{"id":1786,"date":"2016-03-17T15:45:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T19:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=1786"},"modified":"2016-03-18T07:37:12","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T11:37:12","slug":"new-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/?p=1786","title":{"rendered":"New Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry for the big block quote. I just finished The Last Bookaneer<\/a>, which made me think about Kidnapped and reading it thirty-five years ago. I was skimming Browsings <\/a>last night and found these two the description of these two courses, the very thought of which makes me want to be an undergraduate English major. <\/p>\n

Michael Dirda writing at The American Scholar<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year, for instance, I taught a course at the University of Maryland entitled \u201cThe Classic Adventure Novel: 1885-1915,\u201d covering 10 books. Given those dates, you can probably guess half the titles on the reading list: H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon\u2019s Mines; Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped; H. G. Wells, The Time Machine; Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel; E. Nesbit, The Story of the Amulet; G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday; Rudyard Kipling, Kim; A. Conan Doyle, The Lost World; Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes; and John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps.<\/p>\n

If one were to characterize all these disparate works, one might settle for the phrase \u201ccomfort books.\u201d Other descriptive clich\u00e9s come to mind: ripping yarns, action-packed swashbucklers, escapist fantasies, boys\u2019 books. All accurate designations, but I will make the case that such stories are as important to our imaginations as the more canonical classics.<\/p>\n

To my delight, the class proved immensely popular. Students said that it reminded them of why they had majored in English: not because they could hardly wait to read the latest in literary theory, but because they loved stories. This spring the Maryland English Department invited me back to teach again. Did they want me to take over a graduate seminar devoted to Lydgate\u2019s Fall of Princes? Lead a class through the complete critical works of Gayatri Spivak? Teach Proven\u00e7al poetry? Not a bit. Instead of these worthy projects, I\u2019m back discussing \u201cThe Modern Adventure Novel: 1917-1973.\u201d Our reading list picks up where the previous one left off and includes: Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars; Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood; Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades; Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest; H .P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness; Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios; Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination; Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers; Charles Portis, True Grit; and William Goldman, The Princess Bride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry for the big block quote. I just finished The Last Bookaneer, which made me think about Kidnapped and reading it thirty-five years ago. I was skimming Browsings last night and found these two the description of these two courses, the very thought of which makes me want to be an undergraduate English major. Michael … Continue reading New Reading List<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rNFZ-sO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1787,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrclapper.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}