One of the books I scored with the gift certificate Rudder gave me to my favorite
used book store is The Woolcott reader -- Alexander Woolcott's way of
making sure his favorite short fiction was in print so that he could force
everyone he knew to read it. I haven't gotten far in, because I feel I ought to
finish my library books first. (And Waverly took bloody forever to
read!)
So I've only read the Preface so far, but it's already more
than worth the paltry $1.98 they charged just for this
paragraph:
"Now, I would be highly content to come
up for judgment as one who thought highly of all the works in this volume and
deeply loved some of them. It is true that its table of contents seldom duplicates
the lists of books with which some of our best minds are constantly electing to be
wrecked on some desert island -- that putative retreat which must now be suffering
from overpopulation. In those lists (besides indisputable and nourishing
essentials like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and War
and Peace), I do often find austere works of such orthodox classicism as fills
me with a mutinous suspicion that they have been included from a sense of duty and
will be taken, if at all, medicinally. Indeed, when faced with certain of the
monumental works of the world's literature, I am affected as was a
cuisinière of my acquaintance by the State of California, to which brightly
pigmented commonwealth she repaired late in life to make her home. To her former
mistress in the darkling and rain-drenched East, she reported her arrival by
sending a florid postcard on which she had scribbled this message: "It's very
beautiful here I don't like it."
Woolcott wasn't
very beautiful, by all reports, but I think I'll like him.