The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Rebecca West (1892-1983) wrote a number of novйis but is remembered primarily as one of the most astute and energetic jour- nalists of our time, a tireless chronicler of history in the making. Her most ambitious and impressive work is Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942), a massive, two-volume study of the history, politics and culture of the Balkan region; it comes brilliantly to life again for a reader in our own time for its enduring insights into the problems of Bosnia and other countries that once belonged to the much-bat- tered land of Yugoslavia.

Patrick White (1912-1990) was the greatest novelist of modern Australia. His work captures well the vast size of that country, and its potential as a backdrop for the clash of powerful emotions and interests; his novйis tend to be expansive in scope and to carry heavy thematic freight. Of his many books, I recommend Voss (1957) and Riders in the Chariot (1961).

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is probably most widely known for his play Our Town (1938), a portrait of small-town New England life that was considered innovative in its time but which has been thoroughly ruined for most people by too many dreadful high school drama productions. Readers coming to Wilder for the first time would be better off with his landmark novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), set in eighteenth-century Peru, in which a priest tries to find the hand of God in the deaths of five people in the collapse of a bridge.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) may or may not be judged by history to have been the greatest American playwright of the twenti- eth century (a status of which he himself had no doubt), but he surely will be ranked as one of the greatest. Southern and gay, he focused in most of his plays on the hothouse atmosphere of Southern family life, but his best work transcends any taint of mere regionalism. Read, and if possible see stage productions of, at least The Glass Menagerie (1945) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) spent his worlang life as a doctor in suburban New Jersey while simultaneously writing the spare, lyrical, beautifully controlled verse that brought him recogni- tion as one of the finest poets of our time. His poems focus exquis- itely on ordinary things and experiences observed with such clarity of vision and such invention of imagery as to be transformed in the readers mind's eye. See his Collected Poems (two volumes, 1991).

Richard Wright (1908-1960) grew up in poverty in the rural South; as a young man he moved to Chicago, then to New York, and became part of various leftist literary groups. He briefly joined the Communist Party, but then broke with it and moved to Paris after

the end of World War II, and lived there as an expatriate for the rest of his life. He is remembered less for his later essays and polemicai pieces than for two early novйis, Native Son (1940), which intro- duced one of the most vivid characters in American fiction, Bigger Thomas, a Black man imprisoned for murder; and the autobiograph- ical Black Boy (1945).

J.S.M

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to the titles suggested in the Plan, this Bibliography selec- tively lists other important works, if any, by the author, and gives some suggestions for further reading about the authors and their works. Many of the titнes have been published in moderate-priced paperback editions, though some are available only in hardcover.

Publishing is a very volatile industry. Some long-established paper­back series are no longer active; others may have been discontinued by the time this book reaches you. Publishing firms not infrequently change names or disappear. At least some of these books will be out of print at any given time. For these reasons, in this Bibliography (unlike those in earlier editions of the Plan) we do not try systematically to list in-print paperback editions of the recommended books. In the frequent cases where an authors works are widely available in standard editions, we simply say that. In other cases we list editions because they contain supe­rior texts, or especially good introductions and criticai apparatus, or are particularly good translations of works written in languages other than English.