Last issue, we began our “Find the Deliberate Error in the Reading List” contest. It was a tough one, but as we expected, at least one of our readers caught it. He is John E Isham of Akron, Ohio, and he writes: “In The Devils,$ N Dostoyevsky parodies Ivan Turgenev, not Ivan Goncharov.” Congratulations, Mr. Isham! Turgenev is, of course, the author of the anti-anarchist novel $ IFathers and Sons, while Goncharov’s most famous work is Oblomov, the portrait of aristocratic sloth that led Lenin to remark, famously, “We must stamp out Oblomovism!”
This week, Elliott Abrams of Great Falls, Va., offers us this fascinating tidbit: “Paul Horgan’s Whitewater is a novel about growing up in a small town in the Southwest after the Second World War. While very readable, it is not m the same league with Horgan’s novel about the opening of the Southwest to settlement, A Distant Trumpet. Still, until James McDougal writes his memoirs, this is the only Whitewater we are likely to have.”
Also in the category of books whose titles have strange resonance to the current political situation:
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope. The story of two young women — Laura Kennedy and Glencora M’Cluskie — who are torn between the men who deserve them and the men who excite them, with a title question that might well be asked by former Travelgate chief Billy Dale of Hillary Rodham Clinton, now that we know she personally ordered his persecution.
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens. The title of this complex tale of London scavengers might also refer to every single person in the state of Arkansas.
Yes, there’s a mistake embedded somewhere in this item. Send your correction to: Reading List, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, 1150 17th St. NW, Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036.
