Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books (27 page)

Michaels, Leonard,
Collected Stories

Mistry, Rohinton,
A Fine Balance

Munro, Alice,
Friend of My Youth

Murakami, Haruki,
Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Norris, Frank,
The Pit

O’Connor, Flannery,
Wise Blood

Ondaatje, Michael,
Running in the Family

Orwell, George,
The Road to Wigan Pier

Pinsky, Robert,
Selected Poems

Platonov, Andrey,
Soul and Other Stories

Price, Richard,
Clockers

Roth, Joseph,
The Radetzky March

Roth, Philip,
I Married a Communist

Rushdie, Salman,
The Moor’s Last Sigh

Queirós, Eça de,
The Maias

Sebald, W. G.,
The Rings of Saturn

Serge, Victor,
The Case of Comrade Tulayev

Stafford, Jean,
The Mountain Lion

Stendhal,
The Charterhouse of Parma

Svevo, Italo,
Zeno’s Conscience

Theroux, Paul,
The Family Arsenal

Tóibín, Colm,
The Master

Tolstoy, Leo,
War and Peace

Trevor, William,
The Children of Dynmouth

Trollope, Anthony,
The Way We Live Now

Turgenev, Ivan,
Virgin Soil

Twain, Mark,
Huckleberry Finn

Verne, Jules,
The Mysterious Island

West, Rebecca,
The Fountain Overflows

Wharton, Edith,
The House of Mirth

Wolff, Tobias,
In Pharaoh’s Army

Wright, Richard,
Native Son

Zola, Émile,
The Ladies’ Paradise

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the intelligent and useful advice of Arthur Lubow, Katharine Michaels, Thomas Wong, Tim Clark, Anne Wagner, and, above all, Ileene Smith.

INDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

A

Absalom, Absalom!
(Faulkner)

Ackerley, J. R.

Adolescent, The
(Dostoyevsky)

After Nature
(Sebald)

Ahab, Captain

A la recherche du temps perdu
(Proust),
see Remembrance of Things Past

Allen, Esther

Ambler, Eric

Amulet
(Bolaño)

Anna Karenina
(Tolstoy)

Antony and Cleopatra
(Shakespeare)

Asimov, Isaac

“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame” (Hopkins)

Atxaga, Bernardo

Austen, Jane

Austerlitz
(Sebald)

Averno
(Glück)

B

Balzac, Honoré de

Barnes, Albert

Battel of the Books
(Swift)

Baum, Frank

Beckett, Samuel

Beginning of Spring, The
(Fitzgerald)

Bell, Anthea

Bennett, Arnold

Bernhard, Thomas

Berry, Wendell

Best of It, The
(Ryan)

Best of Youth, The
(film)

Bhat, Shashi

“Birches” (Frost)

Birnbaum, Alfred

Black Oak Books

Blue Flower, The
(Fitzgerald)

Bolaño, Roberto

Boleyn, Anne

“Book” (Pinsky)

Bostonians, The
(James)

Bring Up the Bodies
(Mantel)

Brodkey, Harold

Brothers Karamazov, The
(Dostoyevsky)

Browne, Thomas

Browning, Robert

Buchan, John

By Night in Chile
(Bolaño)

C

Canada
(R. Ford)

Capote, Truman

Carver, Raymond

Cervantes, Miguel de

Chaucer, Geoffrey

Clayhanger
(Bennett)

Cody’s Books

Coetzee, J. M.

Coffin for Dimitrios, A
(Ambler)

Collins, Wilkie

Connelly, Michael

Conrad, Joseph

Crime and Punishment
(Dostoyevsky)

Cromer, David

Cromwell, Thomas

D

Dahl, Arne

Dance, Dance, Dance
(Murakami)

David Copperfield
(Dickens)

“Death’s Door” (Gunn)

Defoe, Daniel

Demons
(Dostoyevsky); deleted chapter of

Der Nister (Pinhas Kahanovitch)

de Waal, Edmund

Dickens, Charles; characters in; sentimentality in

Dickinson, Emily

Distant Star
(Bolaño)

Dogs of Riga
(Mankell)

Don Quixote
(Cervantes)

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor; flaws in; grandeur and intimacy in; narrator in; translators of

Double, The
(Dostoyevsky)

Doyle, Arthur Conan

Dresden, bombing of

E

Elephant Vanishes, The
(Murakami)

Eliot, T. S.

Elizabeth Costello
(Coetzee)

Emigrants, The
(Sebald)

Empson, William

End of Eternity, The
(Asimov)

Enright, D. J.

Ephrussi, Charles

Executioner’s Song, The
(Mailer)

F

Faceless Killers
(Mankell)

Family Mashber, The
(Der Nister)

Faulkner, William

Fine Balance, A
(Mistry)

Finnegans Wake
(Joyce)

Firewall
(Mankell)

First Things to Hand
(Pinsky)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott

Fitzgerald, Penelope

Ford, Ford Madox

Ford, Richard

Foundation’s Edge
(Asimov)

Freud, Sigmund

Frost, Robert

G

Gabriel, Philip

Gambler, The
(Dostoyevsky)

Garnett, Constance

Gersão, Teolinda

Gilmore, Gary

Glück, Louise

Golden Bowl, The
(James)

Goldman, Emma

Goncharov, Ivan

Good Soldier, The
(F. M. Ford)

“Grand Inquisitor, The” (Dostoyevsky)

Grant, Ulysses S.

Great World, The
(Malouf)

Gunn, Thom

H

Hamburger, Michael

Hamlet
(Shakespeare)

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
(Murakami)

Hare with Amber Eyes, The
(de Waal)

Hartley, L. P.

Hazzard, Shirley

Heart of Darkness
(Conrad)

Henry IV, Part One
(Shakespeare)

Herzen, Alexander

Higgens, Humphrey

Highsmith, Patricia

Holmes, Sherlock

Homer

Hopkins, Gerard Manley

Howells, William Dean

Huckleberry Finn
(Twain)

Hulse, Michael

I

Idiot, The
(Dostoyevsky)

Iliad
(Homer)

In Cold Blood
(Capote)

Innocence
(Fitzgerald)

In Search of Lost Time
(Proust),
see Remembrance of Things Past

Iphigenia in Forest Hills
(Malcolm)

It’s a Wonderful Life
(film)

I Will Bear Witness
(Klemperer)

J

James, Henry; deliberate inconclusiveness of; grandeur and intimacy in; on interaction of characters and plot; narrator in; notebooks of

Jarrell, Randall

“Jolly Corner, The” (James)

Journalist and the Murderer, The
(Malcolm)

Joyce, James

Jull Costa, Margaret

K

Kafka, Franz

Kahanovitch, Pinhas (Der Nister)

Kahneman, Daniel

Killer Inside Me, The
(Thompson)

Kilmartin, Terence

King Lear
(Shakespeare)

Klemperer, Victor

L

Lady Chatterley’s Lover
(Lawrence)

Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di

Lawrence, D. H.

le Carré, John

Leopard, The
(Lampedusa)

Li Po

Lord Jim
(Conrad)

Loser, The
(Bernhard)

Lost Illusions
(Balzac)

M

Macbeth
(Shakespeare)

Macdonald, Dwight

Macdonald, Ross

Magarshack, David

Maias, The
(Queirós)

Mailer, Norman

Malcolm, Janet

Malouf, David

Man for All Seasons, A
(Bolt)

Mankell, Henning

Manning, Olivia

Mantel, Hilary

Man Who Loved Children, The
(Stead)

Marías, Javier

McDuff, David

Melville, Herman

Merchant of Venice, The
(Shakespeare)

Michaels, Leonard

Milton, John

Mistry, Rohinton

Moby-Dick
(Melville)

Modern Library

“Modest Proposal, A” (Swift)

Montaigne

More, Thomas

Murakami, Haruki

Murray, Steven T.

My Father and Myself
(Ackerley)

“My Last Duchess” (Browning)

My Past and Thoughts
(Herzen)

Myshkin, Prince

Mysterious Island, The
(Verne)

N

Nabokov, Vladimir

Neruda, Pablo

Nesbø, Jo

New Yorker, The

Nin, Anaïs

Norwegian Wood
(Murakami)

Nostromo
(Conrad)

Notes from Underground
(Dostoyevsky)

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief” (Hopkins)

O

Oblomov
(Goncharov)

Oedipus Rex
(Sophocles)

Old Wives’ Tale, The
(Bennett)

1Q84
(Murakami)

“On Vanity” (Montaigne)

Orwell, George

Othello
(Shakespeare)

Our Town
(Wilder)

P

Pale Fire
(Nabokov)

Parade’s End
(F. M. Ford)

Paradise Lost
(Milton)

“Pasture, The” (Frost)

Pevear, Richard

Phineas Finn
(Trollope)

Pinsky, Robert

Place of Greater Safety, A
(Mantel)

Plato

Platonov, Andrei

Plumed Serpent, The
(Lawrence)

Portrait of a Lady, The
(James)

Possessed, The
(Dostoyevsky),
see Demons

Pound, Ezra

Pride and Prejudice
(Austen)

“Private Life, The” (James)

Project Gutenberg

Proust, Marcel

Pyramid, The: The First Wallander Cases
(Mankell)

Q

Queirós, Eça de

R

Ransom
(Malouf)

Raw Youth, A
(Dostoyevsky)

Redbreast
(Nesbø)

Remembrance of Things Past
(Proust); English translations of; as simultaneously grand and intimate

Rings of Saturn, The
(Sebald)

Ripley Under Ground
(Highsmith)

“River-Merchant’s Wife, The: A Letter” (Pound)

Road to Wigan Pier, The
(Orwell)

Robinson Crusoe
(Defoe)

Robots of Dawn, The
(Asimov)

Rosanna
(Wahlöö and Sjöwall)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(Stoppard)

Rubin, Jay

Ryan, Kay

S

Saramago, José

Scott Moncrieff, C. K.

Sebald, W. G.

Secret Agent, The
(Conrad)

Segerberg, Ebba

Shakespeare, William; authority of; grandeur and intimacy in; invisibility of; and paradoxical relationship between audience and play; textual discrepancies in

Shteyngart, Gary

Sjöwall, Maj

Skin of Our Teeth, The
(Wilder)

Sons and Lovers
(Lawrence)

Sophocles

“Soul” (Platonov)

Spoils of Poynton, The
(James)

St. Aubyn, Edward

Stead, Christina

Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)

Stoppard, Tom

Studies in Classic American Literature
(Lawrence)

Super Sad True Love Story
(Shteyngart)

Swift, Jonathan

T

Tale of a Tub, A
(Swift)

Tempest, The
(Shakespeare)

Theroux, Paul

Thinking, Fast and Slow
(Kahneman)

This Boy’s Life
(Wolff)

Thompson, Jim

Thompson, Laurie

Threepenny Review, The

Tolstoy, Leo

To the Lighthouse
(Woolf)

Tragic Muse, The
(James)

Transit of Venus, The
(Hazzard)

Troilus and Criseyde
(Chaucer)

Trollope, Anthony

Troubled Man, The
(Mankell)

“Tune” (Ryan)

Turn of the Screw, The
(James)

Twain, Mark

U

Under Western Eyes
(Conrad)

V

Vargas, Fred

Verne, Jules