Last week we high­light­ed a fea­ture from the excel­lent web­site Neglect­ed Books detail­ing two arti­cles that appeared in The New Repub­lic in 1934 on “good books that almost nobody has read.” The arti­cles were the prod­uct of a query the magazine’s edi­tor, Mal­colm Cow­ley, sent out to the lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty of his day, ask­ing them to list their favorite unsung books. Such lists are bound fast to their his­tor­i­cal con­text; fame is fleet­ing, and great works are for­got­ten and redis­cov­ered in every gen­er­a­tion. Some of the books named then—like Franz Kafka’s The Cas­tle or Nathaniel West’s Miss Lone­ly­hearts—have since gone on to noto­ri­ety. Most of them have not. This week, we thought we’d con­tin­ue the theme with our own list of “neglect­ed books.” I offer mine below, and I encour­age read­ers to name your own in the com­ments. We’ll fea­ture many of your sug­ges­tions in a fol­low-up post.

A few words about my by-no-means-defin­i­tive-and-cer­tain­ly-incom­plete list. These are not obscure works. And you’ll note that there are almost no recent works on it. This is due at least as much to my own lam­en­ta­ble igno­rance of much con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture as to a con­vic­tion that a work that isn’t wide­ly read months after its pub­li­ca­tion is not, there­by, “neglect­ed.” In the age of the inter­net, books can age well even after they’re remain­dered, since instant com­mu­ni­ties of read­ers spring up overnight on fan­sites and places like Goodreads. Instead, my list con­sists of a few neglect­ed clas­sics and a book of poet­ry that I per­son­al­ly think should all be read by many more peo­ple than they are, and that I think are time­ly for one rea­son or anoth­er. Maybe some of these books have got­ten their due in some small cir­cles, and in some cas­es, their influ­ence is much greater than sales fig­ures can ever reflect. But they’re works more peo­ple should read, not sim­ply read about, so I offer you below five titles I think are “neglect­ed books.” You may inter­pret that phrase any way you like when you sub­mit your own sug­ges­tions.

•  Cane by Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer’s Cane is well-known to stu­dents of the Harlem Renais­sance, but it isn’t read much out­side that aca­d­e­m­ic con­text, I think, which is a shame because it is a beau­ti­ful book. Not a nov­el, but a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, poems, and lit­er­ary sketch­es inspired by Toomer’s stint as a sub­sti­tute prin­ci­pal in Spar­ta, Geor­gia in 1921, Cane prac­ti­cal­ly vibrates with the furi­ous and frag­ile lives of a col­lec­tion of char­ac­ters in the Jim Crow South. Yet like all great books, it tran­scends its set­ting, ele­vat­ing its sub­jects to arche­typ­al sta­tus and immor­tal­iz­ing a time and place that seems to live only in car­i­ca­ture now. Read the first sketch, “Karintha,” and see what I mean.

• The Sto­ry of an African Farm by Olive Schrein­er

Olive Schrein­er is anoth­er writer who receives her due in schol­ar­ly cir­cles but is lit­tle read out­side the class­room. Schrein­er was a white South African woman who turned her expe­ri­ences of race, gen­der, and nation to lit­er­ary fame with her nov­el The Sto­ry of an African Farm in 1883. The novel’s suc­cess at the time did not nec­es­sar­i­ly grant its author last­ing fame, and while Schrein­er has been laud­ed for trans­form­ing Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture with her free­think­ing, fem­i­nist views, the book that once made her famous is an almost shock­ing­ly un-Vic­to­ri­an work. Short, stark, impres­sion­is­tic, and very unsen­ti­men­tal, The Sto­ry of an African Farm may find pur­chase with schol­ars for his­tor­i­cal or polit­i­cal rea­sons, but it should be read for its stun­ning prose descrip­tions and pierc­ing dia­logue.

• The Lost Steps by Ale­jo Car­pen­tier

 Car­pen­tier was a Cuban nov­el­ist, schol­ar, and musi­col­o­gist who is not much read in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, and per­haps not much in Latin Amer­i­ca. Although he coined the term “mag­i­cal real­ism” (lo real mar­avil­loso)—as part of his the­o­ry that Latin Amer­i­can his­to­ry is so out­landish as to seem unreal—his lit­er­ary fame in the States has nev­er reached the degree of more fan­tas­tic prac­ti­tion­ers of the style. Although per­haps best known, where he is known, for his harsh tale of Haiti’s first king, the bru­tal Hen­ri Christophe, in The King­dom of this World, Carpentier’s com­plex and mys­te­ri­ous 1953 The Lost Steps is a nov­el that jus­ti­fies my call­ing him the Nabokov of Latin Amer­i­can let­ters.

• The Con­fi­dence Man by Her­man Melville

Melville was cer­tain­ly a neglect­ed writer in his time. He is, it should go with­out say­ing, no more. But while every­one knows Moby Dick (if not many fin­ish it), Bil­ly Budd, and “Bartel­by,” few peo­ple read his, yes dif­fi­cult, nov­el The Con­fi­dence Man. Also called The Con­fi­dence Man: His Mas­quer­ade, this was Melville’s last pub­lished nov­el in his life­time. It’s a dark­ly com­ic book that some­times sounds a bit like Twain in its col­or­ful ver­nac­u­lar and shift­ing reg­is­ters, but grows stranger and more unset­tling as it pro­gress­es, becom­ing almost a cacoph­o­ny of dis­em­bod­ied voic­es in a state of moral pan­ic. The cen­tral char­ac­ter, a name­less shape-shift­ing grifter on a steam­boat called the Fidele, takes on a suc­ces­sion of Amer­i­can iden­ti­ties, all of them thor­ough­ly per­sua­sive and all of them thor­ough­ly, cal­cu­lat­ed­ly, false.

• Ter­res­tri­al Things by Ingrid de Kok

The only book of poet­ry on my list also hap­pens to be the only book by a liv­ing writer. It also hap­pens to be a book that makes me trem­ble each time I think of it. De Kok, a South African poet, takes as her inspi­ra­tion for her 2002 Ter­res­tri­al Things the tran­scripts from her country’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from “The Sound Engi­neer,” a poem pref­aced by the mat­ter-of-fact state­ment that the “high­est turnover” dur­ing the Com­mis­sion, “was appar­ent­ly among reporters edit­ing sound for radio.”

Lis­ten, cut; com­ma, cut;

stam­mer, cut;

edit, pain; con­nect, pain; broad­cast, pain;

lis­ten, cut; com­ma, cut.

Bind gram­mar to hor­ror,

blood heat­ing to the ear­phones,

beat­ing the air­waves’ wings.

 

For truth’s sound bite,

tape the teeth, mouth, jaw,

put hes­i­ta­tion in, take it out:

maybe the breath too.

Take away the lips.

Even the tongue.

Leave just sound’s throat.

So there you have my list. I hope it has inspired you to go dis­cov­er some­thing new (or old). If not, I hope you will sub­mit your own neglect­ed books in the com­ments below and share your hid­den lit­er­ary trea­sures with our read­ers.

Pub­lic domain books list­ed above will be added to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Famous Writ­ers Name “Good Books That Almost Nobody Has Read” in The New Repub­lic (1934)

20 Books Peo­ple Pre­tend to Read (and Now Your Con­fes­sions?)

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

Here’s a chal­lenge: for every book rec­om­mend­ed to you by Ama­zon, pick one from the site Neglect­ed Books. No fan­cy algo­rithms here, just old-fash­ioned serendip­i­ty, and you’re unlike­ly to see much over­lap. You will be reward­ed with book after fas­ci­nat­ing book that has slipped through the usu­al mar­ket­ing chan­nels and fall­en into obscu­ri­ty. Most of the authors come rec­om­mend­ed by well-known names, mak­ing them writ­ers’ writers—people whose writer­ly dif­fi­cul­ty or pecu­liar sub­ject mat­ter can nar­row their read­er­ship.

This is not entire­ly a fair assess­ment, and in many cas­es, the work that achieves lit­er­ary noto­ri­ety does so by chance, not mass appeal, but it is undoubt­ed­ly the case that cer­tain kinds of writ­ers write for cer­tain kinds of read­ers. The lit­er­ary edi­tor Mal­colm Cow­ley, helm­ing The New Repub­lic in 1934, thought so, and lament­ed a sys­tem that pre­vent­ed books from reach­ing their intend­ed read­ers. In a call to “America’s lead­ing nov­el­ists and crit­ics,” Cow­ley asked for lists of such books—and in per­haps a retroac­tive vin­di­ca­tion of the listicle—published them in two arti­cles, “Good Books That Almost Nobody Has Read” and “More About Neglect­ed Books.” Neglect­ed Books, the web­site, quotes Cowley’s announce­ment:

Each year… a few good books get lost in the shuf­fle. It may not be the fault of the pub­lish­er, the crit­ic, the book­seller, it may not be anybody’s fault except that of the gen­er­al sys­tem by which too many books are dis­trib­uted with an enor­mous lot of bal­ly­hoo to not enough read­ers. Most of the good books are favor­ably reviewed, yet the fact remains that many of them nev­er reach the peo­ple who would like and prof­it by them, the peo­ple for whom they are writ­ten.

Cow­ley asked his tar­gets to sug­gest “two or three or four” names and “a few sen­tences iden­ti­fy­ing them.” He got lists from about a dozen writ­ers, includ­ing lions like F. Scott Fitzger­ald,  John Dos Pas­sos, Sin­clair Lewis, Thorn­ton Wilder and crit­ic Edmund Wil­son, who gets a men­tion in both Fitzgerald’s and Dos Pas­sos’ lists. (Fitzger­ald also offered three oth­er titles Miss Lone­ly­hearts by Nathanael West; Sing Before Break­fast by Vin­cent McHugh and Through the Wheat by Thomas Boyd.) Dos Pas­sos, unlike most of the men, names a few women writ­ers, includ­ing Agnes Smed­ley, now revealed to have been a triple agent for the Sovi­ets, the Chi­nese, and Indi­an nation­al­ists, “one of the most pro­lif­ic female spies of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” Dos Pas­sos’ com­men­tary on her auto­bi­og­ra­phy Daugh­ter of Earth—which he mis­re­mem­bers as Woman of Earth—is most­ly under­stat­ed: “An uneven but impres­sive I sup­pose auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nar­ra­tive of a young woman’s life in a West­ern min­ing camp and in New York.”

Lib­er­tar­i­an jour­nal­ist Susan La Fol­lette, one of the few women writ­ers sur­veyed, offers only one sug­ges­tion, Ilya Ilf and Evge­ny Petrov’s 1931 comedic Russ­ian nov­el The Gold­en Calf. The descrip­tion alone in this L.A. Times review of a 2010 trans­la­tion has me think­ing this may indeed be an over­looked mas­ter­work of total­i­tar­i­an satire. La Fol­lette said as much three years after its pub­li­ca­tion, writ­ing of her dis­ap­point­ment, “I take this quite per­son­al­ly, because so few peo­ple even know about it that I rarely find any­one who can laugh over it with me.”

While The New Repub­lic is well-known as a left-of-cen­ter pub­li­ca­tion, the mean­ing of the Amer­i­can Left in the thir­ties was much more inclu­sive, even of avowed Marx­ists like The New Mass­es edi­tor Isidor Schnei­der, who names Impe­ri­al­ism, and The State and Rev­o­lu­tion by Lenin and Lenin­ism by Joseph Stal­in. Next to the irony of nam­ing two books that thou­sands have been coerced to read, Schnei­der con­trar­i­ly names the The Poems of Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins, from the aes­thet­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal, but earnest­ly reli­gious­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Irish Jesuit poet. (The lat­ter two sug­ges­tions did not make pub­li­ca­tion since Schneider’s list was already quite long.) 

As inter­est­ing as the lists them­selves is the selec­tion of respons­es to the sec­ond arti­cle. William Saroy­an writes in to rec­om­mend Grace Stone Coates’ Black Cher­ry as the “finest prose you ever saw.” And leg­endary pub­lish­er Alfred A. Knopf writes with a lengthy and detailed expla­na­tion of the books list­ed that he pub­lished. Of one book named, Franz Kafka’s The Cas­tle, Knopf writes, “The Cas­tle is one of my real­ly inglo­ri­ous fail­ures. It is, as Con­rad Aiken says, a mas­ter­piece. But in the orig­i­nal edi­tion it sold only 715 copies, and since Jan­u­ary 3, 1933, we have been offer­ing it at the rea­son­able price of $1 and only 120 copies have been pur­chased.”

Read more on Cowley’s project at Neglect­ed Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

Ernest Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934

20 Books Peo­ple Pre­tend to Read (and Now Your Con­fes­sions?)

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