Oscar (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills) Wilde once produced a tripartite 'recommended reading' guide for a Victorian literary magazine. Over and above the prevalence of books concerning floral-print wallpaper, it was notable* for including a list** of fashionable tomes one should not bother to read.
Stranded today at a train station (Victoria, since you ask; though not the Brighton line), I made one last desperate stab at Thomas Pynchon's basically unreadable The Crying of Lot 49 - not by chance, his shortest book by some 500pp.
On advice of counsel I will refrain from recording here my precise opinions of Mr Pynchon and/or his literary abilities. Suffice to say that after five minutes I put down TCoL49 in favour of a volume by an obscure American academic, entitled How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and why you should care).
In this same spirit, then, and courtesy of The Times, is an up-dated version of Wilde's idea, which the Amnesiacs frankly ought to have got off their arses and written months ago.
[NB We would never have slated Hemingway and HST. Not. Even. For Laughs. Some things must be sacred.]
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* not to say novel
** not to say novelist
Tuesday 23 September 2008
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