Tuesday 07 May 2024
Dear Student:
Over the years, several students have asked for my guidance concerning reading additional books. And in the past, I had prepared a stock, typical list of titles—or, at least, I had considered that reading list to be stock because I thought other professors or teachers would select the very same titles as I had written down. Therefore, my recommendations, I clumsily thought, would seem banal, expected, or unhelpful. Yes, some of the titles below do appear on other recommendation lists, but I think I shouldn’t avoid recommending them simply because other critics or teachers urge their audiences or students to read them. After all, those books are extraordinary books, and you should read them, too.
I chose not to give you that list; instead, I reflected carefully upon titles that, I hope, you will learn from, too. I taught many of these works in previous courses, not just the war class. Other books have shaped my thinking, teaching, and yes, living life. Even the darkest, most challenging works fight to preserve some fragment of life. Therefore, I don’t think that some of the books are despairing because all creativity—even works of art that confront evil and other undermining forces—resists the pull toward the abyss. These books affirm life, not degrade it. Art is life.
So, perhaps, you will gain a deeper sense of who I am from this recommendation list.
Some books I needed to read more than once to gain a basic understanding. As I grew older, I reread them, and their insights became clearer. You probably will discover this realization, too. Sometimes, we aren’t ready yet for certain books, and need to read other books first and/or need certain life experiences to get us ready for their lessons. This I believe: education is a life-long journey. I also believe that my education has kept me young(ish).
I am glad you heeded my final lesson on the last day of class: “please don’t let the ending of this course be the last time you pick up a book and read. Keep reading. Go to the museum to see that painting. Explore the city and find that memorial or monument. Cultivate your humanity.”
Of course, even after you graduate, please email me if you have any questions about these books.
Very Respectfully,
D
POETRY:
Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry;” “The Wound-Dresser.” Get lost in his Leaves of Grass
Czesław Miłosz, Collected Poetry: too many great ones to list specifically. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature
Wisława Szymborska, Poems New & Collected 1957 1997; again, see above comment. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Bertolt Brecht, “When Evil-Doing Comes Like Falling Rain”
Carolyn Forché, The Country Between Us
William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” (Published a week after 9/11. Written a year and half before. Incredible!)
Anna Akhmatova, “Requiem”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “I Would Like;” “Babi Yar”
NONFICTION:
Aesop, Aesop’s Fables
Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience;” Nature; “Self-Reliance;” “The American Scholar”
Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind
Václav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe
James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village”
Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved. Also try If This Is a Man—original title (Survival in Auschwitz—American title)
Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”
Lionel Trilling, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays. His literary essays motivated me how to write my own.
Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (known as “Civil Disobedience”)
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War
Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II
Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. I also like: Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Her philosophy guided me during graduate school.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God. Her philosophy played an important role in my first book. Her (tragic) life and death are worth reading about in a biography.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (abridged version)
Émile Zola,” J’Accuse…!”
A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. This book taught me how to write like a scholar.
Irving Howe, Politics and the Novel. Another great teacher who taught me how to write.
Shaun Usher (ed.), Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid
Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture
Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey Into The Whirlwind (Also watch the film adaptation by Marleen Gorris, Within the Whirlwind)
DRAMA:
Anton Chekhov, The Seagull; Uncle Vanya—my favorite; Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
William Shakespeare, King Lear
Euripides, The Trojan Women
Bertolt Brecht, Galileo
NOVELS:
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate. I wish I could teach this one for the war class.
Franz Kafka, The Trial; The Castle
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Basically, any book. My personal favorite is: The Idiot
Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (I taught this book several times for the war class)
Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife (I taught it once. Should include it for the war class)
Imre Kertész, Fatelessness (Also watch the film version)
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Amy Waldman, The Submission
SHORT STORIES, NOVELLAS:
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis; “The Hunger Artist”
Lev Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Also try The Sevastopol Sketches (I taught this one for my first war class)
Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener; A Story of Wall Street”
Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”
Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Dog”
Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Katherine Mansfield, “A Dill Pickle”
FILM:
Paweł Pawlikowski, Ida
Andrzej Wajda. Start with his War Trilogy (A Generation; Kanał; Ashes and Diamonds. Then Man of Marble; Man of Iron. Harder to find: Samson; Korczak; Holy Week
Masaki Kobayashi, The Human Condition (Trilogy. 9hrs. Incredible! About WW2. I taught the first part, No Greater Love, to my West Point cadets.)
Elem Klimov, Come and See. (Difficult but important film about Nazi war crimes in Soviet Union)
Andrei Tarkovsky, all of them, but start with Stalker then The Mirror.
Shohei Imamura, Black Rain (Usually teach this film about post-Hiroshima Japan)
Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon
Isao Takahata, Grave of the Fireflies
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, La última cena
Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator
MUSIC:
Henryk Górecki, Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 (also known as: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs)
Frédéric Chopin, all of it!