In
his One Hundred Best Books, John Cowper Powys confidently selects a reading
list for all humanity. Written in 1916 by a man already in his forties, it
offers a selection that can be labelled as distinctly pre-war, pre-First World
War, that is. Given that the author was the product of an English public school
- that means private, by the way, if you are not English - and then Cambridge
University, one would expect the list to be dominated by the classics, ancient
and modern. And, indeed it is, but there are numerous surprises.
One
Hundred Best Books is a short text and offers only a potted critique of the
works chosen. More often than not, John Cowper Powys chooses an author rather
than a work. So, for example, Sir Walter Scott manages to have three books
listed, and Dostoyevsky four, while Chares Dickens manages just one. So, in
fact this list is not one hundred best books, more like a hundred favourite
authors. The critiques, therefore, more often than not relate to the author’s
perception of the writer’s overall oeuvre, rather than to a specific work.
This
list might be almost a hundred years old, but it remains an enlightening and
enjoyable tour of the literary perception and, to a certain extent, the bigotries
of the time. Selections are often more revealing in what they omit rather than
what they include and One Hundred Best Books by John Cowper Powys is no
exception. Indeed, towards the end, the text appears to descend into mere
advertisement, but this part can be safely skimmed or ignored.
A
statistic that reveals much of its time is the stark reality that only two of
the hundred writers listed are women. A third woman, who chose to write under a
male non de plume, George Eliot, is omitted altogether, which, given that she
had died over thirty years before this list was published, is a surprise.
Though the list covers ancient classics and includes works from Russia, France,
Italy, Germany and the United States, there is no place for the naturalism of
Emile Zola.
But
neither is the list merely a safety first trip through big names. A number of
the French and Italians listed would not be immediately recognised by a
contemporary reader. And some names, such as Gilbert Cannan, Vincent O’Sullivan
and Oliver Onions have apparently almost disappeared.
John
Cowper Powys is not afraid, however, to describe those he has chosen in
colourful terms, sometimes revealing much about prevalent ideas of the day. How
many people, in the twenty-first century, would advise the following: “a few
lines taken at random and learned by heart would act as a talisman in all hours
to drive away the insolent pressure of the vulgar and common crowd,” especially
when referring to The Odes of Horace? And today would the phrase “the greatest
intellect in literature” be attached easily to Rabelais?
On
Nietzsche, we are advised that “To appreciate his noble and tragic distinction
with the due pinch of Attic salt it is necessary to be possessed of more
imagination than most persons are able to summon up.” Theodore Dreiser is
lavished with praise: “There is something epic—something enormous and
amorphous—like the body of an elemental giant—about each of these books… All is simple, direct, hard and healthy—a
very epitome and incarnation of the life-force, as it manifests itself in America.”
What literature of the Unites States in the early twenty-first century, I
wonder, aspires to simplicity coupled with directness, hardness and health? If
it exists, I bet it’s not fiction.
Thackeray
has one work included. One wonders whether John Cowper Powys really wanted it. “Without
philosophy, without faith, without moral courage, the uneasy slave of
conventional morality, and with a hopeless vein of sheer worldly philistinism
in his book, Thackeray is yet able, by a certain unconquerable insight into the
motives and impulses of mediocre people, and by a certain weight and mass of
creative force, to give a convincing reality to his pictures of life, which is
almost devastating in its sneering and sentimental accuracy.”
Charles
Dickens is nowadays credited with being a great social realist. Powys includes
only Great Expectations and seems to regard Dickens as something less than
real. “His world may be a world of goblins and fairies, but there cross it
sometimes figures of an arresting appeal and human voices of divine
imagination.” And who, today, would say this about a writer? “Mr. Shaw has
found his role and his occupation very happily cut out for him in the unfailing
stupidity, not untouched by a sense of humor, of our Anglo-Saxon democracy in
England and America.”
One
Hundred Best Books by John Cowper Powys is a quick and easy read. It is always
useful to remind ourselves that perhaps the way we think about the world
changes our psyche as much as changes in fashion alter our appearance.
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