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The weakness of the BBC list. . .
. . . is that it is what it is -- a list of the books that the people who responded to the survey read and re-read. That means that it's a closed system. It reflects a culture, but does not expand the culture.
I would find it more interesting to talk about a different sort of list -- a list of books selected by, well, experts as things that are worth reading. I won't apologize for preferring the opinions of experts to the fancies of the crowd. The latter is a legitimate area of study -- it teaches things about the people who choose those lists. It teaches things about the people, but not about the books. And it does, usually, point to books that are fun. And that's an important consideration.
But what about that other kind of list?
As it turns out, I've got a copy of such a list -- Clifton Fadiman John S. Major's New Lifetime Reading Plan -- a list of the books that Clif Fadiman and John Major felt would be most illuminating for someone to read over the course of a lifetime.
I'm not going to mark which of these I've read and which I haven't. I'll merely point out that, according to actuarial charts, and given my reading speed, I've got a decent chance of having a shot at exposing myself to a fair number of these.
The list is DWM-heavy (Dead White Male-heavy.) That's because, when the book was first compiled, that's what the editors were exposed to. Over time, as works from around the world, by non-white authors, and by women started to actually be published widely and available, the editors could get copies of these, and add them in.
Here's a transcription of the books they chose.
I guess, if I was to make a meme out of this list, it would be, "Pick a book listed here that means something to you. What would you want to say to people about it?"
I'll go first.
Number 36 on the list, Journey to the West. My uncle Bob spent a bunch of time in India, Tibet, Japan, and various other places. He spent time in a Buddhist temple as a monk, teaching English to Japanese high school students, hanging out with Sherpas and discovering that tea with fermented yak butter is every bit as nasty as it sounds. He had this book, Volume 2 of Anthony Yu's translation of Journey. I started reading it, I asked if I could borrow it. I guess I was maybe ten or twelve or so.
That Christmas, I got Volume 1. Volume 3 came on my birthday, and 4 the next Christmas.
I still don't own Volume 2, which, of course, I returned to Bob, some time around when I went to college.
In The Lifetime Reading Plan, it says, "Wu Ch'eng-en's novel clearly is grounded in an oral tradition, and it really demands the kind of leisurely presentation that oral narration imposes on a story. It doesn't necessarily lend itself to the kind of straight-through assault that is the modern appraoch to reading a book." In response to Dr. Major's comment here, I would have to say, with deep respect, "bullshit." I tore through those books. I mean, we're talking flashlight-under-the-covers, "Just one more chapter, Mom," walk-into-lamppost books here. Sure, they had hundreds of pages of footnotes, endnotes, linguistic commentary and so forth. Yes, Yu's work is a scholarly masterpiece, and it is clearly supposed to be aimed at an academic audience. But Anthony Yu clearly understood that this stuff was fun. And he clearly realized that a good translation of a fun book has to be fun to read.
These are superhero pulp stories, pure and simple. Sure, they CLAIM it's a holy Buddhist scripture, they CLAIM that this is a religiously significant work -- but every chapter is something like "Hsuan-tang gets captured by monsters! Oh, no! Pigsy and Sandy have been captured, too! How can Monkey possibly save them all before the candle burns through the rope dropping them all into the pit of piranhas!"
I mean, the basic plot is, "Monkey is such a badass that he nearly took over heaven. All the gods managed to capture him, but even they couldn't kill him. They managed to strip him of his powers, and imprison him. Now, thousands of years later, Tripitaka is going on a Dangerous Mission. And the gods offer Monkey a deal: protect this monk, and you can be let out of your prison. Can one badass monkey, stripped of his power, manage to protect a monk, as, together, they go on a JOURNEY TO THE WEST!!"
For the record, the incredibly cheezey late-seventies anime SF Saiyuki: Starzinger, released in English as Spaceketeers was based on this legend. Then, of course, there's Monkey Magic!, and, for that matter, DragonBall -- also based on this important religious legend. It's why Goku has a tail. What, you don't believe me?
I would find it more interesting to talk about a different sort of list -- a list of books selected by, well, experts as things that are worth reading. I won't apologize for preferring the opinions of experts to the fancies of the crowd. The latter is a legitimate area of study -- it teaches things about the people who choose those lists. It teaches things about the people, but not about the books. And it does, usually, point to books that are fun. And that's an important consideration.
But what about that other kind of list?
As it turns out, I've got a copy of such a list -- Clifton Fadiman John S. Major's New Lifetime Reading Plan -- a list of the books that Clif Fadiman and John Major felt would be most illuminating for someone to read over the course of a lifetime.
I'm not going to mark which of these I've read and which I haven't. I'll merely point out that, according to actuarial charts, and given my reading speed, I've got a decent chance of having a shot at exposing myself to a fair number of these.
The list is DWM-heavy (Dead White Male-heavy.) That's because, when the book was first compiled, that's what the editors were exposed to. Over time, as works from around the world, by non-white authors, and by women started to actually be published widely and available, the editors could get copies of these, and add them in.
Here's a transcription of the books they chose.
I guess, if I was to make a meme out of this list, it would be, "Pick a book listed here that means something to you. What would you want to say to people about it?"
I'll go first.
Number 36 on the list, Journey to the West. My uncle Bob spent a bunch of time in India, Tibet, Japan, and various other places. He spent time in a Buddhist temple as a monk, teaching English to Japanese high school students, hanging out with Sherpas and discovering that tea with fermented yak butter is every bit as nasty as it sounds. He had this book, Volume 2 of Anthony Yu's translation of Journey. I started reading it, I asked if I could borrow it. I guess I was maybe ten or twelve or so.
That Christmas, I got Volume 1. Volume 3 came on my birthday, and 4 the next Christmas.
I still don't own Volume 2, which, of course, I returned to Bob, some time around when I went to college.
In The Lifetime Reading Plan, it says, "Wu Ch'eng-en's novel clearly is grounded in an oral tradition, and it really demands the kind of leisurely presentation that oral narration imposes on a story. It doesn't necessarily lend itself to the kind of straight-through assault that is the modern appraoch to reading a book." In response to Dr. Major's comment here, I would have to say, with deep respect, "bullshit." I tore through those books. I mean, we're talking flashlight-under-the-covers, "Just one more chapter, Mom," walk-into-lamppost books here. Sure, they had hundreds of pages of footnotes, endnotes, linguistic commentary and so forth. Yes, Yu's work is a scholarly masterpiece, and it is clearly supposed to be aimed at an academic audience. But Anthony Yu clearly understood that this stuff was fun. And he clearly realized that a good translation of a fun book has to be fun to read.
These are superhero pulp stories, pure and simple. Sure, they CLAIM it's a holy Buddhist scripture, they CLAIM that this is a religiously significant work -- but every chapter is something like "Hsuan-tang gets captured by monsters! Oh, no! Pigsy and Sandy have been captured, too! How can Monkey possibly save them all before the candle burns through the rope dropping them all into the pit of piranhas!"
I mean, the basic plot is, "Monkey is such a badass that he nearly took over heaven. All the gods managed to capture him, but even they couldn't kill him. They managed to strip him of his powers, and imprison him. Now, thousands of years later, Tripitaka is going on a Dangerous Mission. And the gods offer Monkey a deal: protect this monk, and you can be let out of your prison. Can one badass monkey, stripped of his power, manage to protect a monk, as, together, they go on a JOURNEY TO THE WEST!!"
For the record, the incredibly cheezey late-seventies anime SF Saiyuki: Starzinger, released in English as Spaceketeers was based on this legend. Then, of course, there's Monkey Magic!, and, for that matter, DragonBall -- also based on this important religious legend. It's why Goku has a tail. What, you don't believe me?