Jorge Luis Borges Selects 74 Books for Your Personal Library

in Books, Literature | March 10th, 2015

borges personal library

“Jorge Luis Borges 1951, by Grete Stern” by Grete Stern (1904–1999). Licensed under Pub­lic Domain via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

Jorge Luis Borges’ terse, mind-expand­ing sto­ries reshaped mod­ern fic­tion. He was one of the first authors to mix high cul­ture with low, merg­ing such pop­u­lar gen­res as sci­ence fic­tion and the detec­tive sto­ry with heady philo­soph­i­cal dis­cours­es on author­ship, real­i­ty and exis­tence. His sto­ry “The Gar­den of the Fork­ing Paths,” which describes a nov­el that is also a labyrinth, pre­saged the hyper­tex­tu­al­i­ty of the inter­net age. His tone of iron­ic detach­ment influ­enced gen­er­a­tions of Latin Amer­i­can authors. The BBC argued that Borges was the most impor­tant writer of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Of course, Borges wasn’t just an author. When not writ­ing fic­tion, Borges worked as a lit­er­ary crit­ic, occa­sion­al film crit­ic, a librar­i­an, and, for a spell, as the direc­tor of the Bib­liote­ca Nacional in Buenos Aires. His tastes were famous­ly eclec­tic. He did not think of much of canon­i­cal writ­ers like Goethe, Jane Austen, James Joyce and Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez. He favored the 19th sto­ry­tellers like Edgar Allan Poe and Rud­yard Kipling.

In 1985, Argen­tine pub­lish­er Hys­pamer­i­ca asked Borges to cre­ate A Per­son­al Library — which involved curat­ing 100 great works of lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing intro­duc­tions for each vol­ume. Though he only got through 74 books before he died of liv­er can­cer in 1988, Borges’s selec­tions are fas­ci­nat­ing and deeply idio­syn­crat­ic. He list­ed adven­ture tales by Robert Louis Steven­son and H.G. Wells along­side exot­ic holy books, 8th cen­tu­ry Japan­ese poet­ry and the mus­ing of Kierkegaard. You can see the full list below. A num­ber of the select­ed works can be found in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

1. Sto­ries by Julio Cortázar (not sure if this refers to Hop­scotch, Blow-Up and Oth­er Sto­ries, or nei­ther)
2. & 3. The Apoc­ryphal Gospels
4. Ameri­ka and The Com­plete Sto­ries by Franz Kaf­ka
5. The Blue Cross: A Father Brown Mys­tery by G.K. Chester­ton
6. & 7. The Moon­stone by Wilkie Collins
8. The Intel­li­gence of Flow­ers by Mau­rice Maeter­linck
9. The Desert of the Tar­tars by Dino Buz­za­ti
10. Peer Gynt and Hed­da Gabler by Hen­rik Ibsen
11. The Man­darin: And Oth­er Sto­ries by Eça de Queirós
12. The Jesuit Empire by Leopol­do Lugones
13. The Coun­ter­feit­ers by André Gide
14. The Time Machine and The Invis­i­ble Man by H.G. Wells
15. The Greek Myths by Robert Graves
16. & 17. Demons by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
18. Math­e­mat­ics and the Imag­i­na­tion by Edward Kas­ner
19. The Great God Brown and Oth­er Plays, Strange Inter­lude, and Mourn­ing Becomes Elec­tra by Eugene O’Neill
20. Tales of Ise by Ari­wara no Nar­i­hara
21. Ben­i­to Cereno, Bil­ly Budd, and Bartle­by, the Scriven­er by Her­man Melville
22. The Trag­ic Every­day, The Blind Pilot, and Words and Blood by Gio­van­ni Pap­i­ni
23. The Three Impos­tors
24. Songs of Songs tr. by Fray Luis de León
25. An Expla­na­tion of the Book of Job tr. by Fray Luis de León
26. The End of the Teth­er and Heart of Dark­ness by Joseph Con­rad
27. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gib­bon
28. Essays & Dia­logues by Oscar Wilde
29. Bar­bar­ian in Asia by Hen­ri Michaux
30. The Glass Bead Game by Her­mann Hesse
31. Buried Alive by Arnold Ben­nett
32. On the Nature of Ani­mals by Claudius Elianus
33. The The­o­ry of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
34. The Temp­ta­tion of St. Antony by Gus­tave Flaubert
35. Trav­els by Mar­co Polo
36. Imag­i­nary lives by Mar­cel Schwob
37. Cae­sar and Cleopa­tra, Major Bar­bara, and Can­dide by George Bernard Shaw
38. Macus Bru­tus and The Hour of All by Fran­cis­co de Queve­do
39. The Red Red­maynes by Eden Phillpotts
40. Fear and Trem­bling by Søren Kierkegaard
41. The Golem by Gus­tav Meyrink
42. The Les­son of the Mas­ter, The Fig­ure in the Car­pet, and The Pri­vate Life by Hen­ry James
43. & 44. The Nine Books of the His­to­ry of Herodotus by Her­do­tus
45. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rul­fo
46. Tales by Rud­yard Kipling
47. Vathek by William Beck­ford
48. Moll Flan­ders by Daniel Defoe
49. The Pro­fes­sion­al Secret & Oth­er Texts by Jean Cocteau
50. The Last Days of Emmanuel Kant and Oth­er Sto­ries by Thomas de Quincey
51. Pro­logue to the Work of Sil­ve­rio Lan­za by Ramon Gomez de la Ser­na
52. The Thou­sand and One Nights
53. New Ara­bi­an Nights and Markheim by Robert Louis Steven­son
54. Sal­va­tion of the Jews, The Blood of the Poor, and In the Dark­ness by Léon Bloy
55. The Bha­gavad Gita and The Epic of Gil­gamesh
56. Fan­tas­tic Sto­ries by Juan José Arreo­la
57. Lady into Fox, A Man in the Zoo, and The Sailor’s Return by David Gar­nett
58. Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els by Jonathan Swift
59. Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism by Paul Grous­sac
60. The Idols by Manuel Muji­ca Láinez
61. The Book of Good Love by Juan Ruiz
62. Com­plete Poet­ry by William Blake
63. Above the Dark Cir­cus by Hugh Wal­pole
64. Poet­i­cal Works by Eze­quiel Mar­tinez Estra­da
65. Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
66. The Aeneid by Vir­gil
67. Sto­ries by Voltaire
68. An Exper­i­ment with Time by J.W. Dunne
69. An Essay on Orlan­do Furioso by Atilio Momigliano
70. & 71. The Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence and The Study of Human Nature by William James
72. Egil’s Saga by Snor­ri Sturlu­son
73. The Book of the Dead
74. & 75. The Prob­lem of Time by J. Alexan­der Gunn

As you will observe, Borges’ list is very short on books by women writ­ers. As a counter-offer­ing, you might want to explore this list: 74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Borges: Pro­file of a Writer” Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Weapons of Mass Instruction: Watch a 1979 Ford Falcon Get Converted in a Tank Armored with 900 Free Books

in Books | March 10th, 2015

He has a wild look in his eyes, but a beau­ti­ful idea in his mind. Meet Raul Leme­soff, an eccen­tric char­ac­ter from Buenos Aires, who takes old cars and turns them into “mil­i­taris­tic bib­lio­the­cas” that dri­ve the streets of Argenti­na, giv­ing free books to those who want them. This is an ongo­ing project for Leme­soff, but the weaponized 1979 Ford Fal­con you see above was spe­cial­ly cre­at­ed to cel­e­brate World Book Day on March 5th. You can thank 7UP for com­mis­sion­ing that project.

via Men­tal Floss/This is Colos­sal

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you see any great items we should fea­ture on our site, send them our way. We’d love to get your ideas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Free eBooks

630 Free Audio Books

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Watch “Por­trait of a Book­store as an Old Man”

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Artist Takes Old Books and Gives Them New Life as Intricate Sculptures

in Art, Books, TED Talks | March 5th, 2015

New York-based artist Bri­an Dettmer cuts into old books with X‑ACTO knives and turns them into remixed works of art. Speak­ing at TED Youth last Novem­ber, he told the audi­ence, “I think of my work as sort of a remix .… because I’m work­ing with some­body else’s mate­r­i­al in the same way that a D.J. might be work­ing with some­body else’s music.” “I carve into the sur­face of the book, and I’m not mov­ing or adding any­thing. I’m just carv­ing around what­ev­er I find inter­est­ing. So every­thing you see with­in the fin­ished piece is exact­ly where it was in the book before I began.”

brian-dettmer-book-art

Dettmer puts on dis­play his pret­ty fan­tas­tic cre­ations, all while explain­ing how he sees the book — as a body, a tech­nol­o­gy, a tool, a machine, a land­scape, a case study in archae­ol­o­gy. The talk runs six min­utes and deliv­ers more than the aver­age TED Talk does in 17.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civilization?: Lists by Brian Eno, Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly & Other Forward-Thinking Minds

in Books, Life | February 18th, 2015

One par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tress­ing hall­mark of late moder­ni­ty can be char­ac­ter­ized as a cul­tur­al loss of the future. Where we once delight­ed in imag­in­ing the turns civ­i­liza­tion would take hun­dreds and even thou­sands of years ahead—projecting rad­i­cal designs, inno­v­a­tive solu­tions, great explo­rations, and pecu­liar evo­lu­tion­ary developments—we now find the mode of fore­cast­ing has grown apoc­a­lyp­tic, as cli­mate change and oth­er cat­a­stroph­ic, man-made glob­al phe­nom­e­na make it dif­fi­cult to avoid some very dire con­clu­sions about humanity’s impend­ing fate. We can add to this assess­ment the loss of what we may call the “long view” in our day-to-day lives.

As the Long Now Foun­da­tion co-founder Stew­art Brand describes it, “civ­i­liza­tion is revving itself into a patho­log­i­cal­ly short atten­tion span,” dri­ven by “the accel­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, the short-hori­zon per­spec­tive of mar­ket-dri­ven eco­nom­ics, the next-elec­tion per­spec­tive of democ­ra­cies, or the dis­trac­tions of per­son­al mul­ti-task­ing.”

Such is the tex­ture of mod­ern exis­tence, and though we may run our hands over it dai­ly, remark­ing on how tight­ly woven the fab­ric is, we seem to have few-to-no mech­a­nisms for unweaving—or even loosening—the threads. Enter the Long Now Foun­da­tion and its pro­pos­al of “both a mech­a­nism and a myth” as a means encour­ag­ing “the long view and the tak­ing of long-term respon­si­bil­i­ty.”

libraryfar

Image cour­tesy of Because We Can

Inspired by com­put­er sci­en­tist Daniel Hill’s idea for a Stone­henge-sized clock that “ticks once a year, bongs once a cen­tu­ry, and the cuck­oo comes out every mil­len­ni­um,” the foun­da­tion pro­pos­es a num­ber of projects and guide­lines for restor­ing long-term think­ing, includ­ing “mind­ing myth­ic depth,” “reward­ing patience,” and “ally­ing with com­pe­ti­tion.” The clock, ini­tial­ly a thought exper­i­ment, is becom­ing a real­i­ty, as you can see in the short video above, with a mas­sive, “mon­u­ment scale” ver­sion under con­struc­tion in West Texas and scale pro­to­types in Lon­don and the Long Now Foundation’s San Fran­cis­co head­quar­ters. Large­ly a sym­bol­ic ges­ture, the “10,000 year clock,” as it’s called, has been joined with anoth­er, emi­nent­ly prac­ti­cal under­tak­ing rem­i­nis­cent of Isaac Asimov’s Ency­clo­pe­dia Galac­ti­ca—a “library of the deep future.”

One wing of this library, the Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion, aims to com­pile a col­lec­tion of 3,500 books in the Foun­da­tion’s phys­i­cal space—books deemed most like­ly to “sus­tain or rebuild civ­i­liza­tion.” To begin the project, var­i­ous future-mind­ed con­trib­u­tors have been asked to make their own lists of books to add. The first list comes from musician/composer/producer/musical futur­ist and found­ing board mem­ber Bri­an Eno, who named the foun­da­tion. Oth­er notable con­trib­u­tors include Long Now Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Stew­art Brand and board mem­ber and co-founder of Wired mag­a­zine Kevin Kel­ly. Below, see the first ten titles from each of these futurist’s lists, and fur­ther down, links to the full list of con­trib­u­tors’ selec­tions so far. As you scan the titles below, and browse through each contributor’s list, con­sid­er why and how each of these books would help human­i­ty rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, and sug­gest books of your own in the com­ments.

10 Titles from Bri­an Eno’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

10 Titles from Stew­art Brand’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

10 Titles from Kevin Kelly’s Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion list

Once again, these are only excerpts from longer lists by these three futur­is­tic thinkers. For their com­plete selec­tions, click on their lists below, as well as those from such cul­tur­al fig­ures as sci-fi writer Neal Stephen­son and Brain Pick­ings’ edi­tor Maria Popo­va. And please let us know: Which books would you include in the “Man­u­al for Civ­i­liza­tion” library project, and why? You can also add your own sug­ges­tions for the grow­ing library at the Long Now Foun­da­tion’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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600+ Covers of Philip K. Dick Novels from Around the World: Greece, Japan, Poland & Beyond

in Art, Books | February 17th, 2015

Radio Free Albemuth-gr

I envy book design­ers tasked with putting togeth­er cov­ers for Philip K. Dick nov­els, and yet I don’t envy them. On one hand, they get the chance to visu­al­ly inter­pret some of the most unusu­al, inde­scrib­able genre fic­tion ever writ­ten; on the oth­er hand, they bear the bur­den of visu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ing some of the most unusu­al, inde­scrib­able genre fic­tion ever writ­ten.

valis-it

Dick wrote inter­est­ing books, to put it mild­ly, and as book-lovers know, cer­tain coun­tries’ pub­lish­ing indus­tries tend to put out more inter­est­ing book cov­ers than oth­ers. So what hap­pens at the inter­sec­tion? Here we present to you a selec­tion of Philip K. Dick cov­ers from around the world, begin­ning with a Greek cov­er of his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished nov­el Radio Free Albe­muth that fea­tures the man him­self, relax­ing in his nat­ur­al inter­plan­e­tary envi­ron­ment beside his vin­tage radio.

mancastle-chile

That book put a bare­ly fic­tion­al gloss on Dick­’s own psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ences, as did Valis, whose Ital­ian edi­tion you also see pic­tured here. But his more fan­tas­ti­cal nov­els, such as the I Ching-dri­ven sto­ry of an Amer­i­ca that lost the Sec­ond World War, have received equal­ly com­pelling inter­na­tion­al cov­ers, such as the one from Chile just above.

flow-jp

You can usu­al­ly trust Japan­ese pub­lish­ers to come up with book designs nei­ther too abstract nor too lit­er­al for the con­tents with­in, as one of their edi­tions of Flow My Tears, the Police­man Said quite lit­er­al­ly illus­trates just above. And if you can rely on Japan for that sort of cov­er, you can rely on France for under­state­ment; half the French nov­els I’ve seen have noth­ing on the front but the name of the work, the author, and the pub­lish­er, but behold how Dick­’s untamed exper­i­men­tal spir­it allowed Robert Laf­font to cut loose:

ubik-french28

But if you real­ly want to see an unusu­al graph­ic design cul­ture, you’ve got to look to Poland. We fea­tured that coun­try’s dis­tinc­tive movie posters a few years ago, but their books also par­take of the very same delight­ful­ly askew visu­al tra­di­tion, one I imag­ine that would have done Dick him­self proud­est. Below we have Pol­ish cov­er art for Con­fes­sions of a Crap Artist, his nov­el of mid­cen­tu­ry sub­ur­ban strife, com­posed with mate­ri­als few of us would have thought to use:

confessions-of-a-crap-artist-polish

You can see 600+ inter­na­tion­al Philip K. Dick cov­ers at philipkdick.com’s cov­er gallery, which has for some rea­son gone offline, but which most­ly sur­vives through the mag­ic of the Inter­net Way­back Machine — a device Dick nev­er imag­ined even in his far­thest-out, trick­i­est-to-rep­re­sent fan­tasies.

Relat­ed Content:

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Predict Which 21st Century Novels Will Enter the Literary Canon? And Which Overrated Ones Won’t?

in Books, Literature | February 13th, 2015

oscarwao11

Last year, we fea­tured a 1936 poll where read­ers pre­dict­ed what writ­ers would make it into the lit­er­ary canon of the year 2000. But what results would the same inquiry yield today? What 21st-cen­tu­ry nov­els (ear­ly in the game, I know, but still) will remain wide­ly read over half a cen­tu­ry from now? How much more pre­science have we evolved com­pared to that of our equiv­a­lents almost 80 years ago? How many mod­ern Sin­clair Lewis­es and Willa Cathers would we pick — ver­sus how many mod­ern James Truslow Adamses and James Branch Cabells?

Writ­ing for Arts.Mic, Claire Luchette gives one pos­si­ble set of answers to this ques­tion with her list of “11 Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry Books Our Kids Will Be Taught in School,” which runs as fol­lows:

  1. White Teeth (Zadie Smith, 2000)
  2. Life of Pi (Yann Mar­tel, 2001)
  3. Mid­dle­sex (Jef­frey Eugenides, 2002)
  4. The Kite Run­ner (Khaled Hos­sei­ni, 2003)
  5. The Name­sake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
  6. Gilead by Mar­i­lynne Robin­son (2004)
  7. The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz, 2008)
  8. A Vis­it From the Goon Squad (Jen­nifer Egan, 2010)
  9. Free­dom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)
  10. Dear Life (Alice Munro, 2012)
  11. Tenth of Decem­ber (George Saun­ders, 2013)

The future already looks bright for sev­er­al of Luchet­te’s picks. Junot Diaz’s “habit-form­ing­ly col­or­ful and bright” (not to men­tion Pulitzer-win­ning) The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao recent­ly topped BBC Cul­ture’s crit­ics poll for the best nov­el of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far. Oth­ers face longer odds. As high a point in the zeit­geist as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi reached — and no less an opin­ion leader than Barack Oba­ma called it “an ele­gant proof of God” — I per­son­al­ly tend to agree with the assess­ment of James Wood, who likens its cen­tral rev­e­la­tion to “an edi­to­r­i­al meet­ing of Social Text.”

And so we hand it over to you, Open Cul­ture read­ers. What does the future’s canon look like from where you stand? In the com­ments, name the books you think will remain wide­ly read (or grow more so) at the end of the cen­tu­ry, or indeed, the ones wide­ly read now that will have, by that point, col­lect­ed the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry’s dust. Bonus points for telling us why.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ers Pre­dict in 1936 Which Nov­el­ists Would Still Be Wide­ly Read in the Year 2000

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

The 25 Best Non-Fic­tion Books Ever: Read­ers’ Picks

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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See Penguins Wearing Tiny “Penguin Books” Sweaters, Knitted by the Oldest Man in Australia

in Books, Random | February 12th, 2015

Penguin

How does 109-year-old Alfred “Alfie” Date keep him­self busy? Appar­ent­ly by knit­ting sweaters for endan­gered pen­guins. The old­est man in Aus­tralia, Alfie began knit­ting these lit­tle sweaters at the request of The Pen­guin Foun­da­tion in 2013, after hun­dreds of Lit­tle Pen­guins were injured by a big oil spill. He makes the sweaters in dif­fer­ent styles. But you can’t beat a pen­guin wear­ing a Pen­guin Books logo. We dare you to try.

File under Meta.

via Bored Pan­da

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share Open Cul­ture with your fam­i­ly and friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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Harper Lee on the Joy of Reading Real Books: “Some Things Should Happen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Metal”

in Books, Letters, Literature | February 12th, 2015

News of the new, long-await­ed but hard­ly expect­ed Harp­er Lee nov­el, Go Set a Watch­man—a sequel to the 1960’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird—has been met with vary­ing degrees of skep­ti­cism, sure­ly war­rant­ed giv­en her late sis­ter Alice and oth­ers’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Lee’s phys­i­cal and men­tal decline. On the oth­er hand, the nov­el­ist, it’s been report­ed, is “extreme­ly hurt” by alle­ga­tions that she has been pres­sured to pub­lish. It would be a shame if the con­tro­ver­sy over the pub­li­ca­tion of the nov­el eclipsed the nov­el itself. While it had become some­thing of a tru­ism that Harp­er Lee would only pub­lish the one, great nov­el and nev­er anoth­er, I for one greet this lat­est news with joy.

For one thing, cir­cum­stances aside, the new Harp­er Lee nov­el has the mass media doing some­thing it rarely does anymore—talking about lit­er­ary fic­tion. And for the thou­sands of school kids required to read To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and won­der­ing why they should both­er, the con­ver­sa­tion hope­ful­ly com­mu­ni­cates that books still mat­ter, and not just dystopi­an YA sci-fi and mass-mar­ket trade books about BDSM fan­tasies, but books about ordi­nary peo­ple in ordi­nary times and places. It’s a les­son Lee learned ear­ly. In a 2006 let­ter to Oprah Win­frey, pub­lished in O mag­a­zine, Lee wrote about her child­hood expe­ri­ences with read­ing, and being read to. She recalls arriv­ing “in the first grade, lit­er­ate,” because of her upbring­ing. She also acknowl­edges that “books were scarce”; her and her sib­lings ear­ly lit­er­a­cy meant they were “priv­i­leged” com­pared to oth­er chil­dren, “most­ly from rur­al areas,” and the “chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants.”

While we may dis­miss Lee’s con­tention that in “an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones” and “iPods” they also have “minds like emp­ty rooms” as the kvetch­ing of a senior cit­i­zen, I doubt most peo­ple who respect Lee’s wis­dom and good humor would do so light­ly. Her poet­ic evo­ca­tion of the tac­tile dif­fer­ences between books and gad­gets alone should give us pause: “some things should only hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.”

Read the full let­ter below.

May 7, 2006

Dear Oprah,

Do you remem­ber when you learned to read, or like me, can you not even remem­ber a time when you did­n’t know how? I must have learned from hav­ing been read to by my fam­i­ly. My sis­ters and broth­er, much old­er, read aloud to keep me from pes­ter­ing them; my moth­er read me a sto­ry every day, usu­al­ly a chil­dren’s clas­sic, and my father read from the four news­pa­pers he got through every evening. Then, of course, it was Uncle Wig­gi­ly at bed­time.

So I arrived in the first grade, lit­er­ate, with a curi­ous cul­tur­al assim­i­la­tion of Amer­i­can his­to­ry, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapun­zel, and The Mobile Press. Ear­ly signs of genius? Far from it. Read­ing was an accom­plish­ment I shared with sev­er­al local con­tem­po­raries. Why this endem­ic pre­coc­i­ty? Because in my home­town, a remote vil­lage in the ear­ly 1930s, young­sters had lit­tle to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren’t for small chil­dren. A park for games? Not a hope. We’re talk­ing unpaved streets here, and the Depres­sion.

Books were scarce. There was noth­ing you could call a pub­lic library, we were a hun­dred miles away from a depart­ment store’s books sec­tion, so we chil­dren began to cir­cu­late read­ing mate­r­i­al among our­selves until each child had read anoth­er’s entire stock. There were long dry spells bro­ken by the new Christ­mas books, which start­ed the rounds again.

As we grew old­er, we began to real­ize what our books were worth: Anne of Green Gables was worth two Bobb­sey Twins; two Rover Boys were an even swap for two Tom Swifts. Aes­thet­ic fris­sons ran a poor sec­ond to the thrills of acqui­si­tion. The goal, a full set of a series, was attained only once by an indi­vid­ual of excep­tion­al greed — he swapped his sis­ter’s doll bug­gy.

We were priv­i­leged. There were chil­dren, most­ly from rur­al areas, who had nev­er looked into a book until they went to school. They had to be taught to read in the first grade, and we were impa­tient with them for hav­ing to catch up. We ignored them.

And it was­n’t until we were grown, some of us, that we dis­cov­ered what had befall­en the chil­dren of our African-Amer­i­can ser­vants. In some of their schools, pupils learned to read three-to-one — three chil­dren to one book, which was more than like­ly a cast-off primer from a white gram­mar school. We sel­dom saw them until, old­er, they came to work for us.

Now, 75 years lat­er in an abun­dant soci­ety where peo­ple have lap­tops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like emp­ty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant infor­ma­tion is not for me. I pre­fer to search library stacks because when I work to learn some­thing, I remem­ber it. 

And, Oprah, can you imag­ine curl­ing up in bed to read a com­put­er? Weep­ing for Anna Karen­i­na and being ter­ri­fied by Han­ni­bal Lecter, enter­ing the heart of dark­ness with Mis­tah Kurtz, hav­ing Hold­en Caulfield ring you up — some things should hap­pen on soft pages, not cold met­al.

The vil­lage of my child­hood is gone, with it most of the book col­lec­tors, includ­ing the dodgy one who swapped his com­plete set of Seck­atary Hawkins­es for a shot­gun and kept it until it was retrieved by an irate par­ent.

Now we are three in num­ber and live hun­dreds of miles away from each oth­er. We still keep in touch by tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions of recur­rent theme: “What is your name again?” fol­lowed by “What are you read­ing?” We don’t always remem­ber. 

Much love, 

Harp­er

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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