THE BEST BOOKS IN THE WORLD SIR, —Taste in reading notoriously
differs, yet your critic Mr. Derek Verschoyle and Mr. Somerset Maugham are largely in agreement. One wonders whether famous writers and critics are not inclined to put forward as their preferred books mostly those they think ought to be admired by the general public rather than those they have liked so well them- selves that they would read them again with pleasure today. Perhaps, however, your critic is absolved from this accusa- tion, for he would omit Dickens from his list, and although such an omission would be unpopular, I heartily second it, for Dickens's books have always seemed to me either absurd or romantic caricatures of life.
But taste also changes greatly as we grow older. The inclusion of Stendhal is clearly from memories of reading in early youth, for reading La Chartreuse de Parme at is or 16, I was fascinated by this author's extreme romanticism and impossible heroics, but re-reading the same book at 40 I found its almost childish unreality and exaggerated over- painting of every scene extremely- boring : and who but a boy or young man with no experience of life could find Jane Austen's insipid drawing-room romances entertaining.
- As we gain experience of life many of us expect more reality in what we read, and so we come to enjoy Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex, or, what is perhaps the most delightful book in the world to an adult, Casanova's Memoirs. Then there are some books, perhaps the greatest of all, like War and Peace and The Brothers ICaramazov, which we can read with interest as young men, but at every age, as our experience grows, we find more interesting.
I have often wondered why in these lists of best books most people include so many novels of the Victorian era, when the English literature of this period is generally recog- nised by sincere critics to be the most deficient in art and the most false and untrue to life of any hisorical period. Probably the reason is these were the only books obtainable for the youth of the last generation: anything that touched on life was kept out of the house as unfit for youth to read.
The literature of today seems to me much more alive and realistic than the dead stuff of the last century, and I agree with your critic that something more recent should be in- cluded in a representative list of the best books. What finer book of the whole story of woman's life has ever been written than Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset, certainly more enjoyable reading than the unpleasant and neurotic Madame Bovary. Then of non-fiction works, perhaps the most distin- guished of prose writing in this century is The Dance of Life, by Havelock Ellis. It is surely worthy with the same author's Impressions and Comments to rank with some of the finest works of the great period of English writing at the birth of The Spectator.
What an endlessly fascinating subject for discussion.—
Yours faithfully, • L. H. CALLENDAR. 30 Pine Road, Didsbury, Manchester.
Previous page
