| The Authentic Fables of Reason: Winter-ready Reading Suggestions for Suede1976
Suede ~ I hope you don't mind my responding to your last comment by putting up this list as a post. :)
For starters, I won't promise that this list is chock-full of new, cutting-edge authors. In reality, it's a bit more of an inverse on new -- these are some of my favorite tried-and-true writer's, whose voices I value most.
The title of this entry is drawn from the introduction to my copy of Voltaire's Candide and Other Stories.
"Like the serpent's fable in The White Bull, all Voltaire's stories are an onslaught on taboo, and not least the taboo that theological, metaphysical, scientific, moral, political, and aesthetic debate must be conducted with earnest reverence in dry-as-dust language. For Voltaire, supper-party conversation was the epitome of civilized human intercourse, and the anecdote it's principal ingredient. He himself was a brilliant ranconteur, and narrative verve is to be found throughout his work, especially in his historical works but aslo in more supposedly abstract or analytical writitngs. {..}For Voltaire the conte philosophique, or philosophical story, was an invaluable and effective weapon in his long campaign against bigotry and intolerance and in favor of open-minded inquiry and debate. In his hands it is a kind of fallen fable: where the fable of old appealed to a childlike credulity and fostered the passive acceptance of incontrovertible moral truths, his modern fable is like an apple plucked from the Tree of Knowledge and handed to us by the Serpent himself that we should 'gorge' ourselves (as he advises Eve in the White Bull) and feel the nakedness of our predjudice. We should eat, question and consider. {...} Fiction, in this way, may sometimes be truer than logic. The story civilizes us, knocks us about, turns us from brutes into men: it affects a metamorphosis. And so, as the Ingenu says "Ah, if we must have fables, let them at least be the emblems of truth! I love philosopher's fables and laugh at children's. I hate those of charlatans." What Voltaire the serpent has given us are the authentic fables of reason." -- Roger Pearson
I feel this quote works well to sum up the theme running through this cobbled collection. The one consistent element I value most in my reading material is a certain ability on the part of the author to delve beneath the surface of the obvious, stir the dust-motes in the back corners of the psyche and finally leave me, as a reader, with a greater appetite for questions and engaged, critical thinking than I had when I sat down to read in the first place.
So it goes without saying that I'm a huge fan of Voltaire. You may have read Candide already -- it's one of those de riguer short stories that tend to crop up in high school AP English Classes. Whether you have or haven't, I'd suggest some of his lesser-known short stories -- in today's world of lit they'd be labeled as flash fiction, they're so brief and succint. You can find a handful of really good ones packaged with Candide: Zadig, Micromegas, The White Bull. Micromegas is my personal favorite of all of these. The heartfelt response of the little follower of Locke could double as a statement of my own beliefs and the ending is funny, thought-provoking and inarguably true.
I'd suggest anything by Margaret Atwood and that's a long list to pull from right there -- Margaret Atwood has written dozens of novels that cross multiple genres, numerous volumes of tightly written brilliant poetry, a handful of short story collections as well as a few non-fiction works to boot. I just finished reading one of her older novels The Blind Assasin (genius), her newest poetry collection Morning in The Burned House (gut-wrenching genius -- be prepared) and one of her short story collections Murder in the Dark (hauntingly poetic).
Also, anything by Phillip K Dick, who is a veritable god of serious sci-fi. You don't have to be an ardent fan of science fiction, however, to enjoy his work. In fact, you're probably already familiar with some of it -- three of his short stories have already been turned into movies: Blade Runner, Total Recall and most recently the Spielburg adaptation Minority Report. None of these films do his writing justice, although Blade Runner comes close (which is why it's a cult classic, eh?) One of my personal favorites from his pen is a short story collection titled I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.
One of my all-time favorite authors is Anais Nin -- fittingly enough one of my boyfriend's favoritest authors is Henry Miller. You see, Nin and Miller had an intense, complex and highly productive relationship in Paris during the 1930s which sparked some of their most seminal work -- Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn and Anais Nin's House of Incest. Both of these are dense, explosive and deliberately provocative works which demand a great deal of open-mindedness and attentiveness from their readers. If you're not familiar with these writer's I'd suggest approaching Miller through some of his non-fiction work: Sunday After the War or Stand Still Like the Hummingbird; and Nin through her diary, keeing in mind that there are two versions of it -- an edited and an unexpurgated version. Switching from one version to another between volumes can be a bit mind-bending as well as jarring. In this one case, there is a wonderful writng-related movie I'd highly, highly suggest (most likely because it's not an adaptation at all, it's a tribute) -- Henry and June. It's a truly memorable film as well as one I've seen several times.
My all-time favorit volume of published poetry (so far, I'm still reading) is Autumn's Eros by Mary Kinzie. Her work is lush, complex, lyrical and expansive. My favorite poems in the collection are Stove Sickness and Strawberry Pipe, the last lines of which always make me cry whenever I read it aloud.
Finally, I'm including a shameless plug for a good friend of mine, although I have to say I think it's fitting because I'm absolutely addicted to his voice -- Andy Haven's currently has a blog at www.tinkerx.com where he posts his thoughts on the process of creativity in an age of flux. In the writing section you can find some of his recent poems -- one of my favorites is Pause -- as well as one of his long-short stories Fourth Wall (read this -- like Atwood's novels, it starts off slow then becomes almost unbearably addictive).
So there you have it -- from Voltaire to new Havens, it's a good chunk to chew on, I think.
Now tell me -- what books make up your list of reading material you can't imagine having never discovered? |
