The world is coming to an end. You have been selected to get into a bunker that will save you from sure death. Your task is to take 12 books with you that will sum up the very best of literature and thought for all of recorded human history. You will be the only person picking out books, and these will be the only 12 books in existence after Earth’s destruction.
There are some bizarre stipulations: You may only use an author once, you may not pick an anthology of any sort, you must have at least three genres represented, and at least three nationalities represented.
Go ahead, save literary history! What are your twelve books and why for each?
(Please don’t question the scenario. Everyone and everything that doesn’t get in the bunker with you and your books and your few bunker mates will die and be destroyed. End of story.)
1) Does the Oxford English Dictionary count as an anthology? I don’t think so, so that’s my first pick. Got to have it because it is both informative and entertaining. Also, many of those words will not be present in my other choices but I would still like to keep them around.
2,3,) Interestingly, if I can’t have all of Shakespeare then it seems I don’t want him at all. I’m not sure what to plug into his default spot.
(These are dastardly conditions, you know.)
OK.
Virgil’s Aeneid. We’ll need to know of wanderers, won’t we? It can’t hurt for them to be a bit moralistic. And throw in Homer too. If we can’t have them all we should at least hang on to the archetypes. So The Iliad and The Odyssey. Oh, sh!t. Alright, go with The Iliad so we have the double edged sword.
Sophocles may rot in hell, by the way.
4) The Diary of Samuel Pepys, to make us feel that it all does matter after all.
5) Leaves of Grass. Because Whitman does a lovely job of reminding us to rise up singing.
6,7) Because I cannot pick one philosopher as the most significant, and because I think all are worth thinking of, I will choose some overviews:
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
Bcuz, OMG!, itz the best book ever !!!!
Seriously, this book is as close to an all encompassing account of life as you will ever find. I can’t live without it, so I’m taking it with me.
9) For Whom the Bell Tolls, because this is an amazing paean to the soul of man, at war for a principle.
10) Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey.
Because I said so.
11) The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitzyn
One hell of a cautionary tale.
12) Oh hell, not Gilgamesh because that’s no fun, but Beowulf I guess, on principle if nothing else.
Those are my posterity picks. Here’s what I’d sneak in under my skirts for my own solace:
Well, 8,9, and10 from above, but I still get 12 here. As long as we’re making rules I mean . . .
A Confederacy of Dunces
Atlas Shrugged
The Milagro Beanfield War
The Grapes Of Wrath
Clockers
The Sparrow
A Bonfire of the Vanities
Look Homeward, Angel
Nobody’s Fool
Kristin Lavransdatter
Crime & Punishment
The Fellowship of the Rings
And between these two fields is an infinity of work that has shaped me and all of us. I will be mentally editing, in my sleep even. I would love to just keep making you lists of 12 this or 12 that but I guess I have cheated as much as I think is right.
And look at that! I forgot Gibbon, and I would really miss GWTW. This sh!t is impossible.
I am an entirely unreliable narrator.
February 22nd, 2010 at 6:51 am
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING by Viktor E. Frankl
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVITCH by Aleksandr Solzenitsyn
PULP by Charles Bukowski
THE SHINING by Stephen King
WHEN THINGS FALL APART by Pema Chodron
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole
IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE by Edward Gibbon
GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
and
WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by Shirley Jackson
References :
February 22nd, 2010 at 6:58 am
1) Does the Oxford English Dictionary count as an anthology? I don’t think so, so that’s my first pick. Got to have it because it is both informative and entertaining. Also, many of those words will not be present in my other choices but I would still like to keep them around.
2,3,) Interestingly, if I can’t have all of Shakespeare then it seems I don’t want him at all. I’m not sure what to plug into his default spot.
(These are dastardly conditions, you know.)
OK.
Virgil’s Aeneid. We’ll need to know of wanderers, won’t we? It can’t hurt for them to be a bit moralistic. And throw in Homer too. If we can’t have them all we should at least hang on to the archetypes. So The Iliad and The Odyssey. Oh, sh!t. Alright, go with The Iliad so we have the double edged sword.
Sophocles may rot in hell, by the way.
4) The Diary of Samuel Pepys, to make us feel that it all does matter after all.
5) Leaves of Grass. Because Whitman does a lovely job of reminding us to rise up singing.
6,7) Because I cannot pick one philosopher as the most significant, and because I think all are worth thinking of, I will choose some overviews:
The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
Bcuz, OMG!, itz the best book ever !!!!
Seriously, this book is as close to an all encompassing account of life as you will ever find. I can’t live without it, so I’m taking it with me.
9) For Whom the Bell Tolls, because this is an amazing paean to the soul of man, at war for a principle.
10) Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey.
Because I said so.
11) The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitzyn
One hell of a cautionary tale.
12) Oh hell, not Gilgamesh because that’s no fun, but Beowulf I guess, on principle if nothing else.
Those are my posterity picks. Here’s what I’d sneak in under my skirts for my own solace:
Well, 8,9, and10 from above, but I still get 12 here. As long as we’re making rules I mean . . .
A Confederacy of Dunces
Atlas Shrugged
The Milagro Beanfield War
The Grapes Of Wrath
Clockers
The Sparrow
A Bonfire of the Vanities
Look Homeward, Angel
Nobody’s Fool
Kristin Lavransdatter
Crime & Punishment
The Fellowship of the Rings
And between these two fields is an infinity of work that has shaped me and all of us. I will be mentally editing, in my sleep even. I would love to just keep making you lists of 12 this or 12 that but I guess I have cheated as much as I think is right.
And look at that! I forgot Gibbon, and I would really miss GWTW. This sh!t is impossible.
I am an entirely unreliable narrator.
References :