For the next few weeks, I'll be sharing my favorite works of art. These are not necessarily my answers to "What is the best movie/tv show/song, etc.?" They merely represent some of my favorite pieces that, perhaps, have shaped me. Now, I share them with you.
Favorite Novel:
Ulysses
Ulysses is daunting for any reader and, when I discovered it comprised the entire second part of a semester in a college literary criticism course, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. But ever since I trudged through it, I’ve never been the same reader or person ever again. At the risk of sounding erudite, Ulysses strikes me as a call from Joyce for real change in literary perspective. Sadly, it seems Joyce was the only one to answer his call—with Finnegan’s Wake—seventeen years later. While we students were fortified with Harry Blamire’s The New Bloomsday Book, it was actually a simultaneous listening of the unabridged recording of Ulysses by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan that made my first reading more than an exercise in futility.
Favorite Short Story:
"Distance"
An equally talented poet and fiction writer, Raymond Carver gave the
American short story a shock of electricity it desperately needed in collections as remarkable as Cathedral and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. One of his most eclectic and serious collections was the ethereal Fires, which included short stories, poems, and works of non-fiction. Among the cream of its stories is "Distance," the story of a young marriage and the decision of a husband to leave for a hunting trip while his baby is sick. Both as sparsely described as a Hemingway story but emotionally heartbreaking as the work of the great novelists, "Distance" is worth reading perpetually. Multiple readings not only deepen one's understanding, but sharpen the poesy, setting, the icy misunderstanding built into the rich characters, and freshen the redemption of the ending, as pure and lovely as his stories "Fat" and "A Small Good Thing."
Favorite Novella:
Heart of Darkness
It was in tenth grade at the Alabama School of Fine Arts when I became a devoted lover of literature and when I discovered my favorite authors. The course, at the time, was "World Literature" and it has been sadly replaced with a pathetic pre-20th century American Lit course (basically Irving and the Federalist Papers). But it was with Mr. Brad Hill, that I first discovered Carver, whom I've read ever since. He also very smartly put Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness right alongside Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Years later, I went to Mr. Hill's class and performed readings from both works in addition to Vachel Lindsay's poem "The Congo" as a project for college and a favor to him. I was not a great reader in the 10th grade, but I knew immaculately composed prose when I saw it. Conrad, whose fourth language was English, weaves a cubist narrative of such grace and power that its length (its shortness) is almost a hinderance. Of course, there are elements which are not 21st century moralism, but I cannot and will not blame the author for the time they lived in—regardless of plutocratic revisionists.
Favorite Poem:
"Porphyria's Lover"
This is, by far, the most difficult of choices I made for this series. Any one of the poems I truly love could go here. Catch me in a different moment and I would say e. e. cummings' "[since feeling is first]" or Raymond Carver's "This Word Love." But my favorite poet most certainly is Tennyson's contemporary Robert Browning, whose dramatic monologues (much more successful than his plays) are shimmering with detail and manage to wear the mantle of poetry despite their monological nature. "Porphyria's Lover," a nasty little piece about a man who discovers how to keep his love devoted to him forever, is as chilling as "My Last Duchess," but in meter and rhyme as perfect as Victorian verse gets. It is both indicative of our long, human affair with suspense and horror as well as our devotion to romance and compassion. Then again, as I write this, maybe the poem should be Edgar Allan Poe's three line "[Deep in earth]..." I don't know. Decisions, decisions.
Favorite Autobiography:
Music by Philip Glass
I think many of us long for the day when there will be an autobiography or
memoir worth reading. I would be interested in an autobiography as precise and cohesive as a biography, but you would have to die and then come back to finish it, of course. African American literature gives us the only true world-class autobiographies we have and yet a memoir that traces an artist's life as it relates to the work is more interesting than a work about the life. Philip Glass' beautifully titled Music by Philip Glass (released in the UK as Opera on the Beach) traces the composer's early studies with Nadia Boulanger and Ravi Shankar and goes into detail about the formation of the productions and scores of the "Portrait Opera" trilogy—Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten. Filled with anecdotes and adages worth internalizing (such as 'Let us not forget, after all, that theater...is a species of poetry. It is our confidence in the validity of artistic truths that gives courage to our efforts”), the book is as clear and clear-headed as the music itself. Including priceless photographs and the libretti to the three operas, it is an item worth collecting. Each time you read it, the author's thoughts charge you to use such clarity in your work as well. I wouldn't mind seeing it updated to include the later operas, though Mr. Glass has now given us a more life-centered work in Words without Music. That does not replace this volume in my mind.
Favorite Biography:
The Kindness of Strangers
Anyone who knows me knows I have a love-hate relationship with Tennessee Williams. While I agree with most people that A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are among the greatest scripts written on this continent, I have a hard time ranking Williams with O'Neill and Albee (our greatest American playwrights) because of a long string of off-work in his later years, with the notable exceptions of Small Craft Warnings and The Red Devil Battery Sign, which I believe have great merit still to be found in suitable productions. It seems to me no one was better at dramatizing insanity than Williams, but the later works seem written from within psychosis, far less interesting from a dramaturgical standpoint. Williams was brilliant at character construction but could wreck a play like The Night of the Iguana by giving the tremendous characters nothing to do. Out of all the playwrights I have read deeply, I have read more of him and more work about him than the average Joe. Donald Spoto's The Kindness of Strangers is one of those controversial books to Williams' associates that makes great reading for those of us who didn't know the man. There is pain and heartbreak in its chapters, but unlike many biographies of him (including Williams' own Memoirs and John Lahr's Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh), there is a greater overall vision of Williams' work and life. Reading Williams and reading about Williams is not for the faint of heart. I believe the man was born at the right second, minute, hour, day, month, and year that made continuous great playwriting impossible. There was no chance for the comeback that O'Neill and Albee had. Neither was there for Miller (an equally disturbing descent). And yet, Williams' life is worth knowing and most of his work worth remembering.
Favorite Fairy Tale:
Rumpelstiltskin
Who could ever explain what makes a fairy tale appealing? It captured your imagination so long ago. All I know is it's always been "Rumpelstiltskin" from the Brothers Grimm's Children's and Household Tales. I think it has something to do with a beautifully illustrated version I found in a library once (one of my first trips to a library) and an animated musical version by Hallmark's Timeless Tales video series. After reading more Disney-fied versions of the story, I prefer the Brothers' 1857 edition which ends with Rumpelstiltskin splitting himself in two. The gruesomeness, I suppose, appeals to boys. However, after hearing an interesting interpretation of "Sleeping Beauty" that compares the finger-pricking to the first sign of menstrual blood for young women, I've taken fairy tales a lot more seriously.
Favorite Children's Book:
The House at Pooh Corner
In much the way I favor Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I prefer A. A. Milne's second book of Pooh stories—The House at Pooh Corner—as opposed to Winnie-the-Pooh. I think it's the stories themselves—the introduction of Tigger and the better stories for Eeyore. Also, the ending and saying goodbye to Christopher Robin as he is growing up makes the book a bittersweet companion to the original. I'll always prefer bitter-sweetness over the saccharine.
Favorite Graphic Novel:
Watchmen
Slowly, my sense of what is art and what is entertainment is only widening. As my final entry to literary works, I'm including the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons creation Watchmen. There are still some new forms which I believe may never become art. I tend to agree with the late Roger Ebert that, however grand video games become, they'll never really be art in the sense that art changes you internally. But, then again, I could be blinkered. I didn't use to think that a comic would ever be called a graphic novel. Times are changing and I must get with it sometimes.
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