By an overwhelming margin, readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD have voted to keep the Reading List. The vote was 18 in favor, 3 against (though the ” against” ballot cast by American Scholar editor and noted literary critic Joseph Epstein we gave the weight of six ordinary votes; remember, this is a coonservative magazine, and thus we are not necessarily believers in the “one person, one vote” principle).
Some testimonials:
“Please, please keep the Reading List. I really, really like it,” writes Edward Berenson of El Sobriente, Calif. ” In this day of computers, internets and heaven knows what else, we old-timers need all the reviews, lists, commentaries, anything that we can find.”
I have to admit I do read the ‘List’ and enjoy most of the subjects,” says R. D. Bush of Columbia, Md. “It might be interesting in light of P. J. O’Rourke’s excellent review [of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s It Takes a Village] to bring up all the liberal books which have appeared in the last 30 years just to show the kind of empyt-headedness prevalent throughout the Left.” That’s easy, Mr. Bush: Charles Reich’s The Greening of America, Vivian Gornick’s The Romance of American Communism, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime and Loon Lake and just about anything else, Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. . . . The list could go on forever, and will.
“Your Reading List was both interesting and challenging because the books were actually valuable to read or at least know about,” offers Glenn Koocher of Cambridge, Mass. He does say, as did most people, that he had grown tired of the “find the deliberate error” contest, so we’ll retire that and allow you instead to keep harping on our inadvertent illiteracies and inaccuracies.
Some readers did like the idea of some alternating lists. John Bailey of Flower Mound, Tex., proposes 12 ideas, among them a “Weekly Scoreboard” of races and elections nationwide and “Conservative Joke of the Week.” (A rabbi, a Mexican, and Pat Buchanan were in a lifeboat . . . )
Michelle Puhr of Westminster, Colo., suggests an Entertainment List — ” you could review films, books, CDs, television shows, and the like, and provide recommendations.
. . . Be sure to keep it current and hip. A review of Perry Como’s greatest hits should be balanced with a review of Coolio’s latest CD, Matlock balanced with Friends, and so on.” Actually, we’re waiting for that collaboration between 101 Strings and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince (and Currently Known as a Jerk).
And for this week, we take our Reading List from Lawrence Dugan of Philadelphia, who offers “postwar American religious novels.” He suggests three; we are paring it down to two because we don’t like his first suggestion (it’s from J. D. Salinger). Writes Dugan:
“The Violent Bear It Away, by Flannery O’Connor. What happens when a Southern boy pushes reformation fundamentalism to its literal conclusion.
“The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy. Like O’Connor, Percy was a Southern Catholic who turned what seems like a parochial, isolated background into the basis for universal tales. This one is about a New Orleans society boy-stock broker addicted to benign girl-chasing and film noir when he should be reading Kierkegaard.”
As should we all! Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, anyone?
