And lest we forget “Maus”. That was pretty critically acclaimed for “just a comic.”
Books:
- “Great Expectations,” Charles Dickens
- “Anna Karenina,” Leo Tolstoy
- “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov
- “The Information,” Martin Amis
- “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” Tolkien
- “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Douglas Adams
- “The Stand,” Stephen King
Plays / Musicals
- “Waiting for Godot,” Samuel Becket
- “The Three Sisters,” and “The Cherry Orchard,” Anton Chekhov
- The four major Shakespearean tragedies, plus “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Tempest,” “The Merchant of Venice,” and “Twelfth Night” (and, I guess, “Romeo and Juliet,” although I hate it).
- “Rent,” Jonathan Larsen
- “Sweeney Todd,” Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler
- “Ragtime,” Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens
- “Les Miserables,” Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg
Films:
- “The Princess Bride”
- “Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail”
- “American Beauty”
- “Boogie Nights”
- “Citizen Kane”
- “Schindler’s List”
- “ET”
- “The Exorcist”
Television:
- “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
- “MASH”
- “Frasier,” seasons 1-4
- “The Sopranos”
There are, of course, many more, but this is fun so I figured I’d put in my (incomplete) two cents.
- Frank
Maybe you should read a book. Like:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer
It appalls me that our societal memory of the Holocaust is being reduced to a comic battle between mice and cats, while the original source material written by people who were actually THERE sits unread on a library shelf.
And thus, I urge people to return to the OP. What is essential?
BTW Chronos, isn’t Mycenaean culture more correctly related to Eastern (or middle-eastern) culture, rather than Western culture?
Just to clarify my intentions a bit, I am looking for peoples OPINIONS on this issue. If a comic is deemed by you to be must-see then that’s what I want to hear. This isn’t really a thread for debating what is important (there are already a couple of those going), it’s a thread for stating what YOU find to be important, art-wise.
And what a lovely thread it is. I am really digging this input and my reading list just got way bigger. Thank you all for your help with my quest towards enlightenment. Please continue.
DaLovin’ Dj
Chas, you are misinformed. Both of these books are downright terrible, especially the Shirer. If you are going to speak from the rostrum of authority, do so with a little more knowledge. Only read Shirer if you are interested in a Grand Teleological Narrative of WWII which utterly ignores the fragmentations and complexities of historiography. If you wish to arrogate to yourself the role of expert, do read more than just pop history.
Now, if you are interested in simply the most beautiful work of art ever created by human hands, IMHO of course, then take a look at the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It’s a lousy picture, I admit, but the sculpture is divine. The piece looks much better from side or angular views, but I am having trouble finding decent ones on the web.
MR
:eek:
Why anyone would read this in their spare time is beyind me…I had to read ALL of it for a History class and it was awful, boring, awful, horrible stuff. The highlight was on page 4,982,789: Hitler’s birth name was Schiklgruber.
Now you don’t have to read it at all.
I get much more excited by Holocaust Lit - most of it is non-fiction, and it gets much more personal than Shirer ever did.
Yeesh! Why would anyone go around rcommending that monstrosity?
Well, since apparently we have both read these books, certainly neither you nor I are as misinformed as people who learned their WWII history from Maus. I congratulate you on your ability to rationally engage these difficult books on an intellectual level.
Yes, there are better WWII books. But these ones are widely considered the jumping-off point for further studies. What would you suggest for WWII history books? I’d consider anyone who hasn’t read Mein Kampf as politically uneducated.
I dunno. Most folks down here on the porch at the General Store consider the Iliad to be a bedrock of “Western culture.”
But if you won’t give Chronos the Iliad as an example of Western literature you have to be knowledgable of outside sources to interpret correctly, how about “The Waste-Land” ?
I don’t know if it counts as essential, but “the carytid has fallen under the weight of her burden” by Rodin is, in my NSHO, definitely worth seeing before you die.
Oh, does anyone have any architecture to add to the list?
I am surprised I missed this before. The short answer? No. The long answer? No. WWII history is hardly my specialty, but classics is. 
Both Mycenaean culture as well as dark ages Ionian culture were informed heavily by Middle Eastern, particularly Phoenician, elements. Martin West wrote an excellent book on this subject, called [url=“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198152213/qid=1001698604/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_2_9/104-7466232-4613515”]The East Face of Helicon : West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth
[/quote]
. He explores the possible transmission of eastern ideas into the lyric and epic poetic traditions.
Howeversomuch they inform the tradition, it is not more correctly identified as “eastern.” You may make an interesting case that the Heroic Age of Mycenae was more properly an eastern civilization, but it would be difficult to extend this argument to the Iliad and the Odyssey, both written approximately four hundred years after the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. While comparisons between east and west are extremely interesting and yield fruitful results, one should not be tempted to combine them hastily.
I think you should read a bit more ancient literature, Chas, as it’s all like that. If you are more interested in allusion and intertext in the history of western literature, check out the following:
European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages by Ernst Robert Curtius
Mimesis by Erich Auerbach
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics by J.R.R. Tolkien
Or grab just about any current book on intertextuality or on reception theory. Better yet, try reading the Thyestes of L. Annaeus Seneca and pretend you don’t know the entire story of the fall of the house of Tantalos.
Ok, we agree here. Shirer is definitely not the sine qua non of WWII studies, but it can stimulate interest for further reading. As for better WWII books, I’d better think about that one for a bit. While I recognize what I do not like, I am hardly an expert in the field.
MR
The Palace of Justice in Brussels.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/bruxelles/anglais/vispj.html
Big and scary. I LIKE that in a building. But Chas. E should be by shortly to recommend something Palladian.
I have read Rise and Fall. I thought it was bland. Besides, we aren’t talking about history exclusively. As you so often point out, LOOK AT THE OP. It says whatever is essential. Schindler’s List isn’t critical to learn about the Holocaust, but it darn sure is fine art. Maus hits the same notes. You don’t have to read Maus (or Watchmen for that matter) to learn about a specific point in history. [chuckle]Much like one wouldn’t necessarily read “Where the Sidewalk Ends” to learn about navigation. [/chuckle] Didn’t Maus receive a Pulitzer? Someone must think it is more than just a comic. I ask again. Have you read either of these books? Or did you simply dismiss them as beneath your station. Lighten up. You kind of remind me of the “apples” guy from Good Will Hunting.
Hell, my local newspaper won a Pulitzer for a report on embezzlement in the local Sewer administration. But their reporting was still crap.
OK, back to the OP.
There is one essential book I’ve been hunting for a long time. It is a collection of great speeches and great documents in American history, I think it was by Comager, Morison, Steele, or one of those big history names. I most vividly remember it for one eccentric speech given in Congress during the debate about prohibition. It blathers on and on and on, something to the effect of “If you speak of the demon rum, the destroyer of families, the ruiner of health…then I am against it. But if you speak of alcohol, the convivial toast on New Year’s, the drink that aids conversation and puts the sparkle in one’s eye, then I am all for it.” In sum, he said exactly nothing, the speech is a self-cancelling statement, (+1) + (-1) = 0 and this is why this blithering idiocy was published as one of the great moments in US history.
So… anyone know this book? I haven’t seen this since jr. high, our school had dozens of copies, it must have been a standard history text at some point.
I’ll also toss in an “essential” endorsement for “Columbia History of the World.” But alas, it seems it is out of print, replaced by a larger series of volumes on separate history topics.
There’s just no reaching some people…
OK, not knowing any better, I’ll accept your point. Classics are not my strength, other than the Japanese classics. But I will quibble, and assert that modern Western literature is almost never dependent on the reader’s existing knowledge, while virtually all Japanese writing is based on this premise, even newspaper articles, TV shows, and comics. It’s all about the writing style known as “kishotenketsu.” The whole point of this system is to evoke the reader’s knowledge without explicitly declaring any specific points, then coming to an ambiguous conclusion that requires the reader to decide what the conclusion exactly IS. This is a dramatic dramatic difference from the relatively linear form of western writing, which has often been described as a chain of linked thoughts, any weak link that does not support the previous point means the chain is broken and the conclusion is unsupportable. There really is no form like kishotenketsu in western lit.
Michaelangelo’s David is the most gorgeous/intense/moving thing I’ve ever experienced. See it, please. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. And then I went back a week later because I was leaving Florence soon and I couldn’t stand the thought that I might never get to see it again.
Since I haven’t read Spirer or Speer I may be wrong, but I don’t think they’re in the same genre as Maus. There’s a difference between WWII history and Holocaust literature. (And one is rather more moving than the other.) I’d say that Maus is better compared to Wiesel’s “Night” than anything written by a Nazi officer. And making that particular comparison, I’d say that Maus is the better work. Two reasons come quickly to mind; first, the reader identifies with the cute little characters of Maus on a deeper, less conscious level than in Night, and so is therefore more affected. But more importantly, because Maus examines life after Auschwitz it exposes yet another horror of the Holocaust; even those who managed to survive the camps didn’t really survive them. Hitler killed millions, but millions more were broken, no longer able to interact with their fellow man in the way that humans are meant to do. That’s more of a tragedy than anything you’ll find in a discussion of the Austro-Hungarian roots of German nationalism and a list of troop movements, no matter how damn long it is.
–Cliffy
This is interesting, as I don’t know a dirty copper cent about Japanese literature.
I think that western literature is utterly dependent on the reader’s existing knowledge, especially modern literature. I would even go so far as to argue that no one can possibly read Joyce and appreciate it in any real way without either a thorough knowledge of the Bible or without an excellent reading guide. Likewise the modernist poets: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, etc. are all highly allusive. They draw upon the very core of western civilization and its discontents, from religion, to classical culture, to Romantic pseudo-medievalism. Good luck making sense of Pound’s “translations” of Occitan poetry without having at least some appreciation of the vast canon of courtly love. Wanna read Keats? Better have copies of Spenser, Vergil, and Homer lying around. Seamus Heaney? I hope you have your Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. How about the modern vernacular novels of Latin American nationalism? You just aren’t going to understand them without checking out local newspapers on microfilm first.
Ever try reading Gulliver’s Travels? Even having done some research first I still can’t grasp the satire, as it is dependent on a vast spectrul of European social phenomena inextricably tied to Time and Place. How bout Candide? What sense does it make unless you know the etymologies of the characters’ names and their associations with Enlightenment intellectual figures? Is it really all that intelligible if you don’t know that Dr. Pangloss’ name in Greek means, essentially, “all-words,” and that he is a calque for Liebniz?
I don’t mean to prance around tossing off esoterica. I am just trying to justify my claim in my own haphazard and dilettantish way that Western lit is heavily reliant on all sorts of external knowledge. It may be appreciated on one level without it, as most novels with the exception of some of our stream-of-consciousness favorites at least have coherent, intelligble plots.
As I haven’t read a single Japanese example of kishotenketsu, I have no idea how one would go about comparing the two either qualitatively or quantitatively. I also realize that my examples could be missing your point entirely. I am just trying to clarify and add some nuance to any claim regarding the allusiveness of western lit.
Regards,
MR
I find this to be a very attractive description. I’ll have to look into this a little further. I am all for referencing other work to communicate a point. However, I always end up explaining it if people don’t get it. It sounds like writers using the technique you describe would not explain the references, that’s up to you the reader to figure out.
It reminds me of a quote on a CD I have. It lists one band and says the sample in this part of this song was from this band. “All the rest you’ll have to figure out for yourself.” Instead of the artist explaining it, it is up to the audience to research the music, film, or literature to understand it. Like a parent telling their child to look the word up instead of just giving them the definition. It’s makes the process of finding out as important as just reading the text/listening to the song. Cool.
DaLovin’ Dj
Van Gogh you HAVE to see in person, I had always seen prints of his painting and thought they were beautiful, but until I saw them up close, I had no idea.
Anyone who has ever read Sandman knows that comic books can be amazing works of art.
Chas.E, I think you would not be much fun to be around.
Books (fiction):
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Onegin, Pushkin
A Christmas Story, Truman Capote
Story of My Life, Jay McInerney
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
The Three Coffins, John Dickson Carr
One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
Book (non-fiction):
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Last Chance To See, Douglas Adams
The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
Adventures In The Screen Trade, William Goldman
Godel-Escher-Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
Collected Reviews, Dorothy Parker
Music:
Brandenburg Concertos, J.S. Bach
The Koln Concert, Keith Jarrett
Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd
English Anthems, Thomas Tallis
Adagio for Strings, Barber
White Album, Beatles
Live At Winterland, Hendrix
Eleanor Rigby, Stanley Jordan
Sculpture:
David, Michaelangelo
Drama:
Macbeth, Shakespeare
Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare
The Tempest, Shakespeare
Equus, Peter Schaeffer
Noises Off, Michael Frayn
The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard
Oleanna, David Mamet
Black Comedy, Peter Shaeffer
Dogg’s Hamlet - Cahout’s Macbeth, Tom Stoppard
TV:
Hill St. Blues
Fawlty Towers