Maya Hoover/The Mossy Log
One of the many quirks of the Lewis & Clark academic calendar — aside from three-hour labs on Friday afternoons and a Thanksgiving break seemingly engineered to maximize jet lag — is a whopping 33-day winter break. This is a long time: longer than a housefly’s lifespan, or even an opossum pregnancy. In the interest of drumming up some enriching entertainment for myself and my fellow students in the twilight days of our long January reprieve, I set out to interview a sample of LC English faculty to get their reading recommendations for undergraduates. Fair warning: If you ask a bunch of English professors what their favorite volumes of literature are, you end up with some pretty dense books.
Lyell Asher, associate professor of English
Asher, whose academic work focuses on drama and prose — especially that of Shakespeare and the Renaissance era — proves to be a Renaissance man himself with a series of historical and political nonfiction books. His top recommendation to LC students is “Cultural Amnesia” by Clive James, a 20th century Australian-British journalist whom Asher described as a “raconteur … almost incapable of writing a bad sentence.” “Cultural Amnesia” is a compendium of short biographical profiles of influential figures ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Albert Einstein, with plenty of figures in between who may be lesser known but are no less interesting. Asher recommends “Cultural Amnesia” for undergraduates because it is, “one of those big books you can dip into at any moment,” noting that the book is a great source of knowledge about not only history, but also writing style.
Another history writer Asher admires is Jean-François Revel, whose work he first encountered in the 1980s. “I saw a book entitled ‘Neither Marx Nor Jesus,’ and you see that title and you pick up that book,” Asher recounted. More recently, he read Revel’s “Last Exit to Utopia,” an account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he recommends to LC undergraduates as an eye-opening account of the shortcomings of socialism.
When I asked about his favorite book of all time, Asher answered with Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire,” calling it “infinitely re-readable.” He described Nabokov’s writing as “by turns hilarious and heartbreaking,” and noted that he still discovers new things within “Pale Fire” every time he rereads it.
Early on in his career, Asher was inspired to study English by James Joyce’s short story collection, “Dubliners,” particularly its last piece, “The Dead.” He recalled being struck at how familiar Joyce’s depiction of Dublin was, even though Asher had never been to Dublin when he first read it. Asher also remembered being impressed by the way in which Joyce’s stories move from ordinary characters and circumstances to “profound meditation on love and death.”
Philip Barron, adjunct professor of English
Barron, whose work focuses on creating and analyzing “contemporary, experimental poetics,” wrote that he was drawn to the world of poetry by “how much one could do by saying so little and explaining even less.” He does not consider any one poet or poem his favorite, but noted that he often returns to William Carlos Williams’ “Paterson” and Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching.”
Outside of poetry, Barron is an avid reader of sports memoirs, particularly books by long-distance endurance athletes. He recommends “The Front Runner” by Brendan O’Meara, a nuanced biography of Oregon running legend Steve Prefontaine.
Kristin Fujie, associate professor of English and department chair
Fujie’s work focuses on American modernism, specifically the period between the two world wars. She is also LC’s unofficial resident William Faulkner expert, though as she stipulated, “I don’t know if anyone can ever call themselves truly in control of Faulkner.”
When I asked about her favorite book of all time, Fujie presented a copy of Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” with what appeared to be well over a hundred miniature Post-it annotations sticking out from between the pages. She specifically pointed out an intricate passage of interracial conflict, unexpected empathy and intentionally-confused metaphors warped by linguistic voids in white Southern culture.
“I like the things that you can read over and over again and it never fully makes sense, and you are never bored,” Fujie said.
Fujie was first hooked on Faulkner when she read “The Sound and the Fury” as an undergrad in 1995. Outside of his work, she recommends “There There” by Tommy Orange, saying that Orange emulates Faulkner in his use of regionalism, but flips the concept on its head by situating his novel in the unconventional setting of Oakland, a decision that also pushes boundaries on previous conceptions of Indigenous literature. Oakland is a city whose rapid transformations have quickly left it unrecognizable to its former inhabitants, a fact encapsulated in the Gertrude Stein quote from which Orange took his novel’s title: “there’s no there there.” Fujie noted that this reshaping is also essential in Indigenous American literature and its consideration of homelands.
Jerry Harp, associate professor of humanities
Harp teaches creative writing with a focus on poetry, including bringing contemporary poets such as Rick Barot and Elizabeth Willis to campus to give readings. In his spare time, he also reads history and science writing and enjoys attending weekly lectures by the LC biology department.
This past summer, Harp read the comprehensive “deathbed” edition of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” When Harp reads poetry, he said, “I just sink into it.” Others among his favorite poets include W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens, whom he reads for their “enchanting language.”
When I asked about the last book that knocked his socks off, Harp first asked whether rereading counts, then answered with Faulkner’s “Light in August,” which he got pulled into over the summer while looking for a particular passage. Harp described Faulkner as his favorite fiction writer, and brought up Fujie unprompted: “she and I will geek out on Faulkner once a week or so.”
Harp’s journey in the world of English academia began all the way back in sixth grade, when he first read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” He described the excitement of reading a work widely regarded as the origin of science fiction, and entering into a “world of complexity” with questions about the monstrosity and trauma of the Creature. Harp said “Frankenstein” is how he learned to read difficult books.
“If I just dove in and swam for five or ten pages, I could tell you the gist of what happened … there’s this experience of osmosis,” he said.
This leap-of-faith approach may prove crucial for any students attempting to read every book in this article over winter break.
Andrea Hibbard; assistant professor of English
Hibbard has written a series of articles about gender, genre and sensational 19th-century trials. She cites her graduate education in feminist literary theory as the thing that has most shaped her literary career, naming scholars Maggie Nelson and Rosemarie Bodenheimer as important influences. Hibbard’s favorite book is a tie between “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf and “Middlemarch” by George Eliot. More recently, she read and now thoroughly recommends “The Fraud” by Zadie Smith.
Mary Szybist, Morgan S. Odell professor of humanities
Szybist, like many LC English professors, focuses on poetry in her academic work, but her reading life outside of this is wide and varied. Among her favorite novels is “The Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James, which had a transformative role in her reading experience.
“(It) was one of the novels that first let me into the deep pleasures of reading, and now it feels like a completely different book,” she said.
She also recommends “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy. For non-novel reading, Szybist provided a long list of favorite poets, among them Theodore Roethke, Michael Ondaatje, Gwendolyn Brooks “and, of course, Emily Dickinson.”
In my interviews, I was struck by how often professors would mention a book’s re-readability, but on reflection this makes sense. English professors, by definition, are people who devote great amounts of time and energy to literature, so it follows that their favorite books would be the ones with limitless hidden meanings and discoveries. To some readers, these recommendations may feel like gifts that keep on giving; to others, they may feel like self-imposed homework assignments. Regardless, you can count on these books recommended by LC English professors to draw you in and make you think.
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