We Came Along with a Hammer

Hello. Welcome to this blog. First, the short answers:

Q: What’s this all about?

A: Reading prize-winning books, starting with the 80-odd works which have won Pulitzers for Novel/Fiction. (They changed the name of the category in the 1940s.)

Q: Who are you?

A: We are Diablevert and Dreadful Penny, two old friends who are taking on this project together, snarking alternately.

Q: What’s up with the name?

A: It’s derived from the Afterword to Lolita, and the relevant passage is quoted below.

And now, a word from Vladimir Nabokov:

“For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.”

Diablevert’s slightly longer answer as to what’s up with this blog:

I first read Lolita and its afterword when I was 15, and that passage stuck with me. I think it did because at that time I was just beginning to comprehend that, despite a solid decade of voracious reading, I really knew very little about what books were considered good, what authors important, and what were the connections between them, the allusions and reputations that make up the little literary universe, and I was desperately striving to learn. I remember at about that same age reading some compendium in the New York Times Book Review — 100 Years, 100 Books, summat like that — and deciding to read all the ones I hadn’t read yet. (Except Sister Carrie. Even a glowing review of that book has, as it were, blinking neon lights between the lines, flashing “impenetrable doorstop.”)

I believe I got about three books into this grand scheme before getting stuck partway through The Magic Mountain — there’s a conversation that occurs about a third of the way in, five pages long, essential to the plot, conducted entirely in French — and giving it up. That sense of compulsion, however, the feeling that there were certain authors I needed to read in order to consider myself educated, stuck with me for several years. It was what brought me to Lolita, and Nabokov, in the first place; it drove me to other authors whom loved, and some whom I despised.

But after a time, it faded. I couldn’t tell you exactly when. Perhaps four years as an English major beat it out of me; perhaps I merely grew more weary and cynical with age. But I don’t feel that same compulsion any more; there are many writers whom I know are considered a part of the canon whom I haven’t read and don’t care to read, and many who I figure I’ll get round to someday, after I finally finish Anna Karenina.

So, in a nutshell: I’m a weary, cynical, lazy, dilettante who has started a blog to snark on the classics. Well, that’s only mostly true. What I’m curious about in starting this endeavor is whether some of these books are classics at all — and if not what are they? And what do they tell us about the qualities in literature that we choose to venerate? Do those qualities change over time? Can looking at what books were considered the cream of 75 years ago tell us something about 75 years ago?

I’m curious to find out, anyway.

Dreadful Penny’s two cents:

How do we decide what to read in our too-short lives when given the choice between 19th-century Russian epics or the twenty-seventh Xanth novel? (And this is coming from someone who read more than her fair share of Xanth novels in her middle school days… notably for the dirty parts.) If we, the tender reading public, take these prizes as a yearly Cliff’s Notes for the entire field of publishing, shouldn’t there be someone to make sure that the books are both good AND readable? Constant Reader, we have signed up for this task: reading our way through lauded books of the 20th century so you don’t have to!

Why me? I love literary lists, and I love the idea of the Western canon (both its existence and subverting it). In undergrad, I tracked down all four editions of Clifton Fadiman’s Lifetime Reading Plan to do a thesis examining how shifts in academic literary tastes had changed the presentation of the canon for a middlebrow audience. I’ve been checking books off Modern Library’s list of the greatest novels of the 20th century for six years now. While I understand the concerns of canon-shatterers (all those dead white men! all those Greeks!), I still love the idea that the simple act of reading great books can give you the cheapest and best education you can ask for. I’m thrilled to sift through these prize lists looking for gold and to revisit books that I haven’t read in years, so thanks, diablevert, for asking me to sign on.

Oh, and I even kinda like Sister Carrie, or I did in 11th grade, anyway. But don’t get me started on Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve.