Sunday, October 24, 2004
(3:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
A Candid List of Books I Have Not Read, Despite Being a Graduate Student
As a way of procrastinating, an integral part of the process of writing a statement of purpose for philosophy programs, I sought, and found, this ancient Invisible Adjunct post, which refers to a similarly ancient Crooked Timber post by Kieran Healy, the comments of which refer to this article that I actually wanted, which has the following materials:In his novel Changing Places, David Lodge describes a literary parlor game called "Humiliations" in which participants confess, one by one, titles of books they've never read. The genius of the game is that each player gains a point for each fellow player who's read the book—-in other words, the more accomplished the reader, the lower his or her score. Lodge's winner is an American professor who, in a rousing display of one-downmanship, finally announces that he's never read Hamlet.In terms of British literature, I have read Hamlet, as well as The Faerie Queene, The Sheaparde's Calendar, Paradise Lost and Regained, and Sense and Sensibilitiy. I have read Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain in their original versions. Impressive, certainly. More impressive, however, is the list of important or "obvious" books that I have never read:
- Ulysses -- I got about halfway through this one, twice. Dr. Belcher once started a summer reading group devoted to this text, which I halfway thought about joining; as I remember, Paul Anderson actually tamed the beast, while everyone else was too soft.
- Capital -- I have read neither a full volume, nor even selected sections from this great work. I am completely innocent of any acquaintance with Marx's magnum opus except for those proof-texts cited by Zizek, Jameson, et al.
- Critique of Pure Reason -- I once started to read Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, then decided not to read that after all. We can count the other two Critiques, together with the Metaphysics of Morals, the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, and actually anything by Kant other than "Perpetual Peace" and "The Supposed Right to Lie."
- Confessions -- I have read neither Augustine's nor Rousseau's book of this title, though my French exercise book recently presented me with a few morsels from the latter. Similarly, I have not read City of God, Emile, On the Trinity, or The Social Contract.
- The Order of Things -- so much Foucault has happened to me, but I never quite attained the money shot.
- Anti-Oedipus -- If you think not reading this book is impressive, get a load of this: I have never read A Thousand Plateaus, Difference and Repetition, or The Logic of Sense, and I am similarly innocent of any direct knowledge of Deleuze's many insightful studies of pre-critical metaphysicians.
- The Documents of the Second Vatican Council -- who needs to actually sit down and read this stuff? Good liberal Catholics already know what it says: good liberal stuff that supports the kind of changes we'd like to see in the church.
- Works of Love -- again, plenty of Kierkegaard under my belt, but I've never read this one book that seems to be in his "top three" (with Fear and Trembling and Concluding Unscientific Postscript).
- A Tale of Two Cities -- no Dickens for me! Ha!
- East of Eden -- the same goes for Steinbeck (except for one short story), Hemmingway (got only halfway through A Farewell to Arms), Beckett, Sartre, Kundera, Ezra Pound, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Stephen King.
What books haven't you read?
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