Hey all,

I'm trying to compile a list of books (of all types) to read for once I
graduate and move on to... well, reading. Anyway, I'm sure others would
appreciate it too. If you have a minute, could you post your favorite books
(the really smashing kind)? Anything would be much appreciated.

Thanks a jillion,
tahneer

Tahneer:

Perhaps this will become the hub2001 reading list. I'll start, anyway.

--Al

1) Williams' SPRING AND ALL in its entirety
2) Bulgakov, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

| Hey all,
|
| I'm trying to compile a list of books (of all types) to read for once I
| graduate and move on to... well, reading. Anyway, I'm sure others would
| appreciate it too. If you have a minute, could you post your favorite books
| (the really smashing kind)? Anything would be much appreciated.
|
| Thanks a jillion,
| tahneer
|

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: Andrew W Zitcer <awz@pobox.upenn.edu>
To: afilreis@dept.english.upenn.edu (Al Filreis)
Cc: toksman@sas.upenn.edu, hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:51:53 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

maybe somethings (light and valuable reading) that wouldn't get mentioned

3) Saroyan, The William Saroyan Reader
4) Nathaniel West, A Cool Million

>
> Tahneer:
>
> Perhaps this will become the hub2001 reading list. I'll start, anyway.
>
> --Al
>
>
> 1) Williams' SPRING AND ALL in its entirety
> 2) Bulgakov, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
>
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> | Hey all,
> |
> | I'm trying to compile a list of books (of all types) to read for once I
> | graduate and move on to... well, reading. Anyway, I'm sure others would
> | appreciate it too. If you have a minute, could you post your favorite
books
> | (the really smashing kind)? Anything would be much appreciated.
> |
> | Thanks a jillion,
> | tahneer
> |
>

--
Andrew Zitcer
VPUL Perelman Quadrangle Programming
Foundation Community Arts Initiative
215-573-6107(t)/215-898-7308(f)
200 Houston Hall

Subject: books
From: deborah burnham <dburnham@sas.upenn.edu>
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:03:19 -0700
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

This could turn into the mother of all lists ...

_My Childhood_: Maxim Gorky

_Rumors of Peace_: Ella Leffland

_Daniel Deronda_ George Eliot

_Tar_ : C.K. Williams

_Responsibilities_ and _The Tower_ -- Yeats

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: Jeffrey Mccall <jeffre34@wharton.upenn.edu>
To: toksman@sas.upenn.edu (Tahneer N. Oksman)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:03:43 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

_One Hundred Years of Solitude_ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

_Duino Elegies_ by Ranier Maria Rilke

enjoy,
j

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
St. Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol

(the first two are quite wonderful and the last is *both* wonderful and funny)

j.

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: afilreis@dept.english.upenn.edu (Al Filreis)
To: blankj@sas.upenn.edu (Julia Blank)
Cc: toksman@sas.upenn.edu, hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:07:53 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

| The Hours by Michael Cunningham <-----
|
|
one of the next year's
Writers House Fellows!

Robert Creely _Collected Poems_
Betty Smith _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_
John Barth _Chimera_
Jeanette Winterson _Written on the Body_
Friedrich Nietzsche _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_
Zbigniew Herbert _Collected Poems_
Witold Gombrowicz _Ferdydurke_
Terry McMillan _A Day Late and a Dollar Short_

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: Julia Blank <blankj@sas.upenn.edu>
To: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:21:16 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

wow tahneer, what a wonderful thing you've started!

i forgot to add

yo! by julia alvarez to my list

j.

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: "Russell C. Campbell III" <riii@pobox.upenn.edu>
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:25:45 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

24) Civil War Land in Bad Decline-George Saunders
25) Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys-Chris Fuhrman

Russell Carl Campbell III
News Officer
University Communications
215.898.7798
http://www.upenn.edu/news

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: "jo grudziak" <joasia05@hotmail.com>
To: <hub@dept.english.upenn.edu>
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 09:34:46 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

is anybody keeping track of these?

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
To: "jo grudziak" <joasia05@hotmail.com>, <hub@dept.english.upenn.edu>
From: "Russell C. Campbell III" <riii@pobox.upenn.edu>
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:30:15 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

I'm at my desk all day compiling...

At 9:34 -0400 5/4/01, jo grudziak wrote:
>is anybody keeping track of these?

Russell Carl Campbell III
News Officer
University Communications
215.898.7798
http://www.upenn.edu/news

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: Holly Johnson <hjohnson@philly1.phillymag.com>
To: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:37:26 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Tahneer--

how 'bout:

_Autobiography of Red_ Ann Carson (poem novel perfect for first freedom)
_One-Dimensional Man_ Herbert Marcuse (technology, means, and liberation)
_Air-Conditioned Nightmare_ Henry Miller (miller goes off (on a trip))
_Snow Crash_ Neal Stephenson (fun sun sexy science fiction)
and the book i waited until i graduated to read, then gobbled up in one
sweaty sitting:
_The Iliad_ trans. Richard Lattimore (they spear people in the eyeball!)

whatever you do, read everything you get your hands on. spend all the time
you spent studying, reading. your mind's been primed so use it! have fun!

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
To: "jo grudziak" <joasia05@hotmail.com>, <hub@dept.english.upenn.edu>
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 10:51:34 -0700
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

yes, i've got a list going-- i'll post it in a day or two

this is Great!!!!

-tahneer

At 09:34 AM 5/4/01 -0400, jo grudziak wrote:
>is anybody keeping track of these?
>
>

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 11:02:26 -0700
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Here are mine, if anyone is interested:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie
The Last Night of the Earth Poems, Charles Bukowski

Thanks to everyone!

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: Julia Blank <blankj@sas.upenn.edu>
To: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 10:54:49 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Wow...speaking of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I thought I'd never see or
hear of that book again. When I was younger it was my arch-nemesis. Did
anyone have one book that your parents just insisted that you read, but
that you despised? Mine was Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I don't know why
I took so unkindly to it. I guess they knew what they were talking about
after all....
j.

>Here are mine, if anyone is interested:
>
>
>The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
>Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
>Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie
>The Last Night of the Earth Poems, Charles Bukowski
>

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: hstarr@dept.english.upenn.edu (Heather Starr)
To: toksman@sas.upenn.edu (Tahneer N. Oksman)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:16:32 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

I love this, and love seeing everyone's lists!

Here are a few that I think of right away:

Mysteries of Small Houses, by Alice Notley
The Life of Poetry, by Muriel Rukeyser (ooh you'd love it Tahneer)
To Make our World Anew: A History of African Americans, ed. by Robin Kelley
The Collected Stories, by Grace Paley

just for starters...

hs

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: "Allie D'Augustine" <allied@sas.upenn.edu>
To: Julia Blank <blankj@sas.upenn.edu>,
"Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 11:20:28 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Tahneer, I think you know some of my picks already but I'll add them to the
growing list:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander
England, England, Julian Barnes
any of David Gates' three books (I couldn't pick one!)

arch-nemesis book:

Julia, I always just refused to read anything my parents insisted on, but
what I remember most is Dickens. I decided, without having read any, that
Dickens was awful. And I never did read any until last semester (in
Carolyn Jacobson's class!) when we read Great Expectations. It wasn't that
bad after all--at least, thanks to Carolyn.

--Allie

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: Julia Blank <blankj@sas.upenn.edu>
To: "Allie D'Augustine" <allied@sas.upenn.edu>
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:24:28 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

ugh--yeah...Haroun was my dad's pick....my mother's was David Copperfield.
After 50 pages describing the room he saw as he exited his mother's womb i
couldn't take it anymore.
j.

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: mmerlino@dept.english.upenn.edu (Matthew Merlino)
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 11:31:24 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Here's a stack:

Wallace Stevens, *Transport to Summer*
Russell Edson, *The Tunnel*
Jorie Graham, *The End of Beauty*
Jay Wright, *Boleros*
Michael S. Harper, *Debridement*
Wilson Harris, *Jonestown*
Steve Erikson, *Arc d'x*
Anne Carson (everything, but, if you want just one), *Autobiography of
Red*
Anne Michaels, *Fugitive Pieces*
Pauline Hopkins, *Of One Blood*
John Hawkes, *Second Skin*
Joanna Scott, *The Manikin*
Toni Bambara, *The Salt Eaters*
Jean Genet, *The Blacks*

--
"The other night we painted posters / We played some records by the
Coasters / A bunch of pom-pom girls looked down their nose at me / They
had painted tons of posters / I had painted three / I hear the secret
whispers everywhere I go / My school spirit's at an all-time low."
--Frank Zappa

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: urminska@sas.upenn.edu (Suzanna A Urminska)
To: mmerlino@dept.english.upenn.edu (Matthew Merlino)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 12:22:33 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

ooh, read:

something by carson mccullers (i like esp. her short stories)
something by lois anne yamanaka (esp. her novels)
something by stephen jay gould (he makes learning fun)
any children's book by peter sis (beautiful stories/illustrations)

s.u.

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: carmenm@dept.english.upenn.edu (Carmen Higgins)
To: toksman@sas.upenn.edu (Tahneer N. Oksman)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 12:39:48 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

i was going to send two lists--a children's lit and "other," but the
thing i love the best about rediscovering children's lit is
'rediscovering' that kids' lit is for big kids, too:

(i'm keeping it brief)

King, T. _Green Grass, Running Water_
Kingsolver, B. _Animal Dreams_
_The Bean Tress_
_Pigs in Heaven_
Tan, A. _The Kitchen God's Wife_
Ousmane, Sembene (who is sometime listed as "Ousmane Sembene), _God's Bits
of Wood_
Cushman, K. _Catherine, Called Birdy_
Rostand, E. _Cyrano de Bergerac_
Twain, M. _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_
Anderson, L.H. _Speak_
Cronin, B. _Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type_
Falconer, I. _Olivia_
Diaz, Junot. _Drown_
Crutcher, C. _Athlectic Shorts_

Okay, gotta stop procrastinating, but this was fun...

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: "Elizabeth L. Silver" <elsilver@sas.upenn.edu>
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 12:46:43 -0400
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

this is great!!!

_One Hundred Years of Solitude_....Gabriel Garcia Marquez
_A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_....Betty Smith
_The Red Tent_.....Anita Diamont
_No Telephone to Heaven_....Michelle Cliff
_Tumbling_....Diane McKinney-Whetstone

ok, some of these have already been mentioned, but they are some of my
favorites, so i had to write them again...

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: matthart@dept.english.upenn.edu (Matthew Hart)
To: elsilver@sas.upenn.edu (Elizabeth L. Silver)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 14:12:41 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

My rec reading for anyone's summer or graduation. Abritrarily kept down
to five, or I'd be here all day . . .

1. Basil Bunting, *Collected Poems* (just cos)
2. Raphael Samuel, *Theatres of Memory* (2 vols of the best, most eclectic
and most moving historical writing around)
3. James Hogg, *Confessions of a Justified Sinner* (the world's weirdest
novel)
4. Ezra Pound, *Homage to Sextus Propertius* (just cos I love fridges)
5. HD, *Helen in Egypt* (just an amazing long poem)

Aren't I the uncontemporary f**k*r?

Matt.

PS: Holly's dead right about Stephenson's *Snow Crash*, which is really
excellent sci-fi. Also check out his mammoth, *Cryptonomicon*, which is
surely the Uber-Geek novel of all time, complete with algebra and
everything.

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: mmagee@dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee)
To: matthart@dept.english.upenn.edu (Matthew Hart)
Cc: elsilver@sas.upenn.edu, hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 14:24:17 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Okay I'll play:

1) Frank Stanford, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.
2) George Oppen, Collected Poems
3) Ronald Formisano, Boston Against Busing (if you're interested in race,
class and Boston, MA)

4) Carla Harryman, The Words
5) Lorenzo Thomas, Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and
Twentieth Century American Poetry

-m.

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: hannahjs@sas.upenn.edu (Hannah J Sassaman)
To: joasia05@hotmail.com (jo grudziak)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 14:55:29 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

i don't have any favorites, but i like these books!

about la:

_miss lonelyhearts and in the day of the locust_ by nathaniel west (i think)
_the big sleep_ by raymond carver

anything by italo calvino.

more later. must do something practical with rest of day!!!

hannah

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hannah Sassaman
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~hannahjs

Art is an answer to reality.
-- Tadeusz Kantor

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.
-- Bertold Brecht

You don't need an ideology to knock over a liquor store.
-- Hal Hartley

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: ksherin@dept.english.upenn.edu (Kerry Sherin)
To: blankj@sas.upenn.edu (Julia Blank)
Cc: toksman@sas.upenn.edu (Tahneer N Oksman), hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 18:11:24 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

seconding that emotion -- hooray tahneer!

here are a few more:

_write letter to billy_ by toby olson
(a truly *incredible* novel that mystifies and demystifies the detective
story and makes you believe stuff you can't believe you're believing)

_a humument_ by tom phillips
(pat green just gave me this (thank you pat!) and i was amazed to find
that it is a full-color book! i have it in 109 if anyone wants to come by
and peruse it -- phillips takes a 19th century victorian novel and
re-faces it, adding artwork that selectively reveals small pieces,
poemlets, from the original text)

_don quixote_ (since this is a list of books to read along the way)

.....

--Kerry

From: cjacobso@dept.english.upenn.edu (Carolyn Jacobson)
Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
To: ksherin@dept.english.upenn.edu (Kerry Sherin)
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 19:40:39 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

I'll add:

*Housekeeping*, by Marilynne Robinson (amazing and great and amazing)
*A Prayer for Owen Meany*, by John Irving (the anticipation of this book
got me through my last week of college. I kept it next to my
computer and kept sneaking peaks as I wrote and wrote and wrote
my final papers)
*Villette* by Charlotte Bronte (*Jane Eyre* for realists)
*The Dead and the Living* by Sharon Olds
*Bleak House* by Charles Dickens (blows *Great Expectations* out of the
water, Allie, but is twice as long, which is why we didn't read
it in 60)
*My Antonia*, by Willa Cather

And reading these lists made me think about *100 Years of Solitude*. I
first read that novel in my Interp of Lit class, my first semester of
college. My section of the class was being taught by a severely depressed
retiring faculty member, who had tried to commit suicide in the recent
past, and who was on drugs that made him move about constantly and had
made him loose several of this teeth. He was a Spenserian, but for some
reason was teaching this wild syllabus full of folks like Garcia Marquez
and Diane Wakowski. The whole semester felt like a wild adventure. He
really didn't know much about the books we were reading, and we were all
trying to figure out how to talk about them. And he was very
unpredictable. He was always moving about the classroom, and would often
just wander out after 30 minutes or so, leaving us to figure out that
class was over. But he also read to us a lot, with this great raspy
southern voice, and I think I became an English major because of the way
he read the scene in *100 Years of Solitude* where the trickle of blood
flows all over town.

The last time I read this book, my best friend was between apartments and
was crashing with me. We'd eat a late dinner together, and then we
would sit in the rocking chairs in my front room, and she would
sew a dress she was working and I'd read Garcia Marquez out loud, until
the sun went down enough that neither of us could see to continue. We were
both living out all of our "Little House on the Prairie"-induced 19th
century fantasies, I think, and it was great.

Carolyn

Subject: Book Lists
From: rumitra@sas.upenn.edu (Rumela Mitra)
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 10:25:27 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Hi Tahneer!
here are my two cents:

Kaaterskill Falls--Allegra Goodman
Oranges are not the only fruit--Jeannette Winterson
A Suitable Boy--Vikram Seth
God of Small Things--Arundhati Roy
Angels and Insects--A.S. Byatt
Mephisto--Klaus Mann (corollary to Al's great suggestion of Bulgakov)
No Exit--Sartre
Diary of a Madman--Gogol
The Haunting of Hill House--Shirley Jackson
House of Mirth--Edith Wharton
Jazz--Toni Morrison
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe--author is Fanny something
Night--Elie Wiesel (must read and very short)
Vagina Monologues--Eve Ensler (also very short=sorry if my suggestions are
trite:)
Any Agatha Christie/Arthur Conan Doyle
Also Isaac Asimov/Arthur C. Clark
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings--Maya Angelou
Communion--Whitley Streiber (a little bathroom reading thrown in:)
Voyage Into the Dark--Jean Rhys
Dracula--Bram Stoker
Trilby--George du Maurier
I get really excited about book lists . . .so I'll control myself now:)
I do hope you'll include some of these in your final list! Strike
whatever's obvious and repeated.
Best,
Rumela

Subject: Re:Book Lists
From: "Peter Schwarz" <hschwarz@sas.upenn.edu>
To: <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
Cc: <hub@dept.english.upenn.edu>
Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 12:08:21 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Hi Tahneer,

Here are my selections (and I apologize for any repetitions that might =
arise, I haven't had a chance yet to run through the slew of responses =
to your question):

The Border Trilogy, Cormac McCarthy (though the first, All the Pretty =
Horses is the best in my opinion)
Journey to the End of the Night, Celine
Everything by Beckett and Borges
The Hive and San Camilo, 1936, Camilo Jose Cela
Keys to the Garden, edited by Ammiel Alcalay
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, essays by Camus (read his notebooks =
also)
Bernard Malamud's short stories
Dorothy Parker's short stories
Up in the Hotel (I think that's the name), Joseph Mitchell
The Wedding, Dorothy West
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
The Acid House, Irvine Welsh (of Trainspotting fame)
Busted Scotch, James Kelman
Cane, Jean Toomer
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Ulysses (without a doubt!!), James Joyce
Mark Twain's essays and sketches
The Wild Party (I forget who the author is)
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
The Rendezvous, Justine Levy
The works of Anais Nin (though I have to confess that sometimes they =
become tedious)
The short fiction of H.G. Wells, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Maeve Brennan, =
Nabokov, Tennessee Williams=20
Oscar Wilde's writings
Annie Proulx's book of short stories (I forget the title)
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (haven't read it but plan on it, =
hear it's good)
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien (same as the above)

Bulfinch's Mythology

I don't know how much you're into theater, but I highly recommend =
reading as much dramatic literature and theatrical theory as possible. =
For my own work I've discovered far more powerful influences in theater =
than anything I've yet come across in literary theory.

Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello
La Ronde, Arthur Schnitzler
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee (hideously spectacular)
The Zoo Story, Edward Albee
The plays of Clifford Odets
All the works of Maria Irene Fornes, especially Promenade, The Conduct =
of Life, and Mud
A View from the Bridge, Arthur Miller
The Balcony, Jean Genet
A Dream Play, August Strindberg
The Leader, Ionesco
Striptease, Mzorak (????) early 20th Century Polish absurdist playwright

The Theater and its Double, Antonin Artaud (his infamous collection of =
theatrical manifestos)
Aristotle's Poetics
The Empty Space, Peter Brook
The Theater of Maria Irene Fornes, edited by Marc Robinson

If you read the NYT, check out columnist Maureen Dowd (if Dorothy Parker =
had fallen under H.L. Mencken--to slightly alter her famous quip--there =
would be Maureen) and foreign correspondent Steven Erlanger when his =
dispatches have been published; he's been covering the Balkans for a =
while, and his journalism is Pulitzer-prize winning. Also try to read =
The Paris Review (as I'm sure you already know) and Bard College's =
Conjunctions. Don't miss the annual Pushcart Prize anthology.

Check out www.webdelsol.com Has links to many interesting online lit =
journals.

Good luck on all your future endeavors, Tahneer. I'll always remember =
what you told me about how to deal with the anxiety of public =
speaking...though I still can't bring myself to actually visualizing =
that.

All the best,
Peter

Subject: Re: Book Lists Question
From: hannahjs@sas.upenn.edu (Hannah J Sassaman)
To: hannahjs@sas.upenn.edu (Hannah J Sassaman)
Cc: joasia05@hotmail.com, hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 16:26:51 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

more books.

bizarre lefty plays! fun to read out loud with friends.

all of brecht's plays, but especially _mother courage_.
surrealist plays! _the blind_ by maeterlink. _ubu roi_ by alfred jarry.

comic books! _v for vendetta_ by alan moore and david lloyd.
_the invisibles_ by grant morrison. i've been reading these all over the
writers house. go genre literature.

beauty and sadness by yasunari kawabata.

oh, and go to this COMPLETELY unrelated website (on a fast computer):

http://animutation.mixinmojo.com/anim

hannah

Subject: Re(2): Book Lists Question
From: "Laura Smith" <lsmith@springside.org>
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Cc: hannahjs@sas.upenn.edu, joasia05@hotmail.com
Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 12:04:51 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

wow---i ignore my email for a couple days, and look what you all have
gotten into!!

Three from me:

What is Found There (and the earlier Blood, Bread, and Poetry) are what I
read when the link between poetry and activism seems to be dissolving into
the ink of university press journals again. Both by Adrienne Rich.

Kushner's Angels in America--if you didn't catch up with this one in
February, do it as soon as possible.

Sandra Cisneros's House on Mango Street---please, read it slowly,
slowly--hum a little while you're reading, maybe, or take walks between
vignettes---make it take all day--

Laura

Subject: HUB 2001 READING LIST
From: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 13:27:03 -0700

Thanks to everyone for their great suggestions! I'm not sure if anyone
will be adding, but this is the list I've compiled so far. Your comments and
lists have been so enthusiatic and wonderful. What a way to end the
semester.
Okay, heregoes... (If you want the 'word' version, with italics and
everything, just email me and i'll attach and send it to you).
-tahneer


HUB 2001 Reading List

Al Williams Spring and All
Bulgakov The Master and Margarita
Andrew Saroyan The William Saroyan Reader
Nathaniel West A Cool Million
Deborah Maxim Gorky My Childhood
Ella Leffland Rumors of Peace
George Eliot Daniel Deronda
CK Williams Tar
Yeats Responsibilities and the Tower
Jeff Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
Ranier Maria Rilke Duino Elegies
Julia John Steinbeck Travels with Charley
Michael Cunningham The Hours
Nikolai Gogol St. Petersburg Tales
Julia Alvarez Yo!
Jo Robert Creeley Collected Poems
Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
John Barth Chimera
Jeanette Winterson Written on the Body
Friedrich Nietzche Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Zbigniew Herbert Collected Poems
Witold Gombrowicz Ferdydurke
Terry McMillan A Day Late and a Dollar Short
Russell George Saunders Civil War Land in Bad Decline
Chris Fuhrman Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys
Holly Ann Carson Autobiography of Red
Herbert Marcuse One-Dimensional Man
Henry Miller Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Neal Stephenson Snow Crash
Richard Lattimore, trans. The Iliad
Tahneer Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
Salman Rushdie Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Charles Bukowski The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Heather Alice Notley Mysteries of Small Houses
Muriel Rukeyser The Life of Poetry
Robin Kelley, ed. To Make Our World Anew: A History of
African Americans
Grace Paley The Collected Stories
Allie Haruki Murakami The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Vladimir Nabokov Pnin
Nathan Englander For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
Julian Barnes England, England
David Gates (any of his three books)
Matthew M. Wallace Stevens Transport to Summer
Russell Edson The Tunnel
Jorie Graham The End of Beauty
Jay Wright Boleros
Michael S. Harper Debridement
Wilson Harris Jonestown
Steve Erikson Arc d'x
Anne Carson (everything)
Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces
Pauline Hopkins Of One Blood
John Hawkes Second Skin
Joanna Scott The Manikin
Toni Bambara The Salt Eaters
Jean Genet The Blacks
Suzie Carson McCullers (short stories)
Lois Anne Yamanaka (her novels)
Stephen Jay Gould (anything)
Peter Sis (any children's book)
Carmen T. King Green Grass, Running Water
B. Kingsolver Animal Dreams; The Bean Tress;
Pigs in Heaven
A. Tan The Kitchen God's Wife
Sembene Ousmane God's Bits of Wood
K. Cushman Catherine, Called Birdy
E. Rostand Cyrano de Bergerac
M. Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court
L.H. Anderson Speak
B. Cronin Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type
I. Falconer Olivia
Junot Diaz Drown
C. Crutcher Athletic Shorts
Liz Silver Anita Diamont The Red Tent
Michelle Cliff No Telephone to Heaven
Diane McKinney-Whetstone Tumbling
Matt Hart Basil Bunting Collected Poems
Raphael Samuel Theaters of Memory
James Hogg Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Ezra Pound Homage to Sextus Propertius
HD Helen in Egypt
Michael M. Frank Stanford The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love
You
George Oppen Collected Poems
Ronald Formisano Boston Against Busing
Carla Harryman The Words
Lorenzo Thomas Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and
20th Cent. American Poetry
Hannah Nathaniel West Miss Lonelyhearts and in the Day of The
Locust
Raymond Carver The Big Sleep
Italo Calvino (anything)
Brecht Mother Courage
Maeterlink The Blind
Alfred Jarry Ubu Roi
Alan Moore & David Lloyd V for Vendetta (comic book)
Grant Morrison The Invisibles (comic)
Kerry Toby Olson Write a Letter to Billy
Tom Philips A Humument
Cervantes Don Quixote
Carolyn J. Marilynne Robinson Housekeeping
John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany
Charlotte Bronte Villette
Sharon Olds The Dead and the Living
Charles Dickens Bleak House
Willa Cather My Antonia
Rumela Allegra Goodman Kaaterskill Falls
Jeannette Winterson Oranges are not the Only Fruit
Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy
Arundhati Roy God of Small Things
A.S. Byatt Angels and Insects
Klaus Mann Mephisto
Sartre No Exit
Gogol Diary of a Madman
Shirley Jackson The Haunting of Hill House
Edith Wharton The House of Mirth
Toni Morrison Jazz
Elie Wiesel Night
Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Whitley Streiber Communion
Jean Rhys Voyage into the Dark
Bram Stoker Dracula
George du Maurier Trilby
Jennifer S. Muriel Spark Momento Mori
Elizabeth Bishop Collected Letters
Peter S. Cormac McCarthy The Border Trilogy
Celine Journey to the End of the Night
Borges (anything)
Beckett (anything)
Camilla Jose Cela The Hive and San Camillo, 1936
Ammiel Alcalay, ed. Keys to the Garden
Camus Resistance, Rebellion and Death
Bernard Malamud (short stories)
Dorothy Parker (short stories)
Joseph Mitchell Up in the Hotel
Dorothy West The Wedding
Zadie Smith White Teeth
Irvine Welsh The Acid House
James Kelman Busted Scotch
Jean Toomer Cane
Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway
James Joyce Ulysses
Mark Twain (essays and sketches)
Marguerite Duras The Lover
Justine Levy The Rendezvous
Anais Nin (anything)
Annie Prouix (short stories)
Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind
Tolkien The Lord of the Rings
Luigi Pirandello Six Characters in Search of an
Author
Arthur Schnitzler La Ronde
Edward Albee Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee The Zoo Story
Clifford Odets (the plays of)
Maria Irene Fornes Promenade
Arthur Miller A View from the Bridge
Jean Genet The Balcony
August Strindberg A Dream Play
Ionesco The Leader
Antonin Artaud The Theater and its Double
Aristotle Poetics
Peter Brook The Empty Space
Marc Robinson, ed. The Theater of Maria Irene Fornes
Laura S. Adrienne Rich What is Found There; Blood, Bread
And Poetry
Kushner Angels in America
Sandra Cisneros House on Mango St.

_______________________________________________________________
Every devil I meet is an angel in disguise

*Indigo Girls

Subject: Book Lists Question
From: Randall Couch <couch@pobox.upenn.edu>
To: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 13:52:04 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

Tahneer and folks,

I too hope you'll post this list when it winds up.

Seconds to so many things that have been posted. The Quixote for
sure, and reread it again in twenty years. Anne Carson. Proulx
shorts. A few more that have been important to me:

-Dante (esp. Vita Nuova and the Commedia). For me another lifelong
companion. There's a dynamite new book just published called _The
Poets' Dante: Twentieth Century Responses_ that collects essays by 28
_poets_ from Pound, Eliot, Mandelstam, Borges, to Merrill, C.K.
Williams and Mark Doty. Mandelstam's essay alone is worth the price
of admission, and Robert Fitzgerald describes (and quotes) Ezra
Pound's extensive involvement/correspondence with Laurence Binyon's
translation, a major piece (unknown to me) of Pound's thinking about
translation, as well as about Dante. If you think Dante of only
historical interest, Mandelstam will convince you otherwise.

-Of the Russians, I'd also submit the Brothers Karamazov (more
interesting to me than C&P) and Anna Karenina. Gary Saul Morson (who
used to teach here in Slavic Langs.) has a wonderful Bakhtin-esque
book called _Narrative and Freedom_ on the perception and
representation of time in fiction--and how narrative forms expand or
constrain the characters' and reader's experience of choice as a real
possibility--that illuminates these books in a fundamental way.

-Checkhov shorts.

-Russian poets, Akhmatova and Mandelstam.

-Tristram Shandy by Sterne. Delight from start to finish,
Enlightenment postmodernism.

-_Call It Sleep_ by Henry Roth. This book's publishing history
(publisher went bankrupt as it was released, few copies printed
initially) kept it from having the impact it should have when
published in 1934. One of American modernism's crowning achievements,
imho, and maybe the best treatment of the early 20thC immigrant
experience. More tender and terrible childhood book than Joyce's
Portrait, formally amazing things with layered dictions and dialects
embodying cultures in counterintuitive ways. Al, this is your
area--is this book in or out of fashion these days?

-_Emma_ by Jane Austen. Either you dig Jane or you don't. I do.

-_Gravity's Rainbow_, Pynchon. I know, it's self-indulgent and
sloshy, but it was the '70s.

-_Alexandria Quartet_, Lawrence Durrell. And then read Cavafy. Or
maybe vice-versa.

-Paul Bowles. Anything, but I like the shorts.

-More shorts: Singer, Munro, Trevor, Carver. . .

-_The Magus_ (first version), _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, by
John Fowles. More than meets the eye.

-_London Journal_ by James Boswell. Short, silly, racy, full of
self-creation and self-presentation angst, full of material for
debate on treatment of women, and a really painless introduction into
18thC English culture. The last part records his meeting with Sam
Johnson, and previews the famous bio.

_The Shorter Pepys_. Good abridgment (still a doorstop) of the famous
diary including the Great Fire of London, the plague year, and an
amazingly direct exposure of his thoughts. 17thC construction of self
and the rise of the bourgeois public space. Pepys was also
instrumental in conceiving and creating the navy that "ruled the
waves" for two centuries.

Sorry to go on.

You guys are great! Keep listing . . .

-RC

Subject: Re: HUB 2001 READING ROOM
From: Holly Johnson <hjohnson@philly1.phillymag.com>
To: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 00:54:38 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

I'm lead to imagine a dedicated library, either real or virtual, where all
these text are collected... or maybe that's just the inside of tahneer's
head

Subject: Re: HUB 2001 READING ROOM
From: carmenm@dept.english.upenn.edu (Carmen Higgins)
To: allied@sas.upenn.edu (Allie D'Augustine)
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 09:34:37 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: hjohnson@philly1.phillymag.com, toksman@sas.upenn.edu,
hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

In this spirit:

I spoke with Heather about bringing in "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that
Type"
(prompted by Julia B's interest) for the edification of the Hub. I'll try
to drop it off this afternoon, but since it's only a five minute read or
so, I'd like to ask that it not leave the House and that it be returned to
the Hub office after it's been read in any of the House's other cool
reading nooks.

:-)

According to Allie D'Augustine:
>
> hey Holly,
>
> That definitely sounds do-able. We can set aside a shelf at the house and
> anyone who wants to can donate a couple of favorite books. We'll have a
> "hub favorites" bookshelf (just like "staff picks" at a
bookstore, except
> we'll have better stuff :)
> (although I do think it would be lovely to have them in tahneer's head,
> too. she can be our walking and talking writers house library.)
>

Subject: Re: HUB 2001 READING ROOM
From: Julia Blank <blankj@sas.upenn.edu>
To: carmenm@dept.english.upenn.edu (Carmen Higgins)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 09:37:11 -0400 (EDT)
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

rock on carmen!:)
j.

Subject: Re: HUB 2001 READING ROOM
From: "Tahneer N. Oksman" <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
To: Julia Blank <blankj@sas.upenn.edu>, carmenm@dept.english.upenn.edu (Carmen Higgins)
Cc: hub@dept.english.upenn.edu
Date: Mon, 07 May 2001 10:04:29 -0700
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

you guys are the best!
I have a hardcover copy of haroun and the sea of stories (it's at home
now)... i'll have my parents bring it around graduation and drop it off at
the house. sorry for those of you who had bad childhood experiences with
it, but it really is a great book!
-tahneer

maybe I should drop *my* copy off:) (but alas mine, too, is at home...so
yours will have to suffice)

j.

Hey Kerry--

I'm starting to make some cuts now. I'd like to run it by you as soon as I
chopped a considerable amount off. I'm looking at cutting off things by
the major writers like Twain, Steinbeck etc and looking at things that
people normally wouldn't read. I'm including some poetry, knocking off
some of the more academic/philosophical reading. I'm trying to keep a
culturally diversified list. I think by the time I'm done I should have 40
maybe fifty. If you wouldn't mind going through and lopping it even
further, it would be very helpful. Is this something you would want me to
contact the HUB about? Also, does the WH have any connections with any
reporters from the Inquirer or any other publications that you know about?

Thanks for your enthusiasm. I'm pretty fired up myself about this--so is
Ron for that matter.

Thanks again,

Russ

Russell Carl Campbell III
News Officer
University Communications
215.898.7798
http://www.upenn.edu/news

hope i'm not too late. i dont check my mail often enough to be in the loop
but i can't resist this list. this is long, 16 books - sorry!! - - but i
am in the process of imaging my reading list for grad school hoop-jumping
season, so you got me at a good/bad time.

EVRYTHING HAPPENS -- by dominique fourcade
it is french, and how, but short, and absolutely inspired. a life
changing experience for me, full of facing the problems of writing. he is
a sweet sweet soul. the wisest man i've met.
HOUSEKEEPING -- by marilynne robinson
a haunted book, as carolyn says, just amazzing. plays with space and time
in theory and in practice. i'd say it is written in circular time, or
regressive time.
DICTEE -- by teresa hak kyung cha
history, identity, the body, language, mother tongue, korea, korean,
american, french, cross, crossed out
WORDS OF LIGHT -- by eduardo cadava
a short beuatiful book on photography, light, ideology, astronomy, memory
HAGAR"S DAUGHTER -- by pauline hopkins
found in _the magazine novels_. slavery, history, purity, memory,
membership. hopkins brings biblical tropes and historical document into a
fictional account of african american memory and cultural difference in
conceptions of time.
A HUMUMENT -- by tom phillips
beautiful. kerry suggested it too.
THE GEOGRAPHCAL HISTORY OF AMERICA -- by gertrude stein
written after her first airplane flight. the arbitrariness of state
lines. border writing, active nature imposed upon by european thinking,
like language squished into diagramming sentenced.
THE MASTER LETTERS OF EMILY DICKINSON -- emily dickinson, ed. rw franklin
crushing good poetry, with a great introduction by the editor
PARIS SPLEEN -- by charles baudelaire
funny, brillaint, honest, dirty, gritty, horrible. gutter lyric. how to
write in the mall.
IN THE CAGE -- by henry james
a novella. of imagination and telecommunications as the industry is just
becoming.
THE BIRTH MARK -- by susan howe
any american writer should read this. poetic criticism/history.
FRIENDSHIP -- by maurice blanchot
short, readable essays. great stuff on museums and other cool cultural
stuff.
FICCIONES -- by jorge luis borges
see how far the mind can bend and like it.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ROBERT SMITHSON
he writes weeeird. he's a visual artist who works with nature,
environment, decay... get it for the visuals as much as the writing.
MONKEY -- by wu ch eng en, trans. arthur waley
how to be monkey mind
THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF edgar allen poe
read "man of the crowd" (i think that's what its called) plus, he
lived
in philly and there's alotta poe stuff in philly.

Subject: Book List additions
From: "Peter Schwarz" <hschwarz@sas.upenn.edu>
To: <toksman@sas.upenn.edu>
Cc: <hub@dept.english.upenn.edu>
Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 19:54:52 -0400
Sender: owner-hub@dept.english.upenn.edu

I have some final additions to this phenomenal and accumulating
"library":

Tin House (lit journal)
M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang (a play)
Kandinsky's writings on art
The Blue Lantern, Victor Pelevin
The works of Gunter Grass
Notebooks for an Ethics, Sartre
The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali, Ian Gibson
Diaries, Robert Musil
U.S.A., Dos Passos

Peter