| THE TEN GREATEST PIECES OF LITERATURE (ACCORDING TO ME) I have included here the ten writings that have most influenced me and earned my admiration for a variety of reasons. They are not necessarily the ten greatest pieces of literature ever, although many would feature on such a list. 1. Heart of Darkness: Joseph Conrad This slim novel has several layers of meaning and is written with an intensity of mood and feeling that I have not rediscovered. The journey of Kurtz, up the Congo River and into the heart of Africa, becomes at the same time a journey into the darkness within himself and a metaphor for the parallel journey of Western civilisation into modernism. Francis Ford Coppola adapted the story and moved the setting to the Vietnam War in the movie ‘Apocalypse Now.’ 2. All Quiet on the Western Front: Erich Maria Remarque Called the greatest anti war novel ever written (the same being said of the movie that won the first ever Best Picture Oscar in 1928/9) this book was one of the first pieces of literature I read after graduating from Enid Blyton and other adventure stories. 3. The ABC Murders: Agatha Christie Agatha Christie’s stories about the English countryside, its majestic old houses and families, and its delightfully eccentric people, are one of the main reasons that I am an Anglophile. Most of them are light reading and light entertainment for lazy summer days, but never fail to engross, even the second and third time around. 4. Tess of the d’Urbevilles: Thomas Hardy A beautifully written novel painting word pictures of the Wessex (Dorset) countryside on every page. Hardy’s Tess is one of the literary characters whom I love most – for her simplicity, her beauty, and innocence. This book also provides one of the most memorable and moving scenes I have ever read – as Tess baptises her own dyeing baby. Hardy sub-titled Tess “a pure woman” in a clear challenge to the Victorian mores of the day. 5. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: T. S. Eliot For me Eliot is the premier poet in the English language. I put Prufrock here because it is the first of his poems I ever read, but really the whole corpus of his works is just as good. Eliot is not only a great poet, but one of the very few really great writers of religious verse (after his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism) since John Donne. 6. The Sunne Rising & Devotion XVII (On the Church Bells): John Donne The poet and priest, John Donne, is the greatest of the metaphysical poets and also one of the greatest preachers to grace the pulpits at St Paul’s London and one of the greatest devotional writers as well. I have cited two of his works above, one secular and one religious, that together embrace the range and power of his life and work. 7. Waiting for Godot: Samuel Beckett Godot is existentialist drama at its most powerful and inexplicable. Although Beckett denied it, Godot seems to me to be a clear metaphor for the transcendent or metaphysical (God) that never arrives. Beckett’s view of the human predicament in Godot is so black that it might very well drive one to the unreasonableness of religion! 8. Romeo and Juliet: William Shakespeare I have always loved Shakespeare, pretty much for the same reasons as everyone else. I put Romeo and Juliet here after seeing the play performed in the Royal Botanical Gardens a couple of years ago and in the light of Baz Lurhman's brilliant modern adaptation for the big screen. 9. Dulce et Decorum Est: Wilfred Owen The Welsh born poet Wilfred Owen is the greatest of the war poets and a tragic figure in real life, being killed on the western front just days before the armistice was signed in 1918. His poetry gives rise to the whole twentieth-century genre of ‘war poetry’ and evokes in words the horror and senselessness of the Great War, in doing so, making the (often unheard) plea that it never happen again. 10. The Brothers Karamazov: Fyodor Dostoyevski A one semester course in Russian literature at the University of Melbourne for a never completed Arts degree (I switched to theology) gave rise to a love of Dostoyevski and Tolstoy (the two giants of Russian literature) but also Gogol, Turgenev, and Pushkin. Dostoyevski makes my list for his fascinating interaction with questions of faith and meaning – especially in this book. |