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| Nope. |
A game I play at conventions is confession. Bring up an old
Jack Vance? I’ll admit to never having read it and ask what spoke to you about
it. I’ll confess to never having read Theodore Sturgeon or Octavia Butler, or
only having read Samuel Delany’s non-fiction, or only the first book of Wheel of Time and Ender’s Game. The fun of this exercise is watching people around me
relax, because by going first (and going at all), I’ve let them give up
pretense. Tension leaves their shoulders as they realize it’s okay.
My excuses are legion. I didn’t grow up with LeGuin and
Zelazny, and only ever heard of G.K. Chesterton after I graduated college. I’ve
gone out of my way to collect books by canonical authors in order to catch up –
what I call “doing the diligence” – which yields a mixed bag of results. LeGuin
and Zelazny amaze me, but if I never read another Asimov short story that’s a
thin fictional veil over a science lesson, I’ll be fine.
 |
| Nope. |
My troubles are compounded by interests in literary fiction,
which has its own far broader canons around the world. The many years I spent
reading Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and various translations of The Divine Comedy seem to be the same
time others were getting familiar with The
Sword of Shannara (only read the first one and can’t remember it, sorry).
And then there are all those superhero comics that ate up my adolescence,
though they seem to be more useful now that Marvel films are dominating the
earth. Don’t get me started on Beta Ray Bill.
Nor have I have I given up my other loves. I’ll get to A Canticle for Liebowitz, but I’m
probably going to read Pearl S. Buck’s The
Good Earth and G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel first. So maybe I’ll always be behind, but that’s not always bad.
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| I own it, but... |
As frustrating as it can be to listen to geniuses dissect
apparently great works I’ve never heard of, this slower pace has also yielded
great pleasures. I’m not sure I would have appreciated the works of Shirley
Jackson as a teenager, though having started reading her a few years ago with We Have Always Lived in the Castle, she
is now one of the most inspiring authors in my life. So there’s the frustration
of finding two more important books for every one I knock down, this hydra of
literacy, but there is also the wonder of finding true masterpieces vetted by
decades of readership.
It may just be the way I look at things, but I am far
happier to have read Lord of Light
late than never at all. No one I know of writes this way today, and as far as
I’ve read, no one else used to, not even Zelazny.
If you’re curious, the next authors I intend to do the
diligence on are Lois McMaster Bujold and Samuel Delany. I’m told I’ll love Nova. The two keep getting postponed
because I’ve taken such a long detour through Jo Walton, even though she so
strongly recommends both of them.
