Following up on my last post about list making, and the one before that about Montaigne, I've been thinking about books I've read that really stayed with me and made a difference. Many people, and particularly book bloggers, seem drawn to such an exercise, which seems to me very difficult. Any such list I might construct would vary from day to day, if not hour to hour, reflecting my mood of the moment.
And books are such a personal thing. You have a relationship with a book and its author. It's almost like a friendship. When you are feeling close to one, you might tend to forget how close you feel or felt to another at some previous time. In fact, some books are like old friends, and after you've grown close to them, you find yourself overlooking their weak points while being drawn closer to them by those things that appeal to you. You may even find that you've come to love their flaws as much as their strengths.
Also like friendships, we tend to be drawn to those we're closest to either in time or place. The most recent book you've read may hold a strong attraction for a while, but will it last? Will it become a really close friend, one of those friends for life we hear so much about lately? And then, from time to time, you may rediscover some book that you haven't thought about for a while. Of course, there is always the danger that you'll find you've grown apart from the book or its author, or even from both, and wonder what it was you saw in them.
Since for many years my profession was teaching literature, I was often in the position of re-reading a book many times, sometimes every year. That might seem perverse to a casual reader, but to a professional, it's one of the principal attractions of the job. Even so, some books will hold up to multiple readings better than others. One way to understand what is meant by a classic is to re-read a book many times over one's own lifetime. But even so, some books that I would readily grant classic status I would not want to have to re-read every year. At some point, as with friendships, it comes down to matters of personal taste.
So what would my list look like. When I asked myself what would be my top ten, I knew immediately where I would begin. No, not with Montaigne's Essays, although that book is certainly high on my list, but with Homer's Iliad. Had I made this list when I was a younger man, I would have begun with the Odyssey, but after re-reading the Iliad over a period of about fifteen years, I realized what an inexhaustible work it is, and how foundational it is for all of western literature and culture. But the reason I've placed it first on my list is that it is a book I would never want to be without. Next I put Shakespeare's Hamlet, for many of the same reasons. I never tire of these two, nor of Montaigne, whose Essays I would place next, in position number three.
I see that unintentionally I've begun with a poem, a play, and a book of essays. Or at least, I've done so unconsciously. I've also revealed my prejudices for classical and Renaissance authors. In the number four position I would put Virgil's Aeneid, which I've read many times both in Latin and in translation, followed closely by Ovid's Metamorphoses. These are two classics that, like Homer's poems, are nearly inexhaustible. Every reading reveals new insights and delights both in language and in story.
So I'm halfway done and no American authors. Realizing that I worry, but I still have to include Henry Fielding's Tom Jones next before I add Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn to my list. Somewhere in here I've got to include Jane Austen, probably Pride and Prejudice, because it seems to be my favorite, and I've read it more often than the others. But now things get hard. With only two spots left, I find I'm having difficulty deciding what to include and what to leave out.
Since this is my own personal list, I'm going to go with sentimental favorites, books that meant a lot to me. And so I come to Jack London's Martin Eden, a book I read in high school, and then re-read again a few years ago. It's one of those books with obvious flaws, but it was the one book that made me realize that I wanted to become an English teacher. After reading that book my fate was sealed. The last book, which is the hardest to choose, will have to be James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It was one of those books I read as a young man, and discovered for myself why I wanted to spend my life among books and authors.
So that is my personal top ten list of the moment. I might think differently tomorrow or next week, but that's the way it is with such list making. If I were to go on to list twenty or twenty-five, I'd have a much easier time and an even more eclectic grouping, but I like the discipline of limiting myself to only ten. It's like writing a sonnet, another of my favorite literary forms. Maybe next I should make a list of my favorite sonnets?
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