Do-It-Yourself Canon

[truepenny]

melymbrosia led me to the slippery slope. lnhammer gave me a push.

I've tried to abide fairly strictly by two criteria: admiration and liking. So, for example, while I will admit that Ulysses is a great novel, I will also admit cheerfully that I hate it. Thus, it is not on my list.

Other than that, I don't know. You tell me.


1. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
2. Villette, Charlotte Brontë
3. Dracula, Bram Stoker
4. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
5. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
6. Beloved, Toni Morrison
7. Watership Down, Richard Adams
8. Foe J. M. Coetzee
9. The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
10. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
11. The Dead Zone, Stephen King
12. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
13. Brightness Falls from the Air, James Tiptree, Jr.
14. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
16. Sandman, Neil Gaiman
17. Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
18. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
19. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
20. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
21. Wild Life, Molly Gloss
22. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
23. 1984, George Orwell
24. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
25. We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
26. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
27. Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
28. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
29. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

If I had never exchanged another word with you, the presence of Villette, The Death of the Heart, and Sandman on your list would make me want to be your friend.

Re:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Is that just because they're all three fantastic books, or because I've put them on the same list?

Re:

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Same list.

There are many more than three fantastic books on your list. (Wouldn't put Tiptree on mine. Prefer the short fiction. But it's probably time for a reread. Am also amused both you and h.l. picked Wild Life.)

[heresluck]

Always happy to amuse. *g*

I'm already plotting how to work Herland, Wild Life and some Firefly episodes into a course on The Frontier In American Narrative. Man, I am never gonna get a job.

[larryhammer]

Heh. That produces some interesting connections. (Not to mention, wow, someone who's heard of Molly Gloss.) Especially with Dracula that high up.

---L.

Re:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

They're not in any kind of order. Just random hodge-podgery.

But, yeah. Molly Gloss. Wild Life is just ... wow.

Re:

[larryhammer]

I confess I haven't read that one yet. I'm still simmering from Dazzle of Day. Which, come to think of it, has connections with both Le Guin and Tiptree. <makes note on TBR list>

---L.

Re:

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I totally stalked Molly Gloss at WisCon last year. To her credit, she was not alarmed.

At least, she didn't APPEAR to be alarmed.

Wild Life is my favorite of her books (well, I'm saving a couple for future reading, but I bet I will like them less just because of their topics).

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

Well, you got rid of all the mid-century Manly Men on the ML list, thank goodness. My own list would differ significantly in some places -- lots more early stuff for one, although I guess if we take a strict line on novel form my desire for Absolutely Everyone to understand Margery Kempe would be less obvious -- but at least I recognize and appreciate most of yours. :)

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

This is what I haven't read from your list. What a difference, eh?

5. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
8. Foe J. M. Coetzee
11. The Dead Zone, Stephen King
13. Brightness Falls from the Air, James Tiptree, Jr.
14. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
16. Sandman, Neil Gaiman

27. Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
28. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe

[papersky.livejournal.com]

What is it supposed to be a canon of?

Most stick to one form -- like film, or novels, or poetry, or comic books. If you're going to include Sandman, why not include The Waste Land, Monet's Waterlilies, or for that matter Earl Grey tea?

Re:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Because I think Sandman is a novel.

Other than that, it's all entirely subjective. And I don't know what it's a canon of; that's why I almost didn't post it at all.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

It's very heartening to see someone else with a high regard for We.

[pbprincess.livejournal.com]

Villette and Foe would definitely be on my list as well, but though I admit to perplexity at some of the choices on the other list, it seemed like they were limited to books written in the 20th C.

I haven't heard of a couple of the other authors before...Molly Gloss? must follow up.

Re:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Regardless of what the Modern Library thinks it's doing, no canon, even a canon as hopeless compromised and idiosyncratic as this one, is complete without Wuthering Heights.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Agreed

[pbprincess.livejournal.com]

or Villette.

Did seem to me like the choices they made were overwhelmingly "Modern" (in the bad sense) even if the focus was 20th C.

[pameladean]

Oh, good, my planet, my people. The only one of these I haven't read is the Molly Gloss, so now I suppose I'll have to.

Pamela

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

Finally, a literature list I agree with! [tiny voice]If only because I've read more than half of it[/tiny] I heart you, for having TLU and Sandman on this.