I might assign it to students.
Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man: I read an awful lot of Isherwood in high school, but not this one. Saw the movie.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground: Read a lot of Dostoevsky in junior high, but I don't think this was among them. Could be wrong.
Anna Kavan, Ice: I've read other works by Kavan, but never heard of this one.
Jean Toomer, Cane: I've known who Jean Toomer was for ages, but never looked for or run across his books.
Knut Hamsun, Hunger: Ought to read it, haven't yet.
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room: Unsure why I haven't ended up reading any James Baldwin yet.
Willa Cather, O Pioneers! One of those books my mother read growing up that I haven't gotten to yet. I did read at least one Cather short story long ago.
Herman Melville, Billy Budd. Didn't realize this was short. Moby Dick has been on my to-read list.
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49: Not sure why I didn't read any Pynchon back in my twenties.
George Eliot, Silas Marner: This always sounded like something that might bore me.
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's: This might be a nice antidote to In Cold Blood, which I've read at least twice. Saw the movie on an airplane shortly before the pandemic, oddly enough.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart: Have heard this is good (I mean, before reading the LitHub list).
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn: Know of the author, haven't yet read him.
Philip K. Dick, Ubik: Read a few others by Dick and mostly enjoyed them; not this one yet.
Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart: Read one of her books in my twenties and have never run across any others. The one I read was destroyed by salt water and I'm baffled as to which one it was.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God: Keep meaning to read this...
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome: One of those books that I suspected would be dull and so have not read.
Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock: Saw the movie, didn't know it was based on a book.
Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop: OK, I know I should read Carter's fiction as well as her nonfiction...
Somehow Completely Off My Radar
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World
Kenzaburo Oe, A Personal Matter
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten
Leonard Gardner, Fat City
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go
Charles Portis, Norwood
Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
Readers are invited to add to the list (not doubling up on authors). A quick look at my shelves didn't offer much. I was surprised that my copy of Heinrich Böll's The End of a Mission was slightly over 200 pages, and I forgot to check if it was pre-1970 (it is). Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is just under 200 pages. I lost a lot of books to salt water, long ago.
